On a day when businesses are looking to plan for their future, “milestones” in a long journey have a significant role to play.
Staying on track … remaining focussed … preventing drift
Having ‘set’ points — “milestones” — to keep you focussed on what it is you are trying to achieve is helpful. These points can provide an indication of whether you are going in the right direction and on-course to achieve what it is you have set out to do.
Chunking your way to success
Today is when many businesses will get to know if their plan to emerge from Covid lockdown can be put into place. In a week’s time, it could mean an end to restrictions and an opening-up of business.
It would seem, if the rumours are correct, that the relaxing of the rules will be kicked a little further down the calendar. Once more, businesses will have to re-plan, perhaps run with their contingencies, or, go back to square one. For some, it may signal closure!
The overall ‘target’ of the Government, since early this year, has been to ‘turn-off’ all restrictions and allow businesses, society and the economy to return to pre-pandemic activity. Yet they also introduced a series of interim measures — “milestones” — to check-in on progress i.e. five-week blocks to monitor the data, before moving on to the next level of restriction-relaxation.
Whether you agree or not with how the Government has gone about handling the pandemic, the introduction of these five-week blocks within the timeline to recovery has provided a focal point for businesses to plan how they emerge from the pandemic.
Defining success — setting targets
What are we trying to achieve? What’s our aim? What will success look like? What’s our KPIs. What’s our goal? These are all phrases we often talk about in planning our work yet we can be guilty of thinking about the bigger picture, setting targets for the future and predicting the end point whilst forgetting about the ‘small steps of success’.
We may need to achieve ‘x’ by a certain daye yet setting a series of “milestones” en route, allows us to check-in on progress. We often don’t know for certain what ‘x’ might be. End-point goal setting is often crystal ball gazing informed by what we know at the time, learnt experiences, predicting outcomes based on trends and /or data projection — take your pick as there are few certainties in life!
Setting ‘targets’ is a crucial aspect of business planning yet structuring that plan with interim points — “milestones” — allows you to monitor your progress on a regular basis. For me, this is a critical defining characteristic of good business planning yet is often overlooked as organisations concentrate on the end-game.
Rather than reaching the end and not succeeding, good business practice would embrace a more structured approach. Breaking down business operations into manageable ‘chunks’ with regular check-ins to ensure progress is on-track. Each milestone offers an opportunity to reflect, evaluate, revise, reset what it is you are doing. Each milestone also offers an opportunity to ‘celebrate’ progress … success!
Why the cycling bling?
I was explaining to a friend why I take part in cycling sportives … for the cycling purists, sportives are very ‘meh’(!) … and it suddenly dawned on me that I realised it was a characteristic of my behaviour. I need “milestones” to keep me focussed, something to aim for and more specifically, as a motivator. If my goal is too far away, or I can’t visualise it, I can drift.
Completing three or four sportives every year keeps me motivated. It helps structure my ‘training plan’ i.e. going out and being active for my own health and wellbeing, into smaller more manageable chunks of exercise with a recognisable focal point.
Every bit of bling — finisher medal — comes with a story for me. I can recall the event, the scenery, the weather(!), whether it was an easy ride or a challenging one. It’s my visual experience-maker.
My “milestones” behaviour plays to my ‘structured’ brain. I like a plan, not too rigid, yet enough to help me know the direction of travel. Having these ‘little steps of success’ keep me on track, focussed, motivated, and with a story to tell at the end.
