“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” You’ve heard the quote before, haven’t you? Although we’ve heard it how many of us actually think about it and put it to use in our businesses? How do we manage ourselves?
This week I had a LOT of lofty goals. Some of them were related to sales, some to projects, and some were personal. As a working mom, accomplishing these can be a challenge. For example, my daughter has recently joined her school’s math bowl. This has shifted my schedule to have me leaving work to pick her up by 3:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I love the flexible schedule I have with owning my own business, but it makes it difficult to make sure that I’m accomplishing all of the things I need to do to keep the business running.
In order to counteract my random schedule, each week I break down my larger goals into smaller, manageable chunks. I write what I need to accomplish on my whiteboard and meet with my project manager each week to make sure that I did it. It doesn’t matter what the kids are doing, or if a friend asks me to lunch, I know I have to have 40 sales touches this week and complete two major projects. Measuring this and sharing these things with someone else (an employee, boss, coach, mentor) keeps me accountable.
My project manager does the same thing. We map out her goals for the week (we even have little check boxes next to them…we are nerds) and it helps to keep her accountable as well. Having a visual representation of them on the whiteboard really helps. When we get distracted, we just look at the board again and are reminded to get to work!
How do you do it?
I’m a big fan of the method that Jason Cohen describes in his recent blog post, which is pretty much the complete opposite of what you’ve suggested. Check it out and tell us what you think!
http://blog.asmartbear.com/personal-checklist.html
Interesting. Not really sure if it is the opposite of what I am saying. I make checklists as well and break down my projects into smaller chunks but not necessarily teeny, tiny chunks. Per this blog post, I think it’s actually similar.
Hmm. You write: “In order to counteract my random schedule, each week I break down my larger goals into smaller, manageable chunks.” But Jason says: “Tired of productivity articles instructing you to break down large projects into smaller, more annoying, and less interesting tasks?”
His recommendation is not to make a list of items that you want to do, but instead to figure out what you are doing *wrong*. Then you try *not* to do that for a week. Seem like the opposite to me.
Oh, and happy birthday!