Today we’re going to look at leveraging your group during planning. Whether your group is a business, non-profit, or something else, it’s really important to leverage the skillsets, mindsets, and talents of everyone involved. We’ll briefly discuss six different elements in terms of how best to leverage. Keep in mind that this is only an overview. The process we take you through at EntreResults is much more complicated and detailed than this. But if you want to tackle planning on your own, here are a few things to think about:
1. When you’re meeting with the group, the first thing you should do is review the last year. Then, brainstorm and jot down a list of what worked and what didn’t. If your group is quite large, sometimes it’s good to break it up into smaller teams, perhaps by department, before you proceed with the review.
2. Use the RPA format to write down the goals you’re going to go after for the year. RPA stands for result, purpose, and activity. First, state the desired result as if it has already happened. For example, if your goal is to hire three people throughout the year, your result would be Hired three people.
The purpose is self-explanatory. In this case, maybe it’s so you can create more profit for the company, or to better fulfill the company’s purpose and vision. Or perhaps your current employees are overworked, so more people are needed in order to give everyone else some work-life balance. You get the point. Basically, you must have a reason for why you want to achieve each goal.
Finally, activity would be the little bite-sized steps that’ll help you hit your desired result. Following our example goal of hiring three people, maybe one necessary action would be to create a recruitment plan or improve the hiring process.
That’s the gist of the RPA goal process. Use it for all your goals, because it works.
3. Consider not overdoing it with the number of goals you want to set for the year. There’s no perfect number, but try to shoot for less than five big goals. If you have fifteen or fifty, it’s going to be hard or even impossible to implement them all. Some companies or organizations keep it even simpler at one to three major goals per year.
4. Most people don’t think about this very much, but don’t forget about the culture and values of the company when creating your goals. It’s really important to shoot for growth, but you must consider if your goals are going to potentially hurt your company’s value system. Don’t just try to add people or grow just for growth’s sake. Make sure you’re growing within the boundaries of your company’s desired culture.
5. Figure out a way to track and measure the progress of these goals. Make sure that as you go through the year, there is a way that you can show the progress to everyone involved. People should be able to see where you were when you started, where you are going, etc. Also, each individual that’s in charge of implementing a portion of these goals needs to have some accountability along the way.
6. If you’re doing this with a group, have fun getting to know each other! Obviously, goal-setting is about helping you achieve goals, but the process of creating the goals can oftentimes create unification within the company/organization. Go to an off-site location to talk about these goals. Find some place where everyone can think creatively, and where all members of the group have a chance to interact with each other. Do it over a meal. Make it fun.
So those are the six things to look at in regards to leveraging your group to plan. Go out, take action, and make it a better than amazing day.
