Realigning Your Goals

I read someone say the other day that it feels like we are all grounded. I would have much rather just taken the spanking and moved on!  Anyway, I hope everyone is hanging in there. As the Quarantine keeps slowly moving forward, we must continue working on finding the right and best ways to use our time.  In this blog, I want to spend some time talking a little bit more about what to do with your time and I want to drive a little parallel for you. 

Unfortunately, we don’t know how long it’s going to last.  I have heard that we are discovering evidence that many humans already have some sort of antibodies which means at some point they were already exposed to COVID-19, but they need more time to validate the tests.  This could be good news if not a little unnerving. 

So, what should we be doing with our time at this point?  Continue working until this crap is over and we can all go outside again!  Right now, this period sort of feels like wintertime doesn’t it?  Like we are trapped inside and there isn’t much to do.  Sports aren’t on and things just feel sort of off.  I have read that the best way to get through winter is to spend a lot of time thinking about the upcoming summer so that you have things to look forward to.  So, what are you looking forward to?  Since this is mainly a business post, let’s focus on the business but the principles apply to personal lives as well. 

I’ll bet most of you had plans at the beginning of the year and I also bet that none of those plans had COVID or Quarantine time built in so what are you doing now with the time? Have you reoriented your time around the new plan?  What are the things you want to accomplish?  Have you realigned your goals to match the current and projected reality?  Have you taken a few minutes to think about it yet?  If not, I would encourage you to do so. 

My team and I just finished our second realignment call where we set our next 3-months goals and objectives as well as revisited our year-end goals and objectives.  You see in keeping with our on-going mantra – “You can’t control the wind but you can adjust your sails” we realized that while we are in this weird situation, it’s actually a great time for us to spend a little time re-orienting ourselves on what is next and what is needed right now. 

In our jobs as consultants and coaches, what little time we don’t have with our clients can be used in a lot of different ways and they all sound like good things to do.  Maybe this sounds familiar for some of you guys as well.

However, the right question is what is the most important thing for us to do right now? 

While it is hard to know if we ever really get that answer correct, it is important that we ask the question.  The act of wrestling with that question is the essence of strategic clarity for any organization.  You see, we all have appetites that are bigger than our stomachs – meaning we can always imagine more things that we want to do than we have time to get them done. 

And since we have a very limited number of resources, we have to be very careful that we are pushing hard to get lots of work done, but that we aren’t trying to get so much done that we end up being overwhelmed and ineffective. 

It’s also an important concept to ensure that you know what you are going to do as it helps you know what you aren’t going to do which is just as important.  It helps keep everyone clear and on the same page.

If you haven’t taken the time to figure this out since all this COVID nonsense started, I would encourage you to do so now to help keep you and your team on the same page. 

Maybe your original goals are the same and still appropriate. Maybe they just need a little readjustment, or maybe the landscape you work in is dramatically changed and you need to do a little overhaul on things.  Whatever your situation is, now is a good time to do an alignment check to see if you and your team is still on target or if you need to make some adjustments!  

Here is a simple little framework for you to use about this question speaking specifically to your business, whatever your business is.  For each one of these sections below, ask yourself what needs to be different when COVID is past?  What has this situation changed about your current state, or your ability to meet the future state? 

1.       Demand – the mechanisms and personnel that create demand for your product and service. Think about sales and marketing.

2.       Delivery –the mechanisms and personnel that are involved in delivering your product and service to your clients.

3.       Development – the mechanisms and team members that create and enhance your products and services.

4.       Support – all the joint functions that support the whole organization.  IT, Human Resources, Finance, Accounting, etc. 

Maybe everything is fine and working just as planned.  Most likely that is not the case for most organizations.  So, as you are hunkered down for the “COVID” winter.  Be thinking about what summer is going to look like this year as it will probably look different than it did in years past. My hope is that all companies come out of the COVID fog with a plan and running fast.