While we’re on hiatus preparing for a new season of Rethink the Way You Sell, we wanted to bring you some content from Jeff you probably haven’t heard before. Jeff produced a premium podcast called Deeper Thought from 2020-2022 and you’re about to hear one of those episodes. Enjoy!

This is an enhanced audio version of the Deeper Thought post "“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading” by Andy Racic including an interview with the author and Mike Simmons.

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“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu

It’s December, which means for many of us it is year-end review and planning time.

That means it’s time to establish or refresh your goals.

The value of having goals and perhaps more importantly, a good goal setting process, cannot be overstated.

Goals give you a North Star to orient toward. You can evaluate the rest of your strategies and decisions with the simple question- “does this help me achieve my goals or not?” Using that question gives you a powerful way to defend your time and energy from needless tasks, meetings and projects. Ideally you have buy-in from your manager/leadership team, so they respect when you push back to defend your time.

Thoughts and tips on goals-

Different types of goals work for different people – some people do way better when their goals are public so that people hold them accountable, but not everyone does. Test to figure out what works best for you.

Goal setting is a team activity. If you’re a new or junior-level employee working with your manager on goals, don’t be afraid to speak up if you think the goal won’t get the results you need – you might have insight they don’t, or they can explain why the goal actually makes sense. Don't start down a path you don't have faith in.

Find a goal-setting method you like and stick to it. At my company we use OKRs. Another common framework is SMART goals. BHAGs are fun (if a bit corny). See what fits you and serves your purpose best.

Your goals should be challenging but achievable – finding the balance between cake-walk, reasonable, punchy, stretch, and insane goals takes time. This is why you’ll often see goals as a percent of past performance (ex: increase net new revenue by 20% YoY).

Goals should be things that you can influence but not directly control – things within your control are your tasks, the steps you take to achieve your goal. Don’t confuse goals and steps.

If you’re new to a role and don’t have experience to lean on, seek advice from those who have done it before. If you go this route, make sure to find people who have a similar level of drive/ambition as you do. Otherwise you risk setting mediocre goals, or goals that will drive you insane with the amount of work they require. There’s no shame in looking at a motivated person’s accomplishments and deciding the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Kobe used to get to the gym at 4AM because he was that driven. I’m only up at 4AM if I haven’t gone to bed yet or something is on fire. I respect anyone that dedicates themselves to their craft that much, but I know I’d be miserable if I tried to force myself to work that much.

Last but not least – periodically re-evaluate your goals. We do this exercise annually mostly because we’re human and funny like that. There’s no reason to wait this long, though. What made sense 3 months ago might not make sense anymore. Don’t quit just because the going gets tough, but also don’t throw good energy after bad if the goal has lost its relevance.

As always, if you have any questions, or if you’re having trouble, we’re here to help.

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