Putting First What Matters Most by Jane K Cleland

Author:Jane K Cleland [Cleland, Jane K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940941516
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

We want to break into the Asian market by signing a contract with a suitable distributor within two years.

Step 3.Think Small to Achieve Big

Narrow

The more specific the goal, the more likely you are to achieve it.

Consider the walk to San Francisco from New York. It’s a daunting endeavor. Think of the logistics. (Where will I sleep? How will I stay in touch with my family? What will I take with me?)

What about the logistics associated with walking a mile? Isn’t that less daunting? There’s an old saying that the longest journey begins with a single step. Think about it—if you take one step, and then another, before you know it, you’ll be across the room.

It’s much easier to motivate yourself to do something small than something large, in part because it’s less intimidating. Also, it’s easier to envision a more specific task than a big-picture goal.

No one says you have to do things all at once. This is another example of the power of baby steps. Take a big-picture goal and break it into smaller units.

Max, a supervisor in an environmental lobbying group’s Information Technology (IT) department, received the assignment to investigate new technology options. “I didn’t know where to begin. Don’t get me wrong. I love keeping up with the latest technology, so this was a great opportunity. While I can always use more hands, I had adequate staff and it was a non-critical assignment, so there was no break-your-neck deadline. The problem was the scope of the assignment. It was just too broad.

“No matter how I approached it, I couldn’t seem to get a handle on it. I had three people working on it. After about a month, when their preliminary reports began to come in, I realized there was a major problem. Overlap. Because my assignment to them was broad, they were focusing on areas of personal interest to them—and they shared some of those areas.

“I stopped them then and there and rethought the assignment. The first thing I did was list categories of technology. I thought about approaching it by internal department needs, but decided that might limit us. Just because a department manager told me that he needed new PCs for everyone in the department doesn’t mean it’s true. New technology changes everything. In this case, everyone in the department got new laptops—not new PCs.

“What I did was stop the staff from investigating new technology and put them on the task of investigating existing technology. Once we knew what we were doing now, I broke it into categories. Only then were we ready to investigate new technology. We ended up with small assignments, like investigating options in Internet service providers and pricing alternatives for cell phone service.

“We got it done quicker and with less overlap because I converted a big-picture assignment into Narrow components.”

Experiment with applying the principle. Consider this big-picture objective: I want to increase revenue by four percent. How can you make this goal more Narrow?

Let’s assume that this is a Concrete goal;

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