Basic Guidelines to Goal Setting with No Daily Affirmations or Sticky Notes Required

How Do You Get There from Here?Basic guidelines to goal setting with no daily affirmations or sticky notes required.

Many years ago, when I was freshly promoted pup, I attended a weeklong class called Achievement in Management Skills (AIMS for short). It was a really good class and gave me the basics for a long and happy career in sales and sales management. I still use a great many of the techniques I learned during that week, but I must admit that the two-step goal setting process seemed even then far too simple and far too difficult to maintain.

The first step to goal setting was to determine what it was that one wanted to achieve. No problem. That's the easy part. Next we were each given a pack of sticky notes on which to write our daily affirmations to be the kind of people who achieve these lofty goals. (I attended this class prior to Al Franken's Stuart Smally character, when I saw Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smally for the first time on Saturday Night Live I literally choked on my popcorn and fell out of my chair.)

I have no doubt that many people soared to great heights posting yellow squares of paper to their mirrors and reading aloud how wonderful and accomplished they were. It was just never for me. In my experience there are five steps to achieving one's goals. They are vision, planning, execution, change, and recovery or reward.

Vision

In order to get somewhere, one needs to know where that place is. This is both one of the trickiest parts and easiest parts of goal setting. As both a sales person and a manager I have created goals for work. Typically these are really forecasts based on trends to which I have no real emotional attachment. I'd like to make the company's goal, but I won't be shattered if I don't. The making of the company's goal in and of itself isn't really my goal, but it can be the byproduct of my bigger goal-depending on what that is. If my goal is to be in the top 5% of the company or even to simply remain employed, meeting company goals is going to be important. Again, though, the real goal-the vision if you will-is being in the top 5% and/or remaining employed.

Planning