How often have you heard of an individual or company achieves success without accomplishing a single stated goal? Typically, it is the other way around; no goal achievement equals no success. Consider the philosophy of fewer goals yield greater success, in other words less is more.
The following is a brief outline of what I use during executive or team leadership training.
3-year picture: What does it look like? Simply, what does the individual, or organization look like in 3 years? This is not a 25-page strategic plan document; it is the visual "day dream". What does the future revenue look like, how many locations do you see, how many employees do you want etc. The visual 3-year picture does need to be written down.
Now make a list of all the issues that stand between you and the 3-year picture. Get them ALL out in the open.
1-year plan: now that the picture is in place, write down no more than 6 issues from the list that must be resolved over the next 12 months that move you or your organization towards the 3-year picture. No more than 6, remember we are achieving with "less is more".
90 days: From your one-year plan, build a 90-day world.
From the issues selected, select no more than 3 or 5 that must be resolved over the next 90 days (your true GOALS are now established). Once goals have been established for the 90 days you CAN NOT add additional "something came up goals". Just as important, you cannot add a new goal once one is accomplished.
Give you and your team the feeling of accomplishment. Do not be discouraged if a goal is not accomplished over the next 90 days, it just rolls to the next.
Repeat this process over the next 12 months and watch you or your organization take off!
To your continued success...of your choice.
Michael I agree. My experience with large organizations though is that they typically is the lack of organizational alignment with the overall corporate goals. While the stated strategic goals are often 3 - 5 years in nature the targets,incentive goals and project workload are often focused on the short term. this creates a culture apathy surrounding the long term strategies.