It’s one thing to have goals
It’s another thing to hear the language of goal realization. And it’s another thing to be able to show your team that you are, in fact, achieving your goals. (See picture) See, somewhat meaningful to say "Let’s meet our goal" and it’s indeed significant to hear your team say "We are achieving our goals." But the most power comes in looking at the obvious data and showing your team they are achieving a goal.
The YMX Goal
Earlier this summer we made a decision. While we had way over 1000 members and steady core traffic to the site, especially the forums… we only had 22 subscribers to our feed. That simply means that while the site is putting out great content, not very many people were reading it. (My belief is that feed subscribers are quickly becoming the true measure of a sites power instead of old matrices.)
So we set a crazy, stupid goal of getting 1000 feed subscribers to the site by December 31st, 2007. To go from 22 to 1000 meant that we were going to have to change how we were doing things… so we did! We rearranged a lot of what we were doing purely for the sake of growing this measurable goal. And, if you look at the chart you will see that we are steadily achieving this goal. Since starting on this goal, we’ve grown the feed count by more than 300%!
Mini-celebrations
A few weeks ago I talked about celebrating milestones on the way to achieving a goal. I truly believe that if you don’t have small baby step goals you’ll never achieve crazy, stupid
goals. And when you achieve small baby step goals… you need to
celebrate them. Do it for yourself and do it for your team who is crazy enough to jump on board with the crazy, stupid goal. It’s simply
an acknowledgment that hard work pays off. So when the site hits a
milestone, we "woot woot" it up. When we hit a major milestone, say 100
subscribers, we’ll really "woot woot" it up.
Leaders need to lead
I don’t mean to sound pithy… but I don’t like working for a leader
who doesn’t like to lead. That’s one thing I really like about Bob (senior pastor of our church) He’s never afraid to take the lead. (He’s also the king of crazy, stupid goals.) That’s the way I approve goals at YMX as well. While I have no trouble at all delegating… OK, confession… I’m getting better at delegating… there are simply times when a leader leads to achieve a goal.
Next steps
For those of you with crazy, stupid goals for your jobs, ministries, personal lives, on and on… for you… what are your measurables? How do you know that you are truly achieving a goal and that it’s not just talk, not just rhetoric, but real goal achievement?
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