Curt Fowler | Fowler & Company | Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” – Ken Blanchard
The first quarter of 2018 is in the books and your books should be ready to review by now. 2018 is 25% complete. Now is the time to take a step back and evaluate your progress toward your 2018 goals.
In the business world you should be checking your progress in four key areas: Finance, People, Customers and Operations. If you are reading this and you do not lead a business or department, know that you are the Chief Executive Officer of your life and you need to do a checkup too! How are you doing in the areas of Faith, Family, Fitness and Finances? Success in all four are needed for a great life.
Back to business. Your business should have key goals in each of the areas of Finance, People, Customers and Operations. These goals should be measurable with one person accountable for the results. The accountable party may need a team to accomplish the goal, but don’t try to hold an entire team accountable.
Your organization should have one or two priority goals for the year supported by the goals in finance, people, customers and operations. If you don’t have these goals in place, it is not too late to set them now.
Have the responsible party for each goal create a written report for the leadership team. That report should show progress towards the goal, whether the goal is ahead or behind schedule and a projection of the results for the rest of the year.
No hockey sticks! We don’t do much with hockey sticks around here, but they are a great symbol for overly optimistic plans that rarely work out.
A hockey stick plan shows little progress in the early months of the plan and then a dramatic spike in performance months – if not years – down the road. Managers create these plans to create lower expectations early on and are hopeful that they can pull off a late inning home run or that the leadership will become distracted and stop checking by the time the great results are promised.
We create hockey stick plans in our personal lives all the time. I state I’ll lose 10 pounds by the end of the year and get further and further behind every month but hold out hope that I’ll dramatically improve my discipline and get results before the end of the year. These plans only postpone recognizing that we are failing. We must recognize failure early, so we can make the changes needed for the longer-term win. Goals are not reached in business or personal life through last minute Hail Marys. Goals are reached by daily, diligent work.
If your leaders can show steady progress that creates a trend line towards your long- term goals, they are in great shape. If they cannot, it is time look deeper at the leading indicators that must be moved to drive the desired result.
As an example, are your salespeople prospecting enough to fill up your pipeline to deliver the sales needed? It can take thirty to sixty days to fill an empty pipeline, but you should be seeing solid results by now.
For any type of goal, know your numbers. Know what percent of prospects become buyers. Know how many interviews it typically takes to fill a key role. Your leaders should be able to demonstrate a clear path to success or admit they’ve hit a wall. Encourage your leaders to admit failure. Do not berate or condemn them or you’ll get more hockey stick plans. Now is the time to recognize short-term failure so you can pivot for the long-term win.
Be open, be encouraging and change the plans that need to be changed. Then, write down what a win will look like next week and the week after that. What will the win look like 30 days down the road?
Create a culture of accountability so that everyone is putting their results on the table weekly. We’ve only got 75% of 2018 remaining. Now is the time to make changes to your plans and to measure the results so you can tell if the new plan is working. Recognize failure early and pivot quickly.
Reviews can be a tough time of self-reflection. We often do not like what we see. There is often short-term pain, but that pain can be turned into long term success if we will act based on what we see.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions and I don’t think it is the sugar coated cereal kind.
Have a business growth topic or question you’d like me to cover? Send suggestions to cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com or use our contact form by clicking here.
Curt Fowler is President of Fowler & Company and Director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey . He is dedicated to helping leaders create and achieve a compelling vision for their organization. He is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and has an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School. He is also a CPA and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.
