Here’s the #1 Thing You Can Do To Achieve Bold Goals (Business or Personal)

I know you've got big goals, so I'd like to share the most important thing you can do to achieve them.

Unfortunately, most of us are terrible at achieving our big goals. 80% of us give up on our New Year's goals by the first week in February.

We aren't great at achieving strategic business goals either. In a recent survey of senior executives, 88% said strategic initiatives were critical to organizational success, yet over 50% said their organization was NOT good at executing these initiatives.

The problem isn't us; it's the way we approach big goals.

The problem with how we approach our big goals is that we focus on the goal itself rather than the small, daily habits we must master to achieve the goal.

The most important thing we can do to achieve bold goals is to identify the critical few habits we must repeatedly do to fuel our success and hold ourselves accountable for committing to those habits.

Let's do this!

Achieving Your Big, Personal Goals

As exciting and complicated as our big goals might be, the way we realize them is pretty simple. It all comes down to having the right daily and weekly habits.

Cause (Habit) = Effect (Goal)

The habit is the cause, and that's what deserves our full attention.

So let's use these examples of personal goals:

• Lose 40 lbs
• Write a book
• Find a new job

Like most bold goals, we won't achieve them overnight. Realistically, some might take more than a year. When there is no immediate gratification, we'll need to break goals down into a few actionable steps we can take daily or weekly (habits) and measure our progress against these habits, not the end goal.

Here's the three-step process.

1. Identify the Habits

   For each goal, ask yourself, “What are the essential few habits I must create over the next 30 days to get me closer to achieving this goal?” You could do many things, but there are always the critical few that will have the most impact.

   So why only 30 days? Dream big, but act small. It's overwhelming to think of all the things you will ultimately need to do to achieve a meaningful goal. So don't! Only tackle it 30 days at a time. After 30 days, you can evaluate which habits are moving the needle and any adjustments you need to make.

2. Set Implementation Intentions

   According to James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, “you are two to three times more likely to follow through with a habit if you make a specific plan for when, where, and how you are going to implement it.”

   Use the following framework to build a precise intention:

   I will _______(action) at ________(time) in ________(location).

3. Measure What Matters

   Track your progress! What gets measured gets done, as the saying goes, and it feels great to check the box on a commitment you've made to yourself. I recommend making it easy to do and easy to see.

   If you'd like a copy of my habit tracker template, contact me and I'll send it your way.

Achieving Your Strategic Business Goals

It should be no surprise that the secret to achieving strategic business goals is the same secret for achieving personal goals. The only difference is in the terminology we use.

Habits are essentially lead measures in the business context. Lead measures are those key actions you must do daily or weekly to achieve a goal. So we'll refer to our business habits as “lead measures.”

Here's the four-step process for business goals:

1. Identify the Lead Measures

   As a team, ask the question, “What are the 2–3 things we must do on a daily or weekly basis to achieve this goal?”

   Pro Tip: See my post Leveraging Lead Measures for more on identifying the right lead measures for your strategic goals.

2. Set Implementation Intentions

   As with personal goals, we are much more likely to achieve our goals if we translate the action we need to take into intentions. Stating the intentions in terms of activities, time, and location increases the chance of success exponentially.

   In the Harvard Business Review article, “Get Your Team to Do What It Says It's Going To Do,” the author refers to people who set these types of intentions as “if-then planners.”

   Research suggests that if-then planners are three times as likely as others to reach their goals.

   That is a profound advantage and an opportunity for your team to leverage this approach to get the desired results.

3. Measure What Matters

   Tracking your team's progress is essential. Create simple dashboards for your team that provide up-to-date tracking and visibility on lead measures for all to see. Make them transparent and easily accessible. Visual progress is both motivating and inspires the team to stay accountable to each other.

   Review these dashboards weekly and monthly to stay committed, on-track, and to review any adjustments that might be appropriate. With many strategic projects, particularly new and innovative projects, we find that the actions we thought we needed to take are not working. This review is the perfect time for the team to adjust or pivot to keep moving closer to the goal.

4. Align Incentives With Lead Measures

   Aligning incentives is a critical step often missed in pursuing strategic goals. Most performance and incentive reward systems depend on lag measurements like annual sales, gross profit margin, or customer satisfaction scores.

   But strategic “change the business” goals will typically span more than one performance review cycle. Yet, they don't make their way into the quarterly, semi-annual, or annual review cycle or the incentive systems. To avoid this miss, ask yourself this question:

   How are we aligning our incentives to reward those daily, weekly actions that drive us closer to achieving our long-term strategic goals?

   I recommend integrating the team's lead measures for strategic initiatives into the incentive and performance structure. This approach rewards the team for the daily and weekly behaviors they demonstrate to ensure your business achieves those strategic goals.

Bonus: Make Habits Stick With Identity Habits

At the core of all of our behaviors lie the beliefs we have about ourselves. To create a sustainable habit, we must decide who we want to be and act consistently like that person until we convince ourselves we have become that version of ourselves.

To create identity habits, begin by reframing goals based on who we want to become, not just what we want to achieve. For example:

• The goal is not to write a book but to become a writer.
• The goal is not to run a marathon but to become a runner.
• The goal is not to lose 40 lbs but to become a healthy person.

Using the first example, what habits would someone who is a writer have mastered? A good writer would most likely have a daily writing habit. That translates into, “I'm the kind of person who writes every day.” These identity-based habits are sustainable, and they serve us beyond annual goals.

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” — Jim Ryun

Motivation is terrible fuel to rely on to power our actions. Habits, however, keep us moving forward. Whether it's a personal goal or a business goal, the key to achieving bold goals requires that we identify the critical few habits we must repeatedly do to fuel our success AND hold ourselves accountable to committing to those habits.

You've got bold goals, and the world needs you to achieve them. Use these techniques for creating implementation habits, identity habits, and lead measures to join the few 10%–20% of people who will achieve their goals!

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the single most important thing for achieving a bold goal?

Identify the critical few habits you must do repeatedly to fuel success, and hold yourself accountable to those habits. Focus on the habit (the cause), not the goal (the effect), and measure your progress against the habits, 30 days at a time.

What is an implementation intention?

A specific plan for when, where, and how you'll act on a habit: “I will (action) at (time) in (location).” James Clear's research says you are two to three times more likely to follow through with a habit when you make that plan, and Harvard Business Review reports that “if-then planners” are three times as likely to reach their goals.

What are lead measures?

The business version of habits: the 2–3 key actions a team must do daily or weekly to achieve a strategic goal. Track them on simple, visible dashboards, review them weekly and monthly, and integrate them into your incentive and performance structure, because strategic goals typically outlast a single review cycle.

How do identity habits make habits stick?

Reframe the goal around who you want to become, not just what you want to achieve. The goal is not to write a book but to become a writer, and a writer writes every day. Identity-based habits are sustainable because they serve you beyond any annual goal.

Work well,

Adriana McLane

I help privately held distributors build strategy that holds up through growth, leadership transition, and what comes next. Fifteen years running Fulfilling Strategy — the last six spent deep inside distribution, working alongside the leadership of privately held distribution companies to build strategy that holds when a competitor moves in on your territory, when a President steps back, and when the next generation takes the lead. More about Adriana →