Posts Tagged ‘goal setting’

Being accountable so you achieve your best year ever

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Step 6 ~ KEEPING ON TRACK

Congratulations you have finished your best year ever process.  Just for a moment consider how much time you have just spent creating the coming year the way you absolutely want it.  My guess is about 1 -2 hours and that is probably 1 – 2 hours more than most people you know have invested in creating the coming year as they want it.

So now it is time for you to take action. You want to make sure it becomes a reality.  Consider with whom you share what you have written.  For many people the best time to discover what your goals are is when they see you achieve them – you know; the cynics who will mock you, and make you doubt your ability to achieve them.  Instead, share your goals only with those who will support you, chivvy you along, encourage you, and congratulate you on your progress.

Remember there will always be uncertainty, the coming year will be as uncertain as last year and every year to come will be.  They will always be uncertainty in our lives.  The secret is to act with certainty in everything you have written down.

 

Give up the all-or-nothing, only-perfection-will-do approach.

Avoid becoming obsessed. Not many of us have a 100% hit rate so there may be times when you set a goal and you end up making a mistake or your goal doesn’t work. It’s really not the end of the world. At this point you have a choice: you can get all flustered, beat yourself up and go back to wandering about without direction – or you can learn from the experience and move on.

You can’t break a resolution by messing up just once or even several times. Whenever you notice you’ve gone a bit off-course get back on-track by shifting your actions to get you back on course.  Keep it simple: Pay attention. If things aren’t working try something different. Correct your course.

Re-visit your Rules for Success.  From this list, what single thing if you did it regularly would make the most difference in helping you achieve your goals?

What will be your milestones for keeping track of your progress?

 

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  • When you see yourself making progress what will you do to reward yourself?
  • What will you do to celebrate your success when you achieve your goal?
  • Assuming we all have some way of holding back or sabotaging success, what would be the way you might do this? (For example: procrastination, arrogance, believing it can’t be done, not saying ‘no’, indecisiveness, being too proud to ask for help
  • When you notice yourself doing this, what will you now do instead?
  • Goals are easier to achieve when you have a support structure in place.  Which support structure will you put in place this week to make these goals fun and easy?
    For example:..Ask colleagues and family for support, and to check on how it’s going
    ..Join up with someone else who has the same goal
    ..Join a club or network group
    ..Find a training programme to give you the skills
    ..Set up a coaching programme with a good coach
    ..Find a mentor to guide you, support you and hold you accountable

 

Achieving Goals for your Hotel Business

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Step 5 MAKING IT HAPPEN

Now think about what you need to do to reach these goals?  For each goal outline resources you need, action you need to take and the support you’ll need.

Now make a list of everything you are going to have to do to achieve your goal No. 1.

  • What are the actions?
  • Who can help you?
  • What resources do you need?
  • How will you obtain these?
  • What obstacles will you need to overcome?
  • How will you resolve these?
  • What skills will you require?
  • How will you acquire these?
  • What sacrifices will you need to make?
  • What consistent behaviour will you need to adopt to achieve this goal?
  • What actions can you take in the next seven days to get you nearer your goal?
  • What action can you take in the next 24 hours to get you started?

 

Now do something every single day, however small, that gets you nearer to your goal.

See Part 6 tomorrow or access the whole programme online here

 

 

Setting goals for your Hotel for the next 12 months

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Step 4 ~ WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT

Now the next part of the process is probably the most exciting because this is were you start building your blueprint for the next 12 months.

What do you really want for the next 12 months? What goals really matter?

Lots of people come up with lengthy laundry lists of vague, wishy-washy resolutions with no real oomph in them. Often we don’t even really care about them at all. They’re just fashionable or what we think we “should” care about, or based on what we think other people expect of us.

What do I mean? You know, resolutions like this:

…..I’ll cut our overheads                   
…..I’ll be more focussed
…..I’ll be a better ____ (parent/boss/friend/spouse), etc.
…..I’ll clear our overdraft
…..I’ll do more to bring in new business

Unclear statements like this can NEVER engender any real enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, they’re far more likely to cause you to feel bad rather than good because they all focus on something that’s MISSING rather than on what’s truly desired.

When we focus on something, we are much more likely to get it – whether it’s a car, a financial goal or even a relationship. By sending a message of desire to our brain, we start to make pictures of that and, in turn, we do what we have to do to make it happen. Rather like a builder has an idea of what a project will look like when it’s done or like a hairdresser knows what style they want to create before they start cutting, we can all design the future we want – and then go out to get it.

Unfortunately not all of us are focused on positive outcomes. Many of us are obsessed by what we don’t want, what’s wrong with us and what’s missing from our lives. We often forget to put our attention on what’s great, what’s working and what resources we already have to create even more happiness and success. Because we tend to get what we focus on, if you focus on what’s not working or if you spend all your time wondering why bad things always seem to happen to you, then you’ll simply get more of what you don’t want. What’s the point of that?

Finally, the key thing to consider when you’re setting goals is to clarify why you want something. Chances are if you set goals about things that you need in your life or that will benefit you and others, you’ll feel happy when you achieve: for example, increasing patronage in your restaurant may help your profitability.

But if you set goals just because you think you should or to please other people, you may not feel that great – even when you’ve achieved what you set out to do. For example if increasing patronage in your restaurant just increases your workload, but does little to enhance your bottom line, it’s unlikely to motivate you! You have to ask yourself ‘What’s in it for me?’ and ‘What will happen if I don’t manage to do this?

Whatever goals you set, you have to demand more of yourself to push your performance: and you have to realise that we are all more capable then we think we are. Your ability to achieve is immeasurable – and it can be easier than you think to get what you want.

It is also too easy to set resolutions or goals in some areas which are not then compatible with other areas for life.  For example people often set very ambitious goals for their business, which then conflict with personal goals.  So when setting goals for the coming year it is a good idea to look at all areas of life. Business and career, Personal development, Family, Possessions & things that you want , Spirituality, Relationships or personal relationships, Health and fitness and Financial.  Those aren’t in any particular order of importance and ideally you’ll want to have goals in every single area of life.  Even if you are currently focusing on your business goals for the coming year, at some point you have to be honest and take stock of how well these sit with your goals in other areas.

So now what I want you to do is take some time, (this is probably the lengthiest part of this process) and literally dream; picture and list all the things that you want to achieve in all those areas over the next 12 months.  Most people find this easier to do on paper rather than on a computer; use whichever format works best for you to get the ideas flowing.

At this point don’t worry if your goals are realistic or achievable or not; just brainstorm.  Play with the idea; focus your energy and attention on it until it’s clear and sharp and big enough to be exciting to you, until you feel great just thinking about it. (It doesn’t matter at all what anyone else might think of it.) What are all the things over the next 12 months you want to be, you want to do, that you want to have in all those areas of life.  The being, the doing and having of which would make the coming year the best year ever.

From your list of goals pick your most important goal to work on for now.

The goals that you need to be setting need to be SMART.  You are probably already familiar with the idea of smart goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound.  Click here for a more detailed article on SMART goals.  But a couple of areas I would stress are:

That your goals need to be specific. Describe in specific detail exactly what it is that you want to achieve.

They also need to be expressed in the present tense as if now; as if you already had the goal

And each goal needs a precise time: day, date, month and year, and in some cases it might even be a time of day

  • Now identify your number 1 goal. What is this?
  • When do you want to achieve this by?
  • What will you see, hear or feel once you have achieved this goal?
  • Why is this goal important to you?
  • How will this goal impact others?
  • What impact will working on and achieving this goal have on other areas of life?
  • If you don’t achieve this goal what would happen?
  • Now imagine 6 months have passed, and you’ve done it.  You have achieved your number 1 goal. Write down how you would feel.
  • Now repeat this process for goals 2 and 3.
  • If you wouldn’t feel wonderful about each of these, then you might like to go and re prioritise.

See Part 5 tomorrow or access the whole programme online here

What will help you achieve Your Hotel’s Best Year Ever

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Step 3 ~ RULES FOR SUCCESS

Yesterday’s exercise probably wasn’t as pleasant as the previous part of the exercise but that is OK; we can now extract learnings from what you didn’t achieve so that you can ensure you make the next 12 months different.

So we’re now going to identify your ‘Rules for Success’.  What I want you to do is go over all of the things you have achieved over the last 12 months and work out what it was that you did during those times that enabled you to succeed.

By going through the goals that you have achieved and also going through the goals that you didn’t achieve you can put together your personal rules for success, the rules that you know you have already proven that if you follow these rules you succeed.

It is a good idea to keep these rules for success somewhere handy, to keep reminding yourself of them.  Then next time when things aren’t going the way that you want you can refer to your rules of success.  I keep mine pinned above my desk as a constant reminder.

So take some time now to review the previous year and work on your own personal set of rules for success.

What are the rules that if you follow them you succeed?

Then look at the things that you didn’t achieve, what were the rules that you weren’t following that if you had followed them you would have achieved these goals?

 

  • What do you need to start doing?
  • What do you need to stop doing?
  • What do you need to continue doing?
  • What do you need to do more of?
  • What do you need to do less of?
  • What strengths can you draw on?
  • What are your rules for success?
  • Where will you put these to act as a constant reminder?

 

See Part 4 tomorrow or access the whole programme online here

 

Setting Goals for your Hotel

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

Step 2 ~ WHERE ARE THE GAPS

So, yes, some things fell through the cracks. Take a look at that, too, without the drama

So the next part of the process is to look at the last 12 months and this time look at what you set out to achieve but you haven’t achieved yet.  The goals that you set, but haven’t yet actualised in reality.  And again take some time to make a list of all of these things.

  • What are the things that you wanted to be by now but not yet achieved?
  • What are the things that you wanted to do, but haven’t done yet?
  • What are the things that you wanted to have but haven’t had yet?
  • Have you any outstanding unspoken conversations?
  • What do you regret or feel guilty about?
  • List all the other on-going things that bother you and cause you negative energy – however minor.
  • What do you need to do with them: action or let go?  Make a decision one way or the other; how important are these things to you?
  • What are the things that need to be done?
  • What things do you leave behind you and stop worrying about them?

 

See Part 3 tomorrow or access the whole programme online here

Set goals for your hotel and set out to achieve your best year ever

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Happy New Year!

This New Year take some time (if you haven’t done so already) to sit alone quietly and reflect on what it is you truly want to be, do, and have in your life and for your business?

This process will take you around 2 hours, so a bit longer than the average throw away resolution made on New Year’s Eve.  But to me it is time well spent.

If you prefer to see things written down rather than on a computer screen then I recommend you record all this in a journal, or a hardback book, where you can revisit your notes. Or to access the online version go here. Either way write it down, as this helps reinforce your ideas.

So find yourself a quiet space and set aside a couple of hours to plan Your Best Year Ever.

Step 1 ~ CELEBRATE SUCCESS

Let’s start by reviewing the past 12 months.

Most of us have a tendency to view the taking stock process as an opportunity to beat ourselves up and find fault with everything we have NOT accomplished.

Well, enough of that.  Start from a place of power.

This year, give yourself some credit for what you have accomplished! Make a list, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking anything is too small to be significant. In one way or another, in one area or another (and likely in many), you’ve come a long, long way.

So let’s start by reviewing your successes and accomplishments

So starting from January all the way up to today make a list of all of the things that you have achieved, all the goals that you achieved, any new skills learnt, and burdens you have dealt with.  It doesn’t matter how big the goal was or what area of life it was in write down every single thing you have achieved no matter how small no matter how big.  Month by month list and categorize every single thing you have achieved in the last 12 months.

Now let’s take a look at what you have written. I bet you have achieved more over the last 12 months than you thought you did. So notice how good it makes you feel when you look at what you have gone out and done.

  • What have you achieved?
  • What are you most proud of?
  • What have you learnt that you didn’t know 12 months ago?
  • What new skills have you acquired that you didn’t have this time last year?
  • What challenges have you overcome?
  • What setbacks have you overcome?
  • What setbacks have you overcome?
  • What situations will you look back on with a smile, even if at the time it was uncomfortable?
  • What have you learnt from these experiences?
  • How does it feel to be reminded of all your achievements?

See Part 2 on Monday or access the whole programme online here