Brian P Moran
As Thomas Edison once said, “If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” This may be true, but why is it that so many of us fall somewhat short, not only of astounding ourselves, but of astounding anyone at all? Why is it that the overwhelming majority of human beings never live up to their full potential? And what would your life look like if you performed at your very best, every single day?
We’re held back from achieving our potential, not by a lack of ideas, but by a lack of consistent execution.
- In short, ideas are only powerful if they’re acted on. Knowledge is Power, APPLIED Knowledge is Power.
- The same is true in business. Sure, you need a great idea to succeed. But execution is what makes the difference: ideas are only rewarded if they’re deftly executed in the market.
- Evidence shows that the consistent application of best practice will improve results significantly.
Thinking on an annual basis is a way to guarantee complacency and poor results.
- Annual planning processes aren’t only counterproductive and hard to plan for; they also breed complacency.
- During the first week of January, December looks and feels a long way off. In the first months of the year, it’s easy to think, “OK, well, I’m not quite on track to hit my targets. But there is plenty of time to catch up.” But if you don’t feel any urgency, you’re unlikely to act with urgency.
- It’s common in business to have an end-of-year push to meet targets — so it’s no wonder that, in many financial-services firms, December is the year’s best month
- Top performers recognize that shorter planning periods bring greater urgency and focus.
Developing a vision is the first step toward improved productivity.
- Vision inspires action, progress and results.
- Well, your vision should be ambitious but realistic, and should take into account two time frames.
- First, take a step back from the daily grind and consider your long-term dreams, both personal and professional. Take a pen and paper and write down what you think will matter to you in ten years’ time. How much money do you want in the bank? How much time with your kids? Where do you want your business to be? Write this all down, and build from it a vision of your life ten years down the road.
- Now let’s get a little more specific. Working toward that long-term view, what do you want to achieve in the next three years? Again, write down, in detail, what an ideal life looks like three years from today.
A 12-week plan, rooted in your vision, increases the chance of you reaching your goals.
- A 12-week plan helps you proactively manage your time and focus on important actions.
- With no plan at all, your daily actions are driven by input triggers.
- An email arrives, you answer it. The doorbell rings, up you get. It’s hard to focus on high-impact activities — such as sales calls, or writing a proposal — because you’re not making proactive choices about your time. You’re simply responding to what’s right in front of you.
So how can you create a 12-week plan?
- First, choose your goals. Let’s say the vision you came up with is to sell your business for millions of dollars. Well, a realistic, 12-week goal that’ll put you on the path to that vision might be to generate $110,000 in new business.
- Second, write specific, measurable tasks that, if completed, will lead to your goal. They could be “cold-call ten prospects per week,” or “create a sales-tracker wall chart and update it each week.” Try to focus on a small number of critical activities that you know will move you toward your goal, and don’t overthink it.
Set up controls that will keep you on track when the going gets tough.
In business as in life, we all take a few hits from time to time. So how do you stay on course, especially when the going gets tough?
- Willpower and determination can take us a long way, but neither can take us all the way.
- Even athletic megastars like the Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps have days when they don’t feel like training. And yet they do train. Why? Because they have clear, daily schedules, as well as dedicated trainers to enforce them.
- Of course, we can’t all afford the rigorous support network available to Phelps, but we can embrace two simple support techniques: the weekly plan and the weekly accountability meeting.
- A weekly plan translates the 12-week plan into day-to-day actions. It should list all the tasks from your 12-week plan that are due that particular week — things like meetings with prospects or follow-up calls with promising clients. Each task should bring you closer to your goal, and listing them all, week by week, should make it easy to measure your progress. If you get these tasks done, you’ve had a great week. If not, you need to adjust something.
- In other words, being supported by others helps keep us on track with our goals.
- As the sports entrepreneur George Shinn once commented, “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” So try and set up a Weekly Accountability Meeting with one or two committed individuals. Use the meeting to report back on how successfully you’ve executed your intentions for the week, and to make observations on what’s working and what’s not.
- The simple knowledge that you’ll have to evaluate your performance in front of your peers will help keep you on track, and, if it doesn’t, they can provide advice and suggestion for improvement.
Rigorous measurement is the only way to know whether you are on track.
Every CEO of a major corporation tracks key numbers: units sold, monthly profit margins and revenue. You should do the same.
- Measuring metrics and KPIs enables you tounderstand progress and make decisions about your future actions. So the question becomes, “What should you measure and how should you measure it?”
- To be effective, measurement systems should include lead and lag indicators.
Let’s say your 12-week goal is to lose ten pounds.
- A lag indicator is an end result, so here it would be your weight-loss each week.
- Lead indicators are the actions that make that lag indicator happen. So here, they could be a mile run, calories consumed or minutes spent on the elliptical trainer.
- Measuring lead indicators is particularly important. The authors have found that if you execute 85 percent or more of the actions listed in your weekly plan, you are highly likely to achieve your 12-week goal.
- Remember that the actions in your plan are your most critical tasks: if you’re nailing them, you’re likely to succeed.
Also, keep in mind that embracing measurement requires a shift in thinking.
- Numbers are impersonal, and make no allowances for the personal circumstances that could impact performance — like your son being sick, or your boss bringing you into an extra project.
- But, even though they might seem unfair, face up to what your numbers tell you. All too often, people stop scoring themselves after a couple of tough weeks. Use your weekly accountability meeting to keep you on track, and try to make realistic progress. If you are only completing 45 percent of your critical tasks one week, you probably won’t get up to 85 percent the next week; however, lifting that 45 percent up to 60 percent is still a solid, and manageable, achievement. An increasing score is a good sign for your future results.
- The 12 Week Year can be uncomfortable sometimes, particularly when it comes to your numbers, which won’t let you hide behind excuses. If your results don’t look great, you have two options. You can quit, or you can double down and improve your execution.And who wants to be a quitter?
When your year is only 12 weeks long, every moment counts. Manage your time strategically.
- But here’s the thing: deferring strategically important tasks to accomplish urgent but less important actions means you’ll never deliver to your potential.
- The difference between average results and brilliant ones often boils down to effective time management. But there’s a reason most of us don’t deliver utter brilliance: effectively managing time is hard.
So how can you structure your time better and stay focused? Your week should include three kinds of protected time: strategic blocks, buffer blocks and breakout blocks.
- A strategic block is a three-hour period during which you accept no interruptions — no phone calls, no emails, no quick chats with Janet in the next cubicle. You focus all of your attention on your key strategic activities, whether that means sales calls, writing proposals or closing deals.
- Buffer blocks are times set aside to efficiently deal with all interruptions in one go. For an hour, once or twice a day, you can blast through your emails, respond to your voicemails and catch up with Bob in accounts.
- Breakout blocks help keep us sane and productive. It’s easy to get sucked into working longer and longer hours, but it’s terrible for productivity. A three-hour breakout block, once a week, during normal working hours but spent away from your business, will help you stay fresh, focused and energetic.
- When you plan your week, schedule in these blocks. Then schedule in all your other key actions from your week plan. Your calendar will look pretty full — but that’s okay! The things you’ve scheduled are the critical tasks that’ll keep you moving toward your goals.
Embrace positive accountability and take ownership for your own success.
When we’re struggling with something — a hectic period in the office, say, or an overwhelming amount of academic work — it’s easy to blame our circumstances. We say things like, “I’m just too busy with these projects to make my sales calls,” or, “I’ll quit the cigarettes when the stress of these exams is over.”
- But the reality is this: until we throw off a victim mind-set and take ownership of our actions, we stand no chance of improving our results.
- Take Dustin Carter. As a kid, his arms and legs were amputated to save his life from a severe blood infection. Now, it would have been easy, considering this horrendous setback, for Carter to sink into a stupor of self-pity. But he didn’t. Instead of casting himself as a victim, he learned to thrive, and made a decision that seemed a little crazy: he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a wrestler. And, through years of painful, hard training, he did become a success, wrestling able-bodied competitors and inspiring millions.
- Whatever your goals are, you’ll find yourself in situations that make it harder to reach them, be it a busy time at work, a family problem or health issues. But Dustin reminds us that, though you can’t control your circumstances, you can control how you react to them. This ability is what people call accountability — the willingness to accept what you can control and take ownership of it.
- By taking accountability for your own results, your focus will shift toward improving them.
- Really, failure is just a form of feedback. Once you accept that your poor sales figures are a result of your actions, you can quickly decide to change those actions, and see your sales figures change, too.
- Society generally associates accountability with blame. If someone commits some blameworthy blunder, we hold them accountable. But real accountability isn’t about blame; it’s about accepting ownership for your actions and your outcomes. Embracing that shift in thinking is a major move toward more success.
Break down major tasks into more manageable chunks
When you have multiple big tasks ahead of you, it can feel overwhelming. But research shows that when you think a goal is manageable, you are more likely to achieve it. So if the key actions in your 12-week plan look a little intimidating, work on breaking them down. Write out the individual steps involved in writing a proposal or securing a new business deal. The kick you’ll get out of chalking up executed tasks and making visible progress will be a great motivator!
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