Why Resolutions Fail.

I am a businesswoman, not a psychologist.  So, you may be wondering why I am writing you this month about making and keeping resolutions.  In addition to running ITC, I am on three boards, actively involved in local charities and business organizations, a mother of two, a wife, and a daughter.  I have a lot of balls in the air, and only through goal setting coupled with my task driven personality have I been able to catch them all.  I am an expert in goal setting, and from my perspective, resolutions are goals.  I believe that the key to successful goal setting is to set a plan, and be able to measure the progress.

Like most of you, my entrepreneurial spirit fuels many of my ideas and business objectives.  Recently however, I have been vexed with my inability to achieve the next level of success.  I am a person who always has the answers.  But why am I stuck?  I have so many visions, thoughts, and ideas of where I want to be both personally and professionally.  Why can't I get myself there?  A colleague recommended I read the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution by McChesney, Covey, and Huling.  With this book's help, I believe I have found the answer to my questions, which I am going to share with you.

The book suggests every manager, division leader, President and CEO face the same challenge.  They try to implement too many changes at once.  High achievers are perfectionists.  What we cannot be perfect at in the present, we try rectify.  However, when we are starting out in our careers and in new relationships, goals are more simple and thus easier to achieve.  It is understandable that the more achievable a goal, the greater number of goals we can achieve at one time.  Eventually we reach a plateau.  The key to breaking through this plateau is to focus on a single objective.  At a recent kick off meeting, (where I usually roll out numerous "needs more focus items"), I only rolled out one.  My team ended up speaking longer about this one key area of focus than we would have spent on all the other ideas I normally would have presented.  They knew the direction.  This laser like focus enabled them to create meaningful action items that they could both measure and achieve.  Our company has already seen positive results.

Instead of trying to tackle 30 New Year's Resolution's in January, like I normally would have done, just tackle one.  Try to identify the "WIG" or 'Widely Important Goal" and create the steps to get there.  I am confident that you will see the change you are looking for, leading into a prosperous and happy 2015.