Get Results & Feel Good About It
By this point of the year, you've probably settled into a routine. Hopefully, it's a better one than last year's. If you're the type to set New Year’s resolutions and ambitious goals, I stand with you.
But following through on your goals is as glamorous as day-old socks.
As you well know, most resolutions go awry. We have the best intentions, but we often underestimate the hours, dilemmas, and emergencies that’ll stand in the way of progress. It's a chore. Meanwhile, the dinner still needs to be cooked, groceries bought, laundry washed, cat taken to the vet, bills paid, and yes, you do need regular sleep.
In the movies, this is where a rousing song glazes over the real work and time involved. Nobody has the patience to watch the hero’s transformation.
It's amazing (-ly frustrating?) how much and how little we accomplish at the same time. Day-to-day, we can barely see progress. Like paying off debts, checking your bank account every day won't make the balance go down.
So, if you haven't stuck to your email schedule or fabricated deadlines or sales goals, don't fret. You may be approaching your goals all wrong.
Plan Your Way to Results
As a CPA, I love to track my goals. Daily trackers, weekly planners, even spreadsheets—I'm all in. I love organizational tools and have way too many stickers!
This girly love of planning has a strange side-benefit. In figuring out my goals, I realized that I want to track my progress every day. It just works for me to be consistent. Breaking down my goals into daily actions requires a bit of creativity, so I started researching how.
I found goal-setting gold.
There are two things you can track: results or efforts. The former is about checking the box when you finish. The latter is about noting your progress.
In a brilliant moment, the idea clicked! Instead of tracking goals as done or not done (and always feeling behind), if I reshaped them into a routine, I could chip away at them.
In corporate-speak, I'm talking about leading indicators (or leading metrics). These are actions that increase the odds you’ll accomplish your goals. Most are like habits. You do them consistently and focus on what you put in, not the end result. This relieves the pressure to get #allthethings done right now. It's a long-term approach. You focus on what you can control: your effort.
This thought pattern makes your goals feel achievable. Sometimes, that's all you need to make meaningful progress—a mindset shift.
How to Create Leading Indicators
To create leading metrics, start with a goal and break it down.
Define your goal. Whether it’s SMART, CLEAR, or DUMB.
Outline the chief milestones necessary to achieve your goal.
Generate mini-actions that directly increase your chance of success; look for repetitive or similar tasks.
Add the mini-actions to your schedule, time block, or use your productivity habit of choice.
The Beauty of Leading Metrics
If your goal is to increase your profit margin, you could always ask for a discount or look up an affiliate code. If you do this every time you have to spend money, you'll inevitably find ways to save a few pennies. And those pennies add up to profit if done often enough.
A leading indicator for this could be “ask for/look up a discount every time you make a purchase.”
This one is almost effortless because you have a trigger - whipping out your card - to associate with the action—asking for a discount.
That’s the beauty of leading metrics! If you can make it a habit, it’s easier to succeed.
Breaking Down a Goal into a Habit
Let’s explore an example to see how a goal translates into leading indicators.
If your goal is to help 10 people, then you need to talk to way more than 10 people, maybe 100 or even 1,000. You could reach that goal in many ways. Let’s clarify when and how.
You decide the best way to impact 10 people is via phone consultations every month. To reach this goal, you need to hold 2.5 meetings a week (assuming 4 weeks in a month).
To find how many people you need to reach to land 10 consultations, start by looking at past performance, like your sales conversion rate. If you have no history, start with a guess and refine as you learn more.
You have the past data and know for every 5 inquiries, you book a phone consultation. To get to 2.5 meetings a week, you need 13 inquiries (2.5 * 5) each week.
Your leading metric would be an activity that drives the inquiries. It could be cold calling, advertising, engaging on social media, or something else. Pick an action based on your unique objective, position, and talents.
In my consulting practice, I often call this a “numbers game.” Especially for sales, it’s true (it even has a snazzy name—sales conversion rate). In this example, you must talk to 5 people to make 1 sale. If you keep talking to people, inevitably, you’ll close a deal. The results may not be linear (after all, you can’t meet with half a person), but they should average out over time if you stick with it.
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This year I challenged myself to develop a few leading metrics for each goal. For me, it works best to set daily goals. It's easy to track, plus I get a little buzz whenever I get to check off a box. It motivates me to continue. It feels good knowing that I'm making tangible progress toward my goals.
Every guru tells you to track sales, growth rate, lead source, turnover, profit market, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. But these measures are focused on the past. If you want to climb high, you need to look up and onward.
All you need to do is focus on the next step. Focus on every step. Don’t rest on your laurels remembering all the mountains you summited before. You’ll get to the top now by putting one foot in front of the other a million times.
Five minutes a day dedicated to your goals, like meditation or reading, is a good start. From there, you can grow. Even if you only have two minutes - if you do anything, you've stuck to your resolutions. And you'll stick with it because you feel accomplished.
Pull the power back into your own hands. You are not at the mercy of an algorithm, the economy, or fickle customers. Every day, you can take a step. Even if you need a walker, you’ll make progress.
If you've fallen off the goals wagon this year, it's time to reset. Use these insights. Pick a few leading metrics to start using now. You don't have to wait till January 1st comes around again. It's still early in the year, and you can smoke your goals if you keep to it.