In personal or business life, you should be set up with goals. Goals need to be specific and have some timelines set to them. There is the typical acronym of SMART (Specific-Measured-Attainable-Relevant-Time), but for this blog, let’s just stick with goals being specific and have a timeline.
Too many people today have goals, but no timeline set to them and another common mistake is to make those goals so big, that you never reach them, without small steps to get to the big goal. Yes, keep that big goal, but have smaller ones created that reach out to accomplish the bigger goal.
Here is one of our big goals; As a business management consultant, we want to help 1 Million employees by the year 2025. Then we have smaller actionable goals that will get us to that big goal! Like writing blogs consistently and being more present on social media!
Our life today, in the current economic times is showing us that it is difficult to look to others to look after us. In Canada, just this week there have been almost 1 Million applications for Employment Insurance (EI).
The Prime Minister said that he would get payments out right away. Well, we have relatives that went on EI almost 2 weeks ago and are still waiting. The government cannot keep up, so hopefully, you have back up in your financials to sustain the waiting. The moral of the story here is that when things turn around, like they always do, start putting together personal goals that will have you prepared for the next downturn.
So, from my personal example; I have been in Alberta since 1999 and was in a downturn when I got here. Another downturn in 2008, another in 2014 and now another in 2020. Because I am a slow learner, I started changing my goal perspective in 2014. People are not going to come to your side and help. You need to look after that yourself. Set goals!
One thing we have seen with the recent downturn is that government or no one is out to help you and what do you do in the downturn when it comes to employees. Who do you keep? How do you sustain them? Just three months ago, a relative of ours over Christmas dinner was talking positively about their company and how busy they were. Now last week, they have three days left and nowhere to go. The company has pretty much closed its doors. Yes, downturns will always impact others in specific ways, and yes, you cannot always keep everyone. Sometimes there are just things in life beyond our control.
But what goals are you setting as a business to protect you and your employees against the downturns? We have also witnessed small businesses that are keeping all of their employees and hiring as well. Bottom line, take this time to adapt your business and make it as recession proof as possible. Consider what went wrong and what you can do in the future to correct the issue. Set goals!
Setting goals, from our own experience and those around us, is a boring chore! But it is extremely effective. So why don’t more people do it? We all become complacent and just put that stuff off to the side. There is always something more important to do, other than sitting and writing, understanding what the next steps are. Set small goals and then have one big goal they are leading you to.
To review your goals, feel free to reach out to us at Future To Now Consulting to get the conversation started.
