Effectiveness is often a good measure of success. When we are effective we are producing the results we striving to achieve.
Trouble comes when the results we see are different from what we expected. What then? How do we become more effective?
One sure way to be more effective is to Clarify Your Win.
We All Want to Win
Everyone likes to win. People love the excitement when their team is getting ahead. It’s the reason sports are a multi-billion dollar industry around the globe. We are hard wired to crave winning and being associated with winners.
This is also why a team that’s in the middle of a big loosing streak has trouble filling a stadium. No one wants to associate with “losers”.
With sports it’s easy to see who the winner is. One quick look at the scoreboard, or maybe the clock is all it takes. Winning in most sports can be reduced to numbers and guys often memorize an amazing amount of data from their favorite sports teams all with the the goal of figuring out who’s got the best chances to win.
Or sometimes they use their stats to explain why this team won and that team lost.
Clarifying Your Win
How about in you business? Do you know what a win looks like? Does your team? How about your customers?
Have you even defined your win?
If you give people a clear goal, more often than not they’ll work like crazy to get there. But if your goal is unclear then they’ll be forced to guess. Or worse yet they may choose their own goal and decide for themselves what a win is.
You see, with our without a goal they are going to work hard to get somewhere. The question is, Are they getting where you want them to go?
How to Clarify Your Win
So how do you do it? Simple. Just ask yourself, What is the most important thing?
As you think about the answer to that question, your win will begin to come clear. Boiling it down can make the win even more compelling.
The obvious answer is that business exist to make money. However when making money becomes an offshoot of winning, you are much more likely to make decisions that will make your business successful over the long term. When you don’t, you will be tempted to make short sighted decisions that will increase the bottom line today but ultimately hinder the success of your organization.
For example, here at SuccessCREEations we’ve defined our win as
Making a client so happy they refer 3 jobs a year to us.
Is it ambitious? Sure is. But how would your business look if every one of your customers referred 3 other customers to you? What if only 10% of your customers did? How much is a referral worth to your business.
In our case here a good referral is incredibly valuable. And three from the same source? That’s definitely a win and something to celebrate!
So what’s your win?
Chris, I enjoyed the insight that developed after reading this post. As a self-employed multiple-streams entrepreneur it’s important for me to know when I’ve made progress and when my productivity needs adjusting. It’s so easy to be a poor boss to oneself. Awareness is the key of course and your question brings us right to where we need to be.
What is the most important thing? It reminds me of marshal Thurber’s theory of Dynamic Value. He says that when we can identify the top 15% contributing factor to getting desired results that we need to primarily focus on delivering that dynamic value.
One of the most helpful concepts I ever learned was that goals had to be specific. I fired an affiliate marketing manager recently for this very reason. They would not set a goal. I mean I wasn’t saying “get me 100 subscribers.” I said “You set a goal your comfortable with, and I will hold you accountable” The said no, said bye.
Tom, Focus and prioritizing can often be a challenge when we’re working for ourselves. I think it becomes even more critical when we’re leading a team.
Either way focus has a tendency to magnify our results. If we focus on the right priorities we’ll increase our effectiveness, but get the priorities jumbled up and our effectiveness break down completely.
Advice, it amazes me how some folks are so resistant to being held accountable. I find it sad because it destines them to mediocrity.
Thanks for the post! My main problem is that I never put anything in writing. And I also need to clarify my goals more.
Cecilia, Truth be told I struggle with that too. I’m so busy doing that I don’t always get it written down.
Writing it out sure does help clarify things, though.
I really like the title Clarify Your Win. Its a short but very strong statement.
Thanks for the post! My main problem is that I never put anything in writing. And I also need to clarify my goals more.
Chris, I enjoyed the insight that developed after reading this post. As a self-employed multiple-streams entrepreneur it’s important for me to know when I’ve made progress and when my productivity needs adjusting. It’s so easy to be a poor boss to oneself. Awareness is the key of course and your question brings us right to where we need to be.
Great post about the importance of having clearly defined goals or “wins”! When you ask people the reasons they have for starting a business their usual response is “to make money”. By having a clear set of benchmarks defining the exact results that we want to achieve and that can be measured an organization can move more efficiently towards it and the end result “make money” will ultimately grow from there.
Defining a goal as a win fuels the drive to achieve it more, I like that. As I’ve learned, goals (wins) must be measurable, realistic, and ambitious. Entrepreneurs who set up goals and consistently meet them are successful.
Nice article. Focus on the big picture, it wins the most in the long term.
This is a good post about the importance of having a goal. I read most of your posts and don’t find many posts like this anywhere.
I have always considered a win to be becoming profitable. After reading this however I’m not sure that is a specific enough goal. I will definitely work on improving maybe deciding how much profit I should make for a month or make winning cutting down on expenses.
The same approach applies for becoming a successful blog. If you think of only making money from the beginning, you can never become successful. You have to work hard and write quality posts so that they attract people for a long period of time.
Defining a goal as a win fuels the drive to achieve it more, I like that. As I’ve learned, goals (wins) must be measurable, realistic, and ambitious.