So, how was January for you? Were your new year’s resolutions motivating enough for you to change anything about your business or have they fallen off your radar?
If you’re beating yourself up because yet again you haven’t kept to your resolutions, this blog post from the Harvard Business Review may help you refocus.
In a nutshell, author Peter Bregman first reveals the urban myth of the 3% of Harvard students who wrote down clear goals and who twenty years later were worth 10 times the worth of the rest of their class combined – this study and these people simply didn’t exist! He then suggests that instead of setting goals, we should all consider identifying the activities we want to spend our time doing and are a valuable use of our time as a focus instead. He gives a great example:
“A sales goal, for example, might name a revenue target or a specific number of new clients won. An operations goal might articulate a cost savings.
An area of focus in sales, on the other hand, might involve having lots of conversations with appropriate prospects. An operations area of focus might identify areas you want to explore for cost savings.”
It’s an interesting approach to making sure that at the end of a calendar year you can look back and not only say that you’ve grown your business but that you’ve also enjoyed the journey.
My top area of focus for 2013 is to set up strategic alliances in order to increase the number of services I can offer my clients. So far this year I have met two different groups of marketing consultants/web designers/graphic designers/photographers who I’m looking to work with and it’s been a pleasure from the word go.
