What is more important than your Goals?
Setting specific goals gives you a sense of direction and helps you focus on the most important things. People or Teams who set SMART Goals are more likely to succeed than those who don't. What is more important than setting goals?
"Accurately measuring the progress of a Goal"
The difference between people who achieve their goals and those who abandon their goals is the way you track your progress. Sometimes the most intuitive way to track a goal is not the best way to track a goal. You should be tracking and acting on the metrics which you can directly influence and you also know will directly contribute to achieving your goal.
When you are coaching a soccer team. No doubt your goal is to win the game or score more goals. It makes sense to track your goals against another team on the scoreboard to keep your team engaged and also to keep the game more rewarding. But, focusing on scores might not be enough for your team's win. You have much better chances to win the game if you start tracking and acting on passing, shooting, or ball control skills. When your score tells you if you are achieving your goal, these metrics tell you if you are likely to achieve your goal.
It is defined as Lead Measures in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution. The two most important characteristics of Lead Measures are Predictable and Influenceable. Predictable because you know they take you close to your goal and Influenceable because you can directly control them. The most intuitive way to track progress is using Lag Measures, like revenue, profit, customer satisfaction, or scores in a soccer game. They are called lags because, by the time you see them, the performance that drove them is already passed. You can’t do anything to fix them, they are history. It is much harder to collect data for Lead measures like passing and shooting skills. But no one said leading a team is easy.
One of the most important skills to build for a Manager is to identify the right Lead Measures and acting on them. One of my lead measures for "improving my writing skill" is to track and improve the "No of words written per day".
What are some of your lead measures?