Top-level athletes, successful businesspeople, and high achievers all set goals. It takes you away from day-to-day monotony and moves you towards achieving something that you want in the future. It is visioning and then making your vision a reality with the short-term motivation of milestones.
And if you are in business, you need goals. If you are looking for investment, you'll need a business plan. If you need to pay the bills, you need to figure out how to make money, how much and by when - all very practical goals. However, most organisations struggle to achieve the overarching goals because they get stuck in day to day "doing".
Everyone needs something to work towards. In fact, even without goals, we fill our time doing something, anything. The role of a manager is to ensure that your people are spending their time working on the right things. The best way to do this is to assign tasks or delegate work in the right way so everyone knows what needs to be done by when.
Yet, without a strategic focus, Managers will fill their people's time with the urgent and important tasks, not necessarily the tasks that move the business forward. That is why leaders need to be clear on the vision, mission and overall business objectives.
The leaders need to be clear on where they are now and where they aim to be (the vision) and create a plan to get from here to there. In the process of getting from here to there, great leaders inspire their people through a compelling purpose, the why. Unless we know why we are doing something, we won't emotionally own it or even care about it. In fact, we will instead, choose to work on activities that give us an emotional reaction, even if it's chatting to our colleagues, taking a break, or work on something that does excite us.
To be effective, managers must set goals that excite, motivate and have purpose. They are clear about what needs to be done, by when and why, and then involve their people in coming up with the how. Include and engage is a far more successful strategy that yell, tell, sell.
The role of a manager is, therefore, quite simple:
- Identify what needs to be done (goals);
- Organise resources, people and finance to make it happen;
- Delegate the tasks through goal setting and projects;
- Monitor progress;
- Develop resources, systems, processes and people to ensure success.
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