Goal Setting – Dan Greer

Four Ways To Take Your Goal Setting To The Next Level

Dan Greer — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:56:30 +0000

If the midst of this pandemic and global recession, long range planning now means, what decisions need to be made this week? In this day to day crisis mentality it can become easy to lose the discipline of setting goals. This will make it even harder to stay focused and make good decisions that will impact the future or your organization.

This Forbes post is a great refresher on the goal setting process and why it is more important now than ever:

“Meeting your goals is always a challenge. We all know most New Year’s resolutions fail shortly into the new year. And it certainly isn’t any easier to achieve goals this year — just ask anyone who started 2020 thinking they’d travel more or go to the gym every day.

But if you’re ready to thrive, rather than just survive, as businesses settle into the “new normal,” consider these four ways you can up your goal-setting game.”

Why Creating Instant Momentum Is Key To Reaching Goals

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 06:00:20 +0000

I cannot begin to remember all of the times I have developed great ideas with clear direction only months later to realize nothing happened. Many other times, I have started but never seemed to be able to keep moving forward with clear progress. This Forbes Coaches Council post was very helpful:

“Dreams are very fragile things. When you’re inspired by the possibility of an idea, unless you take immediate action, your dream will fade, and you’ll regret it forever. On the contrary, if you overthink or over-plan something, inertia sets in, and you never get started. You talk yourself out of taking action.”

The Seven Mental Practices Of Star Performers

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 06:00:34 +0000

I am finishing reading Extreme Ownership written by two Navy Seals about how to apply commitment and focus into everything we do as leaders. This post by Jeff Boss reminded me of some of the principles in the book and really challenged me to prioritize my energy around the practices that have the greatest impact:

“Whatever their definition of “elite” is, my take is this: being “elite” in anything isn’t just reserved for professional sports teams or special operations units. What holds people back from becoming elite is how they “see” elite. I see the same mental compartmentalization when I coach leaders and their teams. They put mental toughness into two different buckets based on job description:”

How To Create A Schedule That Really Works For You

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 12:00:24 +0000

I think over the years I have made every mistake possible in working with my schedule. My high D wants everything down on the calendar to the minute only to see my plan get blown up within the first hour of most days. Today, there are so many new daily inputs that we must learn to block hours in our week to create the necessary capacity to stay on track. This Fast Company post was very helpful:

“Being over-scheduled leaves us no time for ourselves. The more “in control” we are of our calendar, the less control we feel like we have over our lives. Not to mention we’re notoriously bad at knowing how long tasks take us to do. When your schedule is this jammed, even going 15 minutes over on your morning task will throw your whole day out of whack.”

10 Ways To Be More Productive

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 12:00:17 +0000

I am a high D personality that likes to get things done. So over the years when things get tough, I tend to just work harder and try to push through it. Now I have come to realize that sometimes taking a walk in the middle of the day may be the most productive thing I could do. Smarter not harder is the game changer and Liz Ryan has an excellent post:

“The biggest problem with workplace productivity is mental. We think about productivity all wrong. We think that if we can tick three or five more items off our To Do list, we’re really doing a great job! We measure, value and reward the wrong things.

We praise people who work the fastest, instead of the people who work the smartest. That’s a big mistake!”

How To Set Goals That Support Life Balance

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:00:49 +0000

There is more and more pushback, especially from Millennial workers, about the expectations about doing work almost 24/7. I also often remind executives the other side of the coin is that we all bring home to work. Bottom line, if we don’t have work life balance it dramatically impacts our sense of well being and productivity. This Forbes post was helpful:

“This time of year, pretty much everyone’s talking about goals. The clean slate of a new year is pretty irresistible, after all, and any leader knows how important it is to set goals. Most of us are pretty goal-oriented people.”

Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong

Mon, 22 May 2017 18:47:36 +0000

It is often said in sports that how you prepare before the game will determine how well you play in the game. I believe that is also true about meeting effectiveness as well. The amount of work that is done before the meeting will determine how well your team can actually use collaboration to obtain great work. This HBR post is excellent:

“When your team is tasked with generating ideas to solve a problem, suggesting a brainstorming session is a natural reaction. But does that approach actually work? Although the term “brainstorming” is now used as a generic term for having groups develop ideas, it began as the name of a specific technique proposed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1950s. He codified the basic rules that many of us follow when getting people together to generate ideas: Toss out as many ideas as possible.”

5 Keys in Setting Goals

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 06:00:09 +0000

All of us have experienced the frustration that comes from really wanting to accomplish something important and thinking we are really committed to it only to realize several months later it did not happen. When I evaluate personally and professionally where the breakdown occurs it usually centers on the disciplines involved in effective goal setting.

These are the five critical things I have learned over the years:

Write it down—if it is not important enough to write down in your personal planner or enter into your cell phone list then it will almost always never get done.
Check your resources—do you realistically have the time, energy, knowledge, skills and commitment to make this happen?
Make it clear—you must be very specific about what you want to accomplish. It cannot be I want to lose weight; it needs to be twenty pounds over next six months.
Develop your plan—strategy is the realistic intersection of resources and commitment. There is a big difference in walking twenty minutes five days week and training for marathon.
Evaluate your progress—this is where the rubber hits the road. Do it often until you know you have sustainable momentum and most important celebrate every win.

The old expression if you don’t measure it then it probably doesn’t matter still rings true to me.

What Does An Agile Organization Mean?

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:00:52 +0000

The tension that exist between the priority of delegation and the seemingly contrasting style of collaboration is real and must be resolved. In some companies there are too many meetings and in others too many silos. This Forbes post is an excellent summary of all the key issues:

“Agile is a vast global movement that is transforming the world of work. The movement took off in software development in 2001 and is now spreading rapidly to all parts, and all kinds, of organizations, as recognized in 2016 by the citadel of general management—Harvard Business Review—with its article, “Embracing Agile,” by Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland and Hirakata Takeuchi.”

How To Boost Your Teams Productivity

Wed, 03 Feb 2016 12:00:15 +0000

I have never experienced a time where there has been more confusion between planning and execution or directive leadership vs. collaboration. Many leaders are over delegating and wondering why projects fail to meet expectations and other leaders are still micro managing and minimizing productivity. This HBR post is one of the best I have see on this subject:

“We all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?”