There’s a strong chance that right now, you have a goal in place that is setting you up for failure. It may be one that you’re excited about. It’s probably one that you agreed to with your team and have been doggedly working towards for several months.
And it likely looks like one of these:
- We will double our followers by the end of the quarter.
- Or we will 1.5x our sales by the end of the year.
- Or we will become the leading brand in our category within 18 months.
All promising, right?
You’ve set yourself up for failure. Here’s why.
While those goals may seem attainable, you’ve actually set yourself up for failure. And when you inevitably come up short, it will surely send ripples of dissatisfaction throughout your entire organization.
After all, goal setting is incredibly powerful… when done right.
But when done improperly, it serves no better than looking at a compass to determine if there’s traffic up ahead. It’s irrelevant. You don’t want irrelevant goals though. You want ones that you can actually achieve.
Ones that will inspire you and your team; that will push you forward to greatness. And that’s possible. To do so you need to make this one, subtle tweak to your goals right now.
Give yourself control.
It wasn’t because I “lacked the drive”
Years ago, I wanted to lose weight. I wasn’t happy with my body and chose to do something about it. So the first thing I did was, you guessed it, set a goal for myself. I declared that I would lose something like 15 pounds in six months.
Totally doable.
At least, so I thought.
But jump to the end of the story and you’ll find that it actually took me several years to get down to my ideal weight. Years, not months. And it certainly wasn’t because I “lacked the drive” or “didn’t put in the work” or any other cliche about failure.
In reality, I just had no control over my body. And neither do you.
Influence isn’t enough
You may think you have control over what your body does, but you don’t. If you have doubts about my claim, then try this: Set a goal to lose a certain amount of weight each week for the next month. It could be two pounds, one pound, five pounds, whatever.
And then from there, do your best.
What you’ll notice is that, even if you do everything perfectly, your body won’t reward you as you had initially hoped. One week you may lose a pound, the next you may gain two. And then you’ll say something like – “Well, it’s because I had pizza this week which I know was a mistake. That’s why I’m up weight.”
Yet that doesn’t make sense since you had the same four slices of pizza for dinner just last week; a week where you lost weight. So what’s the difference? There isn’t one. You simply don’t have control over how your body processes things.
You may think you do, but at most you can only influence it. And influence isn’t enough to get you to the weight you’re after.
How to do things differently
With each goal you set that’s out of your control, you open yourself up for failure again and again. However, there’s an easy solution to this problem. One that I’ve already touched on and have continued to allude to.
You need control over your goals.
Because when you set goals that are within your control, you give yourself the power to actually achieve them. A power that belongs to you and no one else.
Looking back at the weight loss example again, you can’t control how much weight you lose in a given week. What you can control though is how many pushups you do each month. Or how many minutes you run each week. Or how many calories you eat each day.
You can’t control your body, but you can control your actions. So if you set goals that are within your control, you give yourself the opportunity to achieve them and attain the results you’re after.
Set these goals for your brand moving forward
Looking at your brand, then, it’s the same issue.
Goals outside your scope of control will only disappoint you when you inevitably fall flat. So instead, set ones within your control.
Don’t set a goal to double your follower count. Instead, set one to start a conversation with 15 of your followers each day. Don’t set a goal to 1.5x your sales. Instead, set one to send 50 cold emails to potential clients each week.
Don’t set a goal to be the leading brand in your category. Instead, set one to spend ten minutes with each customer that calls in. *After all, the more your customers enjoy your service, the more they’ll share your brand with their friends.
The former goals are all outside of your control.
You can try to influence them, but you have a limited say in if they get accomplished. With the latter goals, you have total control over them. Whether or not you have the conversations or send the emails is completely on you and the effort you make.
If you take the necessary action, you achieve your goal and the result you’re after. If you don’t, you come up short.
Either way though, you have the power to decide. So look at your goals right now and determine if they are within your control. If they aren’t, change them and start to make meaningful progress forward.
About the Author: Corey Fradin is the Founder of QuickBooost – a blog that helps you do more with your time (productivity, goal setting, that kind of thing). His passion for goal setting has led to him helping countless individuals finally achieve their goals.