Mid-Year Plan: Assessing where you are…

 

We all make grand goals for the new year. They seem so doable, practical and a good stretch out of our comfort zone.  Some of us forget about them and move through our work just doing what comes up, just addressing what seems urgent in the moment.  Some of us look at our goals regularly and find ourselves postponing doing those critical tasks and making time for the key actions that will make a difference for us accomplishing our goals.  Some of us know we have this tendency and hire a coach or partner with a colleague or friend to hold us accountable.  And there are others who become obsessive about goal achievement.

Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, we are entering the mid-year point. As we approach June 30^th, the end of the 2^nd quarter, it is time to assess where we are and make loving adjustments to our plans, key strategies, and action plans.  If we work solo or with a team, we still need to get our goals and plans aligned with whatever is our new reality.

So what should you be considering as you assess where you are with your goals for the year.

I often advise my clients to have 3 annual goals – one financial, one operational, one marketing/audience building.  We do the traditional SMART goals insuring as best we can that the goals are specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable and time sensitive and then doable given all that you know about yourself and your environment.  Then we look at the benchmarks or smaller sub-goals that would make the bigger goal inevitable, easily attainable. Each quarter you have the opportunity to assess where you are.  My clients find retreats are a great way of doing this, giving you a breathing moment from the hectic pace of implementation.  Creating the annual plan and doing a mid-year updates require some uninterrupted focus.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself and/or your team:

1. As you compare your goals to your actual results, where are you in attaining your goals?
2. Where have your efforts been stellar?
3. Where have you fallen short on doing what you set out to do?
4. Where did you do the tasks and they just didn’t yield the expected results?
5. What supported and what hindered you in accomplishing your 90 day goals?
6. What has shifted or changed in your environment that you must now consider as you move forward? What new information do you have?
7. For the next 90 days, what seems reasonable and attainable that will address your current reality and move you powerfully towards your goals? Do you have the capacity to do what is needed? What support do you need?

This last question takes you into action planning for the next quarter or 90 days.  And that is what time it is.  It’s time to assess Q2, figure out what you can do for the last 30 days to meet your goals, and start planning for Q3.

If you are batting a 1000 and meeting or exceeding goal, then the question before looking at Q3 is, how will you celebrate your successes and those of your team?

If this kind of thinking is new to you or you know to do it and you just haven’t put the mechanisms in place to make it a part of how you do your work, let’s talk about it.  Take advantage of the opportunity to have a free strategy session with me by clicking the link below.