The Plan! It’s not Fantasy Island—Rock Your Resolutions!

by Shawn Karol Sandy

Last week, part 1 of rocking your resolution, we talked about how most resolutions die a quick and sad death—like a fruit fly circling a banana.

Why? Well there are many reasons, but you can break it down into two main reasons most resolutions fail:

1) You make the wrong resolution
2) You don’t build a strategy to execute

Reaching those resolutions or goals depends on a focused, diligent plan for execution and accountability.

Remember—be accountable to the plan, not the results.

Follow the Plan: Be Specific. Be Intentional, and Execute Your Strategy.

Communicate: For goals to be effective, they have to be clearly communicated to every single employee. They must be clear, loud, visible and tangible.
Plot steps to the goal: You don’t lose weight without assessing your diet, planning your meals, making deliberate choices at the grocery store and tracking what you eat. That is the Plan that produces Results. Goals don’t drive results, Plans do.
Measure progress weekly: The optimal frequency of reviewing progress is weekly. Monthly is too little pressure; daily is too anal. Measure, chart, move forward, pivot or adjust. Frequent measuring insures progress.
Establish responsibility: If you ask employees who is responsible for a goal and no one can answer you in 10 seconds, there’s not enough accountability. Lousy employees avoid responsibility. Good employees accept responsibility. Great employees seek responsibility.
Follow through on goals: Make execution part of your DNA—keep going. Even though more fun, shinier things come along, keep executing to reach the end for this specific goal. Think of goals as building blocks. You need strong foundational goals so you can stack up the next one on top of it. The more solidly your foundation is built—the higher you can go.
Heed your “Morpheus”: In The Matrix, he gave Neo the choice between the blue pill and the red pill. He was basically the adult supervision. Cold, brutal reality is the ally of execution, so find a Morpheus who distributes the red pills and enables both leaders and employees to see things as they really are.