Goal Management - five steps to goal achievement
Every individual aspires to be a successful person in his life. They even have loads of ideas and plans for future. They set goals and try to visualize their bright future. But, to be frank, most of the times individuals fail to reach their goals or keep on struggling to achieve the set goal. While some achieve their goal with ease, most others fail sadly.
Why this happens? What is the difference between the achievers and the rest?
Some act in a planned manner and achieve what they aim while the others just aim and act without any planning. Planning is nothing but a roadmap giving guidance towards success. A well devised plan for sure leads one to successful bay.
You may wonder that “is there a planning method?” and the answer is “yes there is though there is no concrete mathematical formula, there is undoubtedly a process involving steps that lead to success”.
STEP by STEP approach surely makes one taste the success he aspires.
STEP1: Identify Critical Resources
First and foremost process is to list out the resources required to achieve the set goal. Resources could be money, materials, men, etc. that would be necessary in achieving the set goal. The resources required to be estimated both in terms of quantity and quality. One should not forget to add time into resource list too. How much time you have is the target date you set for yourself.
Let’s take cross country journey. The resources required are definitely a vehicle, assistants, money for fuel, camping needs, etc.
STEP2: Identify Critical Activities
No journey is a simple drive. There could be many twists and turns and the driver need to be good. Similarly, to achieve the set goal, one needs to identify the proper ways to tackle the possible or expected hurdles in way of the goal achievement. Identifying the possible hurdles before hand gives advantage of smooth handling of the situations and lowers the possibility of failure as you are ready with an alternative action for the same.
If a driver during the cross country journey has a road map with latest directions and various emergency contact numbers the journey would be completed with any hassles. Having proper information of an alternative route is much to the advantage of driver in adverse situations.
STEP3: Identify Goal Phases.
One needs to break the entire action into phases so that the process could be achieved in parts and ultimately the set goal. Breaking the entire goal into phases with mini goals for each phase would be another way of achieving the main goal easily. Each phase goal would give opportunity to verify whether the progress is on the right track or not.
A 1000 mile drive is hard whereas five 200 mile journeys with halt in between would be much easier to complete without any mishaps. Better is to complete the journey without any mishaps than risking a long drive with possible mishap.
STEP4: Identify the action plan.
Once the phases have been identified, next step is to document the strategies for each phase in action plan. The action plan should consist phase wise time line and action sequence towards phase goal realization. Typical approach required for each set of situations for successful completion of each phase.
Even a 200 mile journey would have to be planned adequately by the driver to meet the target. Each situation requires a typical approach by the driver such as night driving, early morning fog, single lane. The time required to complete the journey depends on the situational factors.
STEP5: Evaluate effectiveness
To ensure that the planning efforts are successful, it is important to systematically monitor action process, evaluate activities and make necessary adjustments. Each phase to be assessed for effectiveness and the possible lapses in actions to be understood, so that the next phase activities amended based on the review. Thus the phase wise review gives every opportunity in identifying the lapses and chance for corrective actions that would result in the achievement of final goal.
You will complete the journey towards the GOAL in time if you follow the above FIVE STEPS. What all you need to do is phase, plan and pursue.