How To Create SMART Goals

In our last article, I shared information about creating a Vision for corporate and personal use, and now I want to share how you can work to obtain these through SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym, and when you break it down, you’ll get:

Specific: Specificity in your goals helps you know and qualify what success will look like because it is hard to say you achieved your goal if you don’t know how to define it.

Measurable: My first college degree was in science. Understanding data gives you an objective way to evaluate your progress. If you can define your goal with a metric, you can see how close you are to achieving it.

Achievable: Make sure that these goals are action-oriented, which means having the ability to control the outcome. In life, there are only two things you can control–your attitude and effort. If your goal will require too much effort, it may become unachievable.

Relevant: Keep the big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs) as something to work towards in the longer term. Break it down as weekly, quarterly, 1-year plan, and even a 3-year picture to help create more realism. As one client said the other day, “Meeting a goal makes you feel great. Failing to meet a goal makes you feel like sh…” uh, well, not the best.

Timebound: Working with companies, we have a specific time frame that we set goals for, namely 10-year target, 3-year picture, 1-year plan, and quarterly rocks. Breaking down the days, weeks, and months into actionable steps allows us to accomplish our goals while measuring the progress towards completion and celebrating once we finish.

SMART Goal Example

Let’s say you’re a business owner and want to increase your monthly sales. Rather than just saying, “I want to triple my revenue,” break it down into the SMART goal steps.

Specific: Triple my monthly revenue by selling my business services.

Measurable: I will go from bringing in $5,000 a month in sales to $15,000.

Achievable: I know the metrics of my digital marketing efforts result in 30 new leads per month, and of those 30, 10 become customers. If I can ramp up my digital marketing efforts, I can triple my new leads through new connections, networking, targeted advertising, or training courses.

Relevant: I want to increase my revenue from $5,000 to $15,000, so I will set aside 30 minutes a day to focus on sending out 20 connection requests based on the geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics of my ideal customer.

Timebound: It will take me three months to ramp up to 120 new leads a month, so I think a realistic timeframe is by August 31st, 2022.

Now, when we put everything together, your new goal will be: Increase my monthly revenue through business services from $5,000 to $15,000 by August 31st, 2022. To achieve this goal, I will send 20 LinkedIn connections per day to my ideal customer, double my budget for digital marketing, and attend one trade show and one training session.

Get Professional Help

Tackship Consulting can help you activate your passion and optimize your performance by helping you create SMART goals and implement them into your business and even your personal goals. Check out our website, or schedule a free consultation to learn more!

February 17, 2022February 17, 2022

Visioning A Process For Setting Your GPS

Visioning, A Process for Setting your GPS

The corporate visioning framework that I use comes from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), which was published initially in Gino Wickman’s book Traction. There are six parts to EOS, but one of the most crucial is the Vision. The Visioning process uses the following eight questions:

What are your Core Values? – This is an honest evaluation of what would make your company great and an assessment of what you live out in your company. Work may come in ensuring you are living out the desired values.
What is your Core Focus?
1. Purpose – what you do best
2. Niche – who do you do it for, and why do they want it done?
What is your 10-Year Target? – A measurable big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG) is your quantum leap, and achieving it will mean great success. It could be revenue, a certain number of units sold, etc. The 10-Year Target is something that excites, inspires, and motivates the leadership team and the company.
What is your Marketing Strategy? – Think about:
1. Target Market – geographic, demographic, and psychographic
2. 3 Uniques – discriminators that make your company
3. Your proven process for serving your customers
4. Your guarantee, promise, or commitment to your customers
What is your 3-Year Picture? – SMART goals that are achievable in the next three years. Defined by measurable progress toward achievement in key metrics. Three years is not too far off, like ten years, and this is where you can actually see the progress toward your BHAG, and you will have a great start on achieving it.
What is your 1-Year Plan? – Also, SMART goals feed the 3-year Picture but are bound to the next 12 months. Achievability becomes even more essential. Prioritize and simplify your life. If you spend all your time working on 100 goals, you will not accomplish anything. Achieving goals is way more fun than failing at goals!
What are your Quarterly Rocks? – Rocks are the imperatives to achieve over the next 90 days. Someone needs to be the accountable person for each rock. Again, keeping the focus on the most important things and spending 90 days getting them done. Everyone should have rocks, at the corporate level, or at the divisional.
What are your Issues? – Look at what needs to be identified, discussed, and solved by your leadership team, that might be blocking your achievement.

Personal Vision

A lot of these same exercises are beneficial in helping people to transition. As you move into a new phase of your life, often you need to figure out what you want to do, where you want to go, how much money you want to make, or how long you are willing to commute. Taking time to reflect on what you want and where you want to go and then the path to get there can help provide you with a solid plan to move forward. Whether you call it a vision or a purpose for your life, figuring out a BHAG, personally, professionally, or spiritually, combined with SMART goal setting, can put you on your path and help you achieve it!

Tackship Consulting Can Help

In our next blog, we will be sharing everything you need to know about SMART goals and how to make them attainable.

Whether you personally or the entire company wants to work towards specific goals and aspirations, Tackship Consulting is here for YOU!

We can help you activate your passion and optimize your performance. Schedule your consultation today to learn more!

January 26, 2022January 26, 2022

Rules of Engagement For A Difficult Conversation

How To Have A Difficult Conversation

Having a difficult conversation is never easy, especially in the workplace. If the conflict doesn’t get solved, it can lead to employees feeling invaluable, having emotional confrontations, and being insecure about their ability to handle the workload.

Company Values Are Important

Values are ideas that are core to who you are and who your business is, and any violation of these values is not compatible with how you want your business run. Therefore, ensuring your employees and staff share in and respect these values will reduce friction and ensure that everyone aligns with the work that they’re doing.

For example, if transparent communication is one of your core values, you want to find employees that aren’t afraid to share information and aren’t afraid to speak frankly. Similarly, managers and supervisors need to be able to hear and process news that may not be what they expect, be capable of dealing with bad news, and not take things personally nor negatively treat bearers of bad news.

By setting the ground rules upfront, you can find like-minded employees, and your business will only be more successful because your team will have the same values you have created for the company.

How To Have A Difficult Conversation At Work

One of the reasons why difficult conversations are nerve-racking is because many grew up in a world where their parents told them, “if you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say it at all.”

Before you take this as me saying to go ahead and criticize people, don’t. That’s not what I mean at all. Rather, what I want you to do is start with two positives. Then, in the next step, identify the issue at hand while owning your own mistakes.

Maybe you forgot to update the other person about a deadline change or didn’t clearly communicate your standards for the project at hand. Whatever it might be, taking ownership of your own mistakes can help the conversation go smoother and show others what you’re trying to do to prevent a similar issue from happening in the future.

Since this is a conversation, remember to let the other person have an opportunity to respond to what you said. Rather than listening just to respond, remember to try and listen to understand the other’s point of view. Try putting yourself in their shoes. It can help give you a new perspective on the matter at hand and help you make more progress.

Next, ask who you are talking with to make the needed changes and clearly state the standards again, all while letting them know of any consequences of not meeting these expectations. It can range from not receiving the promotion they wanted to even losing a job.

The last rule of engagement is to leave the conversation on a positive note. Talk about the strengths that you see and what you love that they’re doing. By ending the meeting on a high note, you can motivate them to fix the problem.

Follow Up Is Key

The next day, follow up with the person to see if they have any questions, how they’re doing, and if you can help with anything.

Let them know you care and want to see them succeed in this position. When you take this time to check in, it helps to reinforce the idea that you’re a safe person to talk with if they need help.

Get Professional Help

Tackship Consulting is here to help you and your business navigate through the issues at hand while helping you learn to deal with any future problems that come up and overcome those obstacles to optimize your overall performance.

January 26, 2022January 26, 2022

What Makes Executive Coaching Unique

The Different Coaching Professions

I often get asked what’s executive coaching, and how is it different from other coaching professions. That’s a great question because, more often than not, there will be confusion about what makes an executive coach unique.

Before we get into what makes executive coaching stand out from other types of coaches, I want to explore the differences between life, business, team, and career coaching.

Life Coaching

In a sense, a life coach helps clients live their life better.

They seek to encourage and offer support to their clientele for both personal and professional issues in their lives. These topics can range from personal goals, life transitions, or even projects that they’re currently doing.

Business Coaching

An entrepreneur would benefit from having a business coach because they help assist and guide business owners with decisions regarding their company.

For example, “how would adding a new team member fit within your business goals?” Or “how can you continue to achieve your personal goals while running the company?”

These are just a few example questions that have a possibility of being asked during a business coaching session. In general, during these meetings, it’s a goal to help the business owner hone his or her strengths while mitigating their weaknesses.

Team Coaching

Teamwork is a crucial part of many companies to be successful, but when there’s miscommunication between the team, it can lead to problems for the entire company.

Team coaching helps to facilitate the performance development of the team as a whole and helps them meet their objectives.

For this to work, though, the coach needs to understand the team dynamic because the focus isn’t solely on an individual.

Career Coaching

Looking for a new career but don’t know where to start?

Then a career coach is a beneficial tool because they focus on job searches, negotiating salaries and promotions while providing clients accountability.

Executive Coaching

An executive coach acts as a sounding board that helps clients improve professional and organizational performances.

Even though executive coaching is similar to the other examples, it does have a unique aspect.

Executive coaches focus not only on challenges in the current moment of a client’s life but their life as a whole. This allows an executive coach to help facilitate a client’s desire to move towards improved performance.

Work With Tackship Consulting

As an executive coach, I’ve been trained and certified to help clients explore their goals and the steps they need to reach their goals and make their dreams a reality.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can activate your passions and optimize your performance, fill out the contact form today.

October 13, 2020October 13, 2020

Forgiveness is the Key to Love

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is a powerful concept. It takes a lot for us to forgive, and to understand that there are struggles going on in every single one of us. Forgiveness and the ability to accept those with flaws is a critical aspect of love and love is the key to moving our lives, and our purposes forward. Who will you allow yourself to forgive today?