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What are your new-year resolutions for your firm?
Hard to believe, I know, but we’re now starting 2011.
The harsh reality seems to me that the older we all get, the faster the years go by, and still there are many practitioners who have not yet implemented the changes they promised they would in 2010.
Well, now is your chance (and you know who you are!) to make amends by setting some realistic, achievable goals for yourself, your staff, your clients and your firm.
In discussing goal setting with some of my clients, practitioners just like you, I try to remember the simple acronym that will help keep us all on track:
Goals should be SMART…
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-limited
In other words, don’t just say ‘I want to grow my practice in 2011’ for example, instead be more specific. If you’re presently billing $600,000 and want to grow by 15%, say ‘I want to take my firm from $600,000 to $690,000 in billings by the end of 2011.’
This is
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Specific – a growth of 15% or $90,000,
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Measurable – you either achieve it or you don’t
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Attainable – going from $600,000 to $2,000,000 might be a bit of a stretch!
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Relevant – the goal is directly related to your firm
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Time-limited – by the end of 2011
Now, it’s time to then back-fill your goal and determine what it is that you’re going to commit to do during the year to enable you to realize this.
How do you plan to achieve this? What are you going to have to do? What will you have to stop doing in order to be able to do the things you will have to do? When will each stage need to be done by? What resources will you need? Do you already have them all or will you need to invest in order to reach your goals? What technology or software will you need? What training? When will each of these things be done by? Who will do them?
You see, the thing with goal setting is that one thing often leads to another, and before we know it we have yet another huge to-do list that drags us down.
The way around this, and to actually achieve your goals is to chunk large projects down into smaller, achievable steps so that we are not daunted by the massive project we have now made a commitment to.
Make your goal/resolution public.
By coming out and stating our intentions for the coming year we are making another form of commitment to achieving our goals, and some of us need this.
Get an accountability buddy.
Giving someone ‘nagging rights’ is another step in the right direction. Ask someone in your firm, or a family member to hold you accountable and ask for evidence regularly that you are making strides in your desired direction, and give them permission to nag you into taking action if you seem to be deviating from the plan, or simply not moving forward fast enough to reach your goal in the allotted time.
Stop doing the things that get in the way.
It’s all too easy to become distracted. We all tend to take on too much, and not delegate enough. Push work down to the lowest level possible in your firm so that you don’t get side-tracked by urgent, but not important, issues.
Get your clients to help you.
Sometimes we need to educate our clients. Whether it’s ‘please, this year, tidy up your bookkeeping’ or ‘on matters like this, my assistant can help you, not me’ we need to be that little bit more assertive sometimes, otherwise our clients can run roughshod all over us and we will never get down to working towards our goals.
As 2010 closes and another year opens, I wish you all the very best in your endeavors, and I look forward to writing about some of the success stories later in the new year.
© 2004-2011,
Steve McIntyre-Smith. All Rights Reserved. |
