What happens when you ignore goal setting in your business?

How can goal setting in your business turn your team’s performance from OK to outstanding…

What’s hockey got to do with your business success?

Do you have goals in place for you and your team?

What have you done to future-proof the success of your business?

Goal setting – time to clarify how to measure success in your business

How can your business learn from pensioners who had recent knee and hip replacements?

What have 2 orthopaedic hospitals and a collection of Scottish pensioners got to do with goal setting in your business?

Discover how a group of recovering knee and hip replacement pensioners in Scotland could be putting your business to shame…

Is your business ready for the challenge of goal setting – learn from hip and knee replacement patients

How can the same principles used in recovering patients in Scotland be applied to your business

How SMART goals used successfully with orthopaedic patients can work in your business…

How can a group of Scottish pensioners, 13 weeks, and a blank notebook transform the fortunes of your business...?

Business goals work when you follow a few ‘golden rules’…

When was the last time you set challenging goals for your team?

What can business owners learn from GE and Jack Welch about stretch goals?

How can your business use stretch goals and achieve growth year on year?

What did Jack Welch do at GE to achieve sustained growth for 2 decades?

Stretch your team and you will achieve things you previously thought impossible

Use SMART stretch goals in your business today

Don’t accept ‘Achievable’ stretch for ‘Ambitious’

Stretch goals – the key to the future success of your business

How to measure outcome and process goals in your business…

What is a ‘stretch’ goal and how can you apply it effectively in your business?

How can your business’s future be transformed by using stretch goals?

Stretch goals can and will energise you and your team…

Stretch your team to work harder and smarter for business success

Achieve the right results for your business by making your goals personal to your team

Achieve the right results for your business by making your goals relevant to your customers

Help your business survive and thrive by setting clear expectations when goal setting

What happens when you clarify the expectations of the goals in your business?

The power of three matters when it comes to setting the right goals for your business

Time to get your team on board by involving them in the goals you set in your business

Get clarity on the expectations of your goals and help your team, customers and business win.

Use goals right and give your team focus

Use ambitious SMART stretch goals in your business and build a more engaged purpose driven team

When setting goals in your business you MUST use the SMART system

Making goals alive every day in your business will bring you the success you want

Don’t let your business stall by not taking goal setting seriously

Use a visual way of goal setting to drive your business forwards

1. Most business owners when they go into business have one goal, to make enough money to survive the first month!

It's frustrating when your business achieves less than it should, but are you doing enough to help yourself? Click here to learn the value to your business of goal setting.

2. Are you doing enough to help your business? Do you have goals in place for you and your team? A goal in sport is the difference between winning and losing, success or failure, in business a goal is not as obvious, but just as important, click here to learn why…

3. Just as goals have an effect on motivation, motivation has an important effect on goal achievement. The key is to prove the power of goals.

This is easy to an elite athlete, but what about trying to explain the success of goal setting to a group of pensioners who have just experienced the agony of knee or hip replacement…

Are they ready for the challenge of goal setting? Would you be in their situation? Click here to learn more…

4. Click here to read how a study conducted in 1992, done inside two of Scotland’s busiest orthopaedic hospitals provided stark evidence that goal setting works. These same principles can be applied with great success to your business too.

5. In 1992 a study inside 2 of Scotland’s Orthopaedic hospitals provided overwhelming evidence that goal setting works. The study proved that having challenging goals clearly worked for pain-riddled hip and knee replacement patients. When was the last time you set really challenging goals for your team? Click here to learn more.

6. As a business leader I am sure you have heard of SMART goals, but do you know what SMART goals are and do you write them down?

Read here how the use of SMART goals over 13 weeks worked for the patients in this study and how these basic principles can be applied successfully in your business.

7. Jack Welch was CEO at GE for 20 years, he believed in SMART goals, but Jack pushed for uncomfortable stretch goals not attainable goals.
In his 20 years as GE boss, he increased the company’s market value from $12 billion to $280 billion. Click here to learn how stretching your team can make them achieve things they did not think possible.

8. An article in The Economist (2011) about Jack Welch’s GE’s stretch goals states:

“...if the right environment was created for the group, setting stretch goals and working toward what might seem to be impossible results often became reality.”

Click here to learn how when you stretch your business to try and achieve the impossible, you will come closer than you think…

9. Research strongly suggests that performance and results improve when a difficult SMART Stretch goal is set. Click here to learn what a stretch goal is and how can you apply it effectively in your business?

10. Stretch goals energise you and your team and push you to work smarter and harder to try and achieve it. Click here to learn more…

11. When it comes to setting the right goals in your business, it pays to clarify expectations so that your team understand what you want to achieve from the goals you are setting. Click here to discover why…

12. SMART goals help clarify expectations. Outcome and process goals help clarify expectations too, click here to learn more…

13. So, what are SMART goals and stretch goals and how can you make them work in your business? You might be a sceptic… you might think unachieved goals demotivate a team, you might think your team aren’t interested in goals and feel they resist them…

However, you would be wrong! Click here to learn why

14. When used right, goals give a team focus, a sense of purpose, a common togetherness.

They will solidify your team in ways you did not think possible…

Even to the point where that STRETCH goal you set… could be achieved. Click here to learn how…

15. Don’t let your business stall by not taking goal setting seriously. Research proves that scientific, measured, targeted and focused goal setting works. It worked for GE, it worked for hip and knee replacement patients and it can work in your business. Click here to learn more,

16. Start using SMART stretch goals in your business today.

Making goals alive every day or every week will bring your business the success you want. Click here to learn more.

1. Most business owners when they go into business have one goal, to make enough money to survive the first month!

It's frustrating when your business achieves less than it should, but are you doing enough to help yourself? Click here to learn the value to your business of goal setting.

2. Are you doing enough to help your business? Do you have goals in place for you and your team? A goal in sport is the difference between winning and losing, success or failure, in business a goal is not as obvious, but just as important, click here to learn why…

3. Just as goals have an effect on motivation, motivation has an important effect on goal achievement. The key is to prove the power of goals.

This is easy to an elite athlete, but what about trying to explain the success of goal setting to a group of pensioners who have just experienced the agony of knee or hip replacement…

Are they ready for the challenge of goal setting? Would you be in their situation? Click here to learn more…

4. Click here to read how a study conducted in 1992, done inside two of Scotland’s busiest orthopaedic hospitals provided stark evidence that goal setting works. These same principles can be applied with great success to your business too.

5. In 1992 a study inside 2 of Scotland’s Orthopaedic hospitals provided overwhelming evidence that goal setting works. The study proved that having challenging goals clearly worked for pain-riddled hip and knee replacement patients. When was the last time you set really challenging goals for your team? Click here to learn more.

6. As a business leader I am sure you have heard of SMART goals, but do you know what SMART goals are and do you write them down?

Read here how the use of SMART goals over 13 weeks worked for the patients in this study and how these basic principles can be applied successfully in your business.

7. Jack Welch was CEO at GE for 20 years, he believed in SMART goals, but Jack pushed for uncomfortable stretch goals not attainable goals.
In his 20 years as GE boss, he increased the company’s market value from $12 billion to $280 billion. Click here to learn how stretching your team can make them achieve things they did not think possible.

8. An article in The Economist (2011) about Jack Welch’s GE’s stretch goals states:

“...if the right environment was created for the group, setting stretch goals and working toward what might seem to be impossible results often became reality.”

Click here to learn how when you stretch your business to try and achieve the impossible, you will come closer than you think…

9. Research strongly suggests that performance and results improve when a difficult SMART Stretch goal is set. Click here to learn what a stretch goal is and how can you apply it effectively in your business?

10. Stretch goals energise you and your team and push you to work smarter and harder to try and achieve it. Click here to learn more…

11. When it comes to setting the right goals in your business, it pays to clarify expectations so that your team understand what you want to achieve from the goals you are setting. Click here to discover why…

12. SMART goals help clarify expectations. Outcome and process goals help clarify expectations too, click here to learn more…

13. So, what are SMART goals and stretch goals and how can you make them work in your business? You might be a sceptic… you might think unachieved goals demotivate a team, you might think your team aren’t interested in goals and feel they resist them…

However, you would be wrong! Click here to learn why

14. When used right, goals give a team focus, a sense of purpose, a common togetherness.

They will solidify your team in ways you did not think possible…

Even to the point where that STRETCH goal you set… could be achieved. Click here to learn how…

15. Don’t let your business stall by not taking goal setting seriously. Research proves that scientific, measured, targeted and focused goal setting works. It worked for GE, it worked for hip and knee replacement patients and it can work in your business. Click here to learn more,

16. Start using SMART stretch goals in your business today.

Making goals alive every day or every week will bring your business the success you want. Click here to learn more.

Blog 1 – Goal setting – the clearest way to measure the success of your business

When they go into business, most owners have one goal – to make enough money to survive the first month!

It's frustrating when your business achieves less than it should, but are you doing enough to help yourself?

For your business to grow and be successful, you need to do some planning.

As a business owner, you should not fear setting goals. It is important to remember that goal setting doesn't have to be only about making money.

Setting goals could be about:

• new business ideas
• employee retention
• improving your product or service

or, in fact, anything that is important to enhancing your business.

Are you doing enough to help your business?

Do you have goals in place for you and your team?

Do you have goals in place that guarantee the future growth and success of your business?

In football or hockey, a goal is a fundamental part of the game, the difference between winning and losing, success or failure. In business, a goal is not as obvious and yet…

…a summary of more than 1,000 studies into business goals suggests:

“There is strong evidence that the increases in job performance produced by goal setting have important economic and practical value.”

So even if you fear setting goals, the fact is that, if you ignore them, your business will achieve less than it could.

Click here to discover how to use goals in your business today and watch your business thrive.

Blog 2 – How can your business learn from hip and knee replacement patients?

Just as goals affect motivation, motivation has an important effect on goal achievement. The key is to understand the power of goals.

This is easy for an elite athlete – train and practice hard and you could be a World or Olympic medallist.

It’s also easy to explain to a motivated business leader – achieve the goals set out before you, and your business grows and you make more money.

These goals are real and achievable, and these people are ready for the challenge, given the positions they are already in…

But what about trying to explain the success of goal setting to a group of Scots with an average age of 68, who have just experienced the agony of knee or hip replacement…

Were they ready for the challenge of goal setting?

Would you be in their situation?

With hip or knee replacement surgery, bones are broken, joint muscles are severed and recovery is time-consuming and painful. Even the smallest of movements can be agony.

However, to make a good recovery, patients must become mobile on the replaced joint as soon as possible… if they don’t, then the joint, muscles and healing tissue will not repair properly.

Setting goals is the best way to achieve a successful rehabilitation. However, as the agony of the rehab is extreme, it is not unusual for some people to skip their sessions.

Click here to read how a study conducted in 1992 inside two of Scotland’s busiest orthopaedic hospitals provided stark evidence that goal setting works! And learn how the same goal setting system can be applied to your business and how your business can learn to walk and run just as these patients did.

Blog 3 – How SMART goals, used successfully with orthopaedic patients, can work in your business…

In 1992, a study inside 2 of Scotland’s orthopaedic hospitals provided overwhelming evidence that goal setting works.

The study proved that having challenging goals worked for pain-riddled hip and knee replacement patients.

When was the last time you set challenging goals for your team?

The researchers who conducted this study gave the patients a booklet detailing the schedule for their planned rehabilitation. Included in the booklet were 13 mostly blank pages with the following instructions:

‘My goals for the week are…?’

‘Write down exactly what you are going to do. For example, if you are going to go for a walk this week, write down where and when you are going to walk’

The successful patients completed all 13 pages with very specific, written-down goals and plans. Why? How?

The goals were SMART goals…

As a business leader, you have likely heard of SMART goals, but do you know what SMART goals actually are? Do you write them down?

The researchers in this study proved that SMART goals work. They can work in your business too…

S – The goal must be Specific – going for a walk and writing down where and when

M – The goal must be Measurable – how long is the walk and where is it to and from

A – The goal must be Achieveable – can the distance be reached

R – The goal must be Relevant to you – having just had a knee operation, walking is part of the recovery

T – The goal must be Time-bound – the recovery booklet covered only 13 weeks, so the patients had 13 weeks to achieve their goals

The research strongly suggests, however, that A for Achievable is wrong, as this word suggests it can be achieved with some degree of ease.

You need to REALLY push yourself to reach your goal, so change Achievable to Ambitious and you can keep working on your SMART goals!

Click here to discover how the use of SMART goals over 13 weeks worked for the patients in this study and how these basic principles can be applied successfully in your business.

Blog 4 - What can business owners learn from GE and Jack Welch about stretch goals?

Scientific research and practical experiences at Jack Welch’s GE suggest that discomfort is the emotion you should feel about the goals you set yourself.

Here’s why…

Jack Welch was CEO at GE for 20 years. He pushed for uncomfortable, ambitious ‘stretch’ goals, not simply achievable goals.

In his 20 years as GE boss, he increased the company’s market value from $12 billion to $280 billion. That is an increase of $ 13 billion every year for 20 years!

An article in The Economist (2011) about GE’s stretch goals states:

“...if the right environment was created for the group, setting stretch goals and working toward what might seem to be impossible results often became reality.”

That last line appeals:  ‘Impossible results often become reality.’

So where does that leave SMART goals?

Although SMART goals get the thumbs up from many research studies, one element of SMART proves to get in the way of your high performance!

S – they must be Specific
M – they must be Measurable
A – they must be Achievable – change this to AMBITIOUS
R – they must be Relevant to you
T – they must be Time-bound

The research strongly suggests that A for Achievable is wrong!

An achievable goal suggests a sense of comfort with the goal. Change Achievable to Ambitious and you keep yourself stretching for that goal.

Jack Welch pushed for ambitious stretch goals, not simply achievable ones.

Click here to discover more about how you can be like Jack Welch and make stretch goals work for your business.

Blog 5 – How can your business benefit from process and outcome driven goals?

Research strongly suggests that performance and results improve when a difficult SMART stretch goal is set.

So, what is a stretch goal and how can you apply it effectively in your business?

A stretch goal is an objective that cannot be achieved by incremental or small improvements, but requires extending yourself to the limit for the goal to be achieved.

The goal must be a challenge that is significantly beyond your team’s or your business’s current level of performance.

Stretch goals energise you and your team and push you to work smarter and harder to try and achieve them.

The term ‘stretch goals’ was first invented by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, to denote those objectives that seemed unachievable with the present resources.

Jack believed that, when it came to stretch goals, it paid to have 2 types of goal:

1. Stretch Outcome goals – GE had a SMART stretch outcome goal – to be No.1 or No.2 in every sector they worked in.

2. Stretch Process goals – GE had SMART stretch process goals – every division and manager at GE had KPIs to achieve, every week and month.

Have you set you and your team stretch goals? Does this goal really stretch your team?

Are your goals outcome and process driven? How are they measured?

Set your business an impossible challenge… stretch yourself to achieve an ambitious goal that as a business seems unattainable, and you will see this goal stretch your thinking, planning and actions.

Click here to discover how to watch the profits of your business grow by applying the science of stretch goals.

Blog 6 – Understand the 3 expectations at play when it comes to goal setting in your business

When it comes to setting the right goals in your business, it pays to clarify expectations so that your team understand what you want to achieve from the goals you are setting.

SMART goals help clarify expectations.

Outcome and process goals help clarify expectations too.

These expectations come in 3 forms – if any one of these 3 expectations is missing, you are setting your team up to fail.

1. Make it personal – If you impose goals on your team, they will likely push back against the goals, even if they think they are a good idea. No one likes being forced to do something.

However, when you involve your team from the beginning in the goal setting process, they will become more invested in the work they do – they’ll be more productive, more engaged and more motivated.

When they receive personal or team recognition during the process they will become more and more invested in the pursuit and achievement of the goal.

Personal goals help clarify and manage your team's personal expectations.

2. Relevant to customers - Customers MUST win if your team and business are going to win.

Your customers are at the heart of your business success, so when implementing any goals in your business your team has to understand how their work will deliver the benefits of the goal for the customers. Show your team how their work will help win and keep customers, ensuring that your business is recommended to others.

Your team must see the connection between their personal goals and customer expectations.

3. Your business must win too – If your team and your customers benefit from the goals you are setting, but your business fails to win new customers or grow its profit, then everyone loses.

When your team see how the speed, quality and quantity of work they do is aligned to their own expectations, to the customers’ expectations and to the success of the business, it’s a win-win.

Your job as the leader is to ensure your team understands how their personal goals are connected to the goals of the customers and, ultimately, to the goals of the business.

Goal setting provides clarity on what is expected from each member of your team, and the outcome and process goals provide the focused stepping stones along the way to ensure you can achieve the ambitious goal you have set.

Click here to discover more about the importance of the 3 expectations when it comes to deciding on the goals for your team, customers and business.

BLOG 7 – Make SMART and stretch goals work in your business

So, what are SMART goals and stretch goals, and how can you make them work in your business?

You might be a sceptic – you might think unachieved goals demotivate a team or you might think your team isn’t interested in goals and that they will be resisted…

However, you would be wrong!

When used in the right way, goals give a team focus, a sense of purpose and a common togetherness.

They will solidify your team in ways you did not think possible…even to the point where that ambitious stretch goal you set could be achieved.

SMART goals are those that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

When setting goals in your business, you should always endeavour to use the SMART system.

Many believe that the A should stand for Ambitious, rather than for Achievable, allowing you to elevate the goal to another level, whilst keeping to the SMART system.

There is plenty of research to back up the fact that SMART goals work.

They worked for a group of elderly patients recovering from hip and knee replacements, who achieved and exceeded their goals by following the SMART system.

Stretch goals can be used in your business to challenge the status quo, because a stretch goal requires pushing your team beyond their current limits – these goals often feel unachievable.

They will challenge your team to truly commit and, even if a stretch goal is not achieved, just by getting close your team will often achieve more than if the goal had not been set.

If you want to see your team working together in the pursuit of a common goal, why not try this orange exercise with them. It’s a bit of fun and was used by GE at a series of innovation days. It shows that stretch goals really work.

THE GE ORANGE EXERCISE – PROVING STRETCH GOALS WORK:

GE’s extraordinary success, growing from $12billion to $280billion in 20 years, is partly thanks to their focus on stretch goals. To demonstrate the power of stretch goals and to get the buy-in of managers, they ran an exercise at a series of innovation days.

Stretch goals often challenge people because it feels like they’re ‘unachievable’. People are reluctant to commit to stretch goals because they feel like they are committing to something that will fail.

You can use this simple exercise to help demonstrate the power of stretch goals.

Give a team of 6 or 7 of your people one orange.

Challenge them to all touch the whole orange one at a time, as quickly as possible, and for the first person who touches the orange to also touch it last.

Tell them they can pass it, throw it, do what they like to achieve the task as quickly as they can.

When they are ready, time their efforts with a stopwatch (or use your phone).

Whatever time they achieve, ask them to have another go but make it faster this time (this works even better if there are more than one group – suggest they are competing with other groups).

Whatever time they achieve the second time, ask them to have another go and tell them they should be aiming for doing this in less than 1 second (which is what other groups have achieved).

If they struggle with this, ask them to review what has to change for things to speed up – distance between hands or speed of the orange – and ask them what they can do to influence these variables.

Solution - the group stacks up their palms on top of each other almost vertically and lets the orange fall from the first person’s left hand (top of the stack) to the first person’s right hand (bottom of the stack), whilst passing over everyone else’s hand in between. This should take less than a second.

BLOG 8 – Take 5 scientific goal setting steps to drive your business forward.

Don’t let your business stall by failing to take goal setting seriously. Research proves that scientific, measured, targeted and focused goal setting works. It worked for GE, it worked for hip or knee replacement patients and it can work in your business.

Here are 5 steps to help you treat goal setting as one of your business-critical tasks:

1. Your goals must be ambitious – they must be goals that really stretch you, your team and your business. Work out outcome goals and process goals as Jack Welch did at GE and get your people involved in achieving them.

2. Your ambitious goals must be specific – use The SMART
Checklist (in the supporting tools) to check that you have your goals planned correctly.

3. Your ambitious goals must be written down – we all work better off a list, something tangible that we can refer to – use The Goals Wheel and The SMART Checklist (in the supporting tools) to help.

4. Anticipate and plan for the difficulties – work out the hurdles you will encounter on the way to achieving your ambitious goal, then work out how to deal with them if they happen. For example, if you will be walking a long way in the heat, you would plan ahead and take water.

5. Create regular feedback and reward behaviours – the key to the success or failure of your ambitious goal is to make goals a habitual part of your business's weekly and monthly routine. Regular feedback and rewards for progress and achievement of your team will help confirm this habit and increase their motivation and enthusiasm.

Click here to discover how to start setting ambitious SMART goals in your business today.

Time to make the goals for your business relevant, personal and ambitious…

Do you have goals for the short- and long-term success of your business, goals which are part of your strategic plan? Have they been shared with your team?

A wish list is not the same as a set of goals.

If you are not clear on your business goals, your team will be in the dark – lacking direction, motivation and enthusiasm for the work that they do.

Set ambitious outcome and process goals for your business, and take your team on the journey with you, ensuring that all will be more engaged in the achievement of these goals.

In this 'Goal Setting Works' edition of Business Breakthrough you will learn, in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea:

• what SMART goals are and the importance of ambitious ‘stretch’ goals 
• why outcome and process goals are crucial for the motivation and engagement of your team
• that goal expectations come in 3 forms and all must be present for the goal to be achieved

Click here to discover that goals aren’t meant to be a stick you use to beat your people. When you use goal setting successfully in your business, you will build the drive, enthusiasm and success of your team and will ensure their buy-in and engagement in working towards achieving your goals.