Goals – Know Them to Meet Them

The year 2010 has been all about goals for me, my team, and our clients. Reminding ourselves, regularly, of the value of establishing goals is important. In business and our personal lives, having goals is so critical to achieving success, balance, or anything else you want out of your life. Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Interestingly, once you know your goals, getting there is often the easy part.

Many people tend to get lost in the infinite details during their daily lives. I’m just as guilty as anyone else. The truly successful, though, establish goals, remind themselves every day of where they are trying to get, and don’t lose that focus. That focus becomes a part of who they are.

I recall building a big Web site for nurses a number of years back. With the success we were having, a multitude of ideas continually flowed in from around the company about what we should add next. I kept a clear set of goals visible and public: an enhancement must 1) drive traffic, 2) drive revenue, or 3) be strategically, incredibly important to the company. If an enhancement didn’t further one of those goals, it didn’t get done. Were some people upset? You bet. But business isn’t about pleasing everyone. At the end of the day, in your business life, you’ll be judged by what you accomplish.

So whether you’re working on a broad, far-reaching plan or a small campaign, knowing your goals and sticking to them is what will have a dramatic impact on your ability to succeed. Once you know where you want to be, you can identify the obstacles, figure out how you can overcome each one, and establish a plan that you believe can help you succeed. It all starts with the goals. Stick to them, and there could be no saying how successful you can become in business and in your overall life.