I’m a big fan of goal setting and personal development.  I do a formal goal setting process every quarter, and keep an “annual plan” for myself that is similar to a business plan for the company.

That being said, I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions because I think too many people don’t take the process seriously enough and get fooled into believing that doing some wishful thinking once per year is going to help them achieve their goals.  Goals need to be something you stick in front of your face every day and constantly pursue, not something you dream up at midnight with 4 glasses of champagne in you and then forget the next day!

Over the last several years I’ve studied several different goal setting methodologies and developed a set of best practices that Ive found really work for me.  Here are the most important lessons I’ve learned about setting and achieving goals:

1. Set and review your goals frequently and regularly
2. Write them down and put them someplace that you’ll see them every day
3. When you set a goal, do something to move you towards its achievement as soon as possible, preferably right away – get momentum
4. When you achieve a goal, no matter how small it is, reward yourself for it – this teaches the brain that accomplishing things is “fun”
5. The most important lesson I’ve learned about goal setting: Know the reason “why” behind each of  your goals.  As Tony Robbins says, “If you have a strong enough why, you’ll figure out the how.”

Point number five is the most important thing you can learn about goal setting.  If you have a strong enough why, you’ll figure out the how.  Every time you set a goal, really think about the “why” behind the goal, and make sure you write it down as well.  Make it emotional and intense.

As an example, you may  set a goal to make $2ook in personal income this year.  That’s pretty motivating.  But money in and of itself is just paper.

The why behing the goal may be something like this: “To have enough money so that I can take my new bride on the honeymoon of a lifetime, to make her feel like the queen that I think she is, and to give myself the financial freedom to really enjoy my time with her!”

That puts some extra juice behind your goal!  Now that money means something!  I hope you get the idea.

By the way, my bet is that 90% of your employees don’t have a goal setting process for themselves.  Think of the fuel this is robbing from our company every day!  We realized this at Everon last year and rolled out a formal, quarterly goal setting process for our employees – it makes a huge difference.

I hope you find a way to use a goal setting process to really energize your 2009 – best of luck in the new year!

Mike Cooch

PS – If you’d like some details of the process we have for setting and tracking goals, I’ll be posting some content in our membership site MSPCoach.com.

Tomorrow I go to the mountaintop.

Since I live in Colorado, you may think I’m REALLY going to the mountaintop, but I’m referring to my process of taking time away from everything to set clear goals for myself.

Are you doing this on a regular basis?  If not, start!

I’m pretty sure that anyone that knows me well would tell you that I don’t sit still much.  I think my biggest fear in life is not doing all of the things I want to do, so setting clear goals is incredibly important.  Taking a bit of clear-headed time to think about where you’ve been over the last few months, where  you’d like to go in the next few months, and what you need to do to get there, is one of the most valuable exercises you can engage in.  And it takes time.  Yes, I could write a few goals down in 1/2 an hour at my office tomorrow, but I’d be robbing myself of the benefits of slowing down long enough to really think about what I want and getting myself fired up to get there.

Once you get good at this process yourself, the best thing in the world that you can do for your business is to teach the same process to your key employees.  At Everon, everyone on our management team goes through this process each quarter and shares the results with all of the other managers.

This habit has created a great degree of clarity and communication within the team that has led to much more getting done much faster.  Since we started doing it I am shocked that we ever made it without doing it!

So wherever you are, carve out some time to go to your mountaintop soon, and set some big goals that will propel you and your business forward.

MRC