December & January are the busiest months of the year for us managers. We need to publish our goals for the coming year, and we need to collect & write employee evaluations. I remember myself working nights and weekends to complete these tasks. Not always sure what the exact goals should be as sometimes we don’t have clarity about the industry or our projects. Especially in this fast moving world where things change every week!
You have only one goal
What do you mean one goal? Have you smoked something recently? My excel has over 100 lines of things we need to accomplish and some 50 more of tasks we didn’t get done from last year!
Yet, I claim, you have only one goal. all the rest are a simple derivatives of this one simple goal.
Your goal is to help your clients succeed
Know your clients
Because you deliver something, a product or a service, you have clients. You have 3 types of clients:
- Those who buy or receive your product or service
- Those who YOU buy or receive a product or service from
- Your team, your manager, your peers.
When you dedicate all your effort and resources to make your clients successful, you will earn their trust, you will get better results, your team will fill they have an impact, you will get more appreciation, more positive feedback, more respect, and basically YOU will be more successful.
This strategy is called “The strategy of Preeminence” defined by the #1 business accelerator expert Jay Abraham (No affiliation). Jay used it for business but it is applied beautifully also in the corporate world or any other work environment.
Type 1 Client
Let’s take an example. Let’s say my team delivers a piece of code to a larger product that Solves something. Two teams get our code. Integration and validation. How can I make them successful? Integration will probably answer (Go and ask them of course!) that delivery on time and according to spec will be great. Understand what it means and set a derived goal! Validation team will want to get the spec early and your cooperation on building a test plan review. again, Understand what it means and set a derived goal!
That will also help you write your employee evaluation. What’s the connection? Employee evaluation is about Impact. When you help your clients succeed, you make actual measurable Impact! Now it is easy to quantify the work your team did in order to generate success. Look at the last year goals, look at what success is and if you did act on the goals – here is your impact!
Type 2 client
Let’s look at another client – your vendors or teams that deliver to you. How easy it is to work with you? Do you define clear requirements and timelines? Go interview your vendors and suppliers. Help them deliver faster and with more quality. Derive your goals from that.
Type 3 client
How about your team? They are also your client. If you invest in their success they will reciprocate. they will invest in you above and beyond! Where do they want to grow to? what do they need in order to be successful at work? How can they be successful with work-life balance? Do they see their kids enough? Successful employees create great results!
5 steps process to define your derived goals:
- Write down who ALL of your clients are
- Set a meeting with your clients
- Invest in understanding how they perceive reality. How things look from their point of view.
- Discover what is success for them. Ask your clients how you can help in make them successful
- Define the actions you need to take based on your findings
Bottom Line
Your goals are simply derived from your client’s success. Focus in helping your clients reach their goals, all your actions and processes will be positively impacted from that.
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Thank you for reading this.
Nir Megnazi – Leadership Coach