Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.

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James Clear

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives -- getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.

What I'm starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What's the difference between goals and systems?

• If you're a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
• If you're a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
• If you're a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
• If you're an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:
If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I've written this year. (You can see them all here.) In the last 12 months, I've written over 115,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have basically written two books this year.

All of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn't measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count goal for any particular article. I never said, "I want to write two books this year."

What I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed the same (or perhaps better) results.

Let's talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals. 

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you're working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, "I'm not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal."

The problem with this mindset is that you're teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. "Once I reach my goal, then I'll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I'll be successful."

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time. 

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that's not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of "yo-yo effect" where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn't painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don't reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it's about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that's why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins. 

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can't predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Each Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week provides a feedback loop that tells me if I'm doing things right. When that number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments. 

Fall In Love With Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I've found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

In fact, I think I'm going to officially declare 2014 the "Year of the Sloth" so that everyone will be forced to slow down and make consistent, methodical progress rather than chasing sexy goals for a few weeks and then flaming out.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

Speaking the Language of Social Media

 

Chances are that unless you’ve been in a cave for the last seven years, you are aware of social media is becoming an important outreach tool for most small business these days. You may not yet realize how to do it right, though. If you’re going about it the way most companies are, then pay attention.

Social Networks Previously Seen As Distribution Channels

Up until this point, companies saw the various social media platforms as various distribution channels. This means that basically they understood that the message of their company is basically established, and that they have only to push this message out through the various web platforms. In truth, however, each social media platform is a unique community with a common language that differs from the others. The kind of things you post on Facebook, for example, would not translate as well if shared on Tumblr. The youth are already well aware of this. It’s essential that businesses learn to speak the various native languages of each media channel they use.

Offer Lots of Value Before Asking

Often companies and small businesses only go online when they want to share a promotional offer, product or service that they’ve recently begun offering. This is a faulty approach. Instead, businesses should find some way to connect what they’re doing to their audience by sharing small bits of value on a regular basis. This should be something insightful, entertaining or interesting that is easy for the follower to quickly digest and receive value from. By doing this on a regular basis, your audience will learn to rely on you for value and you will build comfort, rapport and trust. Then, when it comes time to ask for something, you’ll find that a lot more people are receptive to joining in the cause.

Telling a Story

The core of marketing these days is to tell a unique story. The truth is that most of the services and products that one company offers can probably be found somewhere else with little difficulty. That is why having a compelling story makes all the difference. You can have two different businesses that offer the very same quality of a product, and yet one will get more business. This is often because they sell themselves in a way that excites the customer and draws people in by making them feel as if by giving the company business they are taking part in a much larger story.

Authentic Branding

Branding today has changed significantly from the past. As soon as you become too pushy people will back away and take their business elsewhere. And if you are inauthentic, or attempting to pander to your audience they will detect it. Today people place a very high value on authenticity.

By learning the game you will find that it really hasn’t actually changed that much in essence. People still connect best with companies that provide value, speak their language and are authentic.

Board Strategies for Overcoming the Most Common Succession Planning Obstacles

July 2014 

The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act more than a decade ago set in motion a dramatic change in CEO succession planning: While CEO succession had always been in the board’s purview, the board reasserted itself in working on the subject with its passage. This change brought much-needed oversight and additional rigor to the succession planning process at many companies. Nevertheless, many directors still find aspects of the process challenging and feel less confident than they would like to be that the board will be in the position to make the best decision for the business when a transition is imminent.
In our experience, there are four main areas that boards continue to find challenging: 

• Getting started and addressing succession planning with the appropriate regularity. Some boards can be reluctant to broach the topic, particularly with a strong, established CEO or when a transition seems distant, or they may over-focus on certain facets of the process.
• Ensuring that the strategy and criteria for the next CEO is forward-looking enough. When the strategy relies too heavily on status quo assumptions or doesn’t look far enough out, it reduces the chances that the process will produce internal candidates with the right skills for the future business.
• Thoughtfully and effectively assessing internal candidates. Directors often tell us that they lack the insights with which to thoroughly assess potential successors or to understand whether a candidate will be ready in a specific time frame.
• Assuring the development of a robust succession pipeline. When they do not set expectations with the CEO and CHRO that succession planning and talent development are ongoing and shared responsibilities, boards can lack confidence in the succession pipeline.

To increase director confidence in the process, boards may need to take a fresh look at how CEO succession planning is practiced today and consider whether it is time to update their approach. We examine the most common challenges in more detail and consider ways boards can overcome the obstacles they face to establish a rigorous and effective succession planning approach. 

1. Start now and embrace CEO succession planning with the right balance
Most directors and CEOs today recognize that the board has the ultimate responsibility for CEO succession planning and selecting a CEO successor. That doesn’t mean, however, that directors find it easy to initiate discussions about succession, particularly with an entrenched and successful CEO who doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon, but does have a pivotal role to play in the succession process. Overcoming resistance to raising the issue with the CEO — or, in the most difficult situations, forcing the issue with a reluctant CEO — continues to be a challenge for many boards.

One approach that can be helpful in desensitizing the issue is to start early — years before a transition is on the horizon — develop a regular cadence around C-suite succession planning, and encourage the CEO and CHRO to be partners in the process. One of the best ways to achieve this balance is to begin CEO succession planning when a new CEO takes the helm and set expectations about the CEO’s role in the process immediately. Starting early and making succession planning an ongoing activity can help minimize the emotion that often surrounds succession and also allows the board to get to know potential candidates and their performance over time.

The right structure and approach can enable the board to give succession planning the attention it needs, while balancing all the other priorities directors have on their plates. Succession planning is arguably one of the more important responsibilities of the board, and many board members are eager to participate. However, it also is one of the most intensive board responsibilities, requiring significant work between meetings. Many boards establish a smaller working committee — three to four directors who are the most qualified and who have the necessary time — to steer the process and handle the granular work associated with assessment and benchmarking, but involve the board at critical touch points throughout the process. 

2. Ensure that succession planning is rooted in the future needs of the business and base criteria for the role on the levers that will be critical to the future
Most board members today accept that the foundation for CEO succession planning is an agreed-upon strategic direction for the company from which the criteria for the next CEO can be based. Very often, however, the articulated strategy is too rooted in the present or relies too heavily on status quo assumptions, rather than taking a prospective view of where the company needs to be in five to 10 years. When this occurs, the criteria for the next CEO may not be tied to the specific strategic, organizational and operational levers that the next CEO will need to employ, potentially impeding the development of internal candidates with these capabilities.

Wise boards agree on strategic issues up front, since these decisions will influence the kind of future leader or leaders the company will need, and push themselves to go beyond generalities. They identify the very specific effect the next CEO needs to have on the business and define the skills that it will take to accomplish that effect. These could include invigorating the innovation pipeline, applying disciplined cost management, pursuing specific growth targets in emerging markets or building new organizational capabilities or cultural themes to drive organic growth.

Agreeing on a future-looking strategy that informs the criteria for the next CEO is a critical step that helps make the process go smoothly. It also helps boards avoid the trap of choosing an executive who mimics the incumbent’s strengths, instead of selecting the candidate with the qualifications best suited to the company’s strategy for the future 

3. Thoughtfully and effectively assess internal candidates
By definition, internal candidates are not proven CEOs, so how can boards gain better insights into candidates’ ability to succeed in a role that is dramatically different in scope and complexity? Boards tend to see succession candidates through a very narrow window of observation and judge potential based on past performance, both of which can cause bias (positive and negative) when considering successors. To gain the insights they need to understand the capabilities of their company’s rising executives and make the discerning judgments about their readiness for the top role, boards need to embrace an assessment process that is fact-based, rigorous and forward-looking. 

Assess succession candidates with a forward-looking lens
A board’s ability to choose a CEO successor requires a frank view of candidates’ readiness, including an understanding of their development needs based on the future direction of the company and the likelihood of their being able to close any gaps in a reasonable amount of time. Candidate assessments should review candidates’ track records delivering against strategic and operational levers that are similar to what the next CEO will be required to pull, drilling down into the specific contributions individuals have made in the businesses they have run. In addition, boards should strive to gain an understanding of candidates’ ability to stretch into the CEO role. Executives’ analytical capabilities, social intelligence and self-awareness are skills that speak to their Executive Intelligence and ability to navigate more complex, ambiguous and demanding contexts.

A rigorous review of an individual’s competencies, including the observations of others who can validate their performance in current and past roles, can reveal whether candidates have the relevant experience as well as potential gaps. Gaps may include a lack of specific knowledge or “hard skills,” such as experience with regulators or financiers, or a deficiency in certain “soft skills” — behavioral skills such as the ability to navigate complex interactions or to influence, motivate and create followership among others. Boards also will want to consider whether the culture of the company needs to shift or change, and how aligned individual candidate profiles are with the desired company culture. 

Incorporate external benchmarking
Companies that are strong producers of internal talent sometimes lose a sense of how their talent compares to the best-in-class talent externally or overlook how the world has shifted around them. Taking a look at external talent — through research, informal or formal introductions or an executive search — can provide additional insight when assessing the readiness of potential successors. Ideally, benchmarking should happen in tandem with internal assessment, so that the results of the internal assessments and external benchmarking can be compared simultaneously. This process is critical to giving the board a good sense of the relative strength of the internal candidates, as measured against outside talent who have proven themselves as skilled in the operational areas that will be critical for the company’s future success and have demonstrated the values and behaviors that align with the ideal company culture. 

4. Assure the development of a robust succession pipeline
For boards, having confidence in the succession pipeline means ensuring that the CEO is focused on developing a succession-ready team and that directors have the insights about potential CEO contenders they will need to provide the necessary developmental assignments and, ultimately, to choose a successor. This ideally is a broad-based effort that incorporates up-to-date definitions for all the senior team, regular assessments and benchmarking, and thoughtful developmental assignments.

This does not mean that directors must become talent managers. But, it does require boards to take responsibility for ensuring that the right processes for talent management are in place and that they have the appropriate knowledge of potential leadership. Directors should get to know the senior leadership through presentations in the boardroom and regular meetings outside of it. Boards should plan on a deep-dive talent review at least once annually, which includes having the CEO and CHRO lead a discussion about forward-looking leadership requirements against which talent can be evaluated. By being involved on an ongoing basis, the board can observe patterns of performance and develop a more nuanced point of view on executives’ strengths and weaknesses.

Well-governed companies take a longer-term view toward succession. Boards should make sure that there is a process in place to develop talent for all the top positions in the company, and that compensation plans for the CEO and other top executives are linked to their success in developing and retaining talent. By taking these actions, boards can more effectively prepare their companies for succession over the short term, and help build the bench strength that the company needs for stability and success well into the future. 

CEO SUCCESSION: THE CEO'S ROLE

The CEO is both a member of the board and the leader of the management team. As such, the CEO must be an active participant in many aspects of the CEO succession planning process, but then step back as the process progresses toward the selection of the next CEO.

Ideally, the CEO will, early in his or her tenure, emphasize his or her commitment to management development and providing internal succession options for the board to consider on a long-term basis. The CEO should be a proactive, engaged partner with the board and CHRO in a regular C-suite and CEO succession planning process, including planning for emergency succession scenarios. For CEOs, this means ensuring that the board begins succession planning early in their tenure, working closely with the CHRO to develop a robust, forward-looking approach to executive talent management, and being willing to step back to give potential successors room to grow at the right time. Finally, as a transition grows nearer and the attention of the organization begins to turn to the next CEO, CEOs must manage their own emotions regarding the changes. 

Conclusion

Corporate boards have become increasingly sophisticated in CEO succession planning, embracing their ownership of the succession process and adopting thoughtful approaches to identifying and developing potential successors. To further increase their confidence that the succession planning process will produce strong candidates and provide directors with the insights they need to select a successor, boards should start early and work closely with the CEO and CHRO to regularly assess candidates based on the forward-looking requirements of the business.

Posted by: Spencer Stuart one of the world’s leading executive search consulting firms.

leadership

Get out of their way

The future of productivity 2014 - Smart exporting for Canadian companies

Exporting drives competitiveness and productivity
Canada suffers from a stubborn lack of productivity growth, threatening our standard of living. Exporting is one of the keys to solving Canada’s productivity problem.

Research and previous reports by Deloitte clearly show a link between productivity and export activity, but fewer than 4% of Canadian companies export. Worse, despite clear advantages for companies who turn their attention beyond our borders, export activity by Canadian companies is slowing down.

Trade secret: Companies that export reduce their risk of failure
Exporters grow faster and become more productive. More surprising is that exporting lowers overall business risk. By diversifying their geographic exposure, exporters experience more stability and lower risk of market failure — even if foreign markets are more volatile than the domestic market.

With less exposure and sensitivity to risk, Canadian exporters invest more in innovation, driving their competitiveness.

Smart exporting
Deloitte has distilled insights from 46 experienced exporters into a three-stage journey toward “smart exporting,” captured in a new report, The future of productivity: Smart exporting for Canadian companies.

Stage 1: Think like an exporter

• Prospective exporters need to adopt a global mindset. They should reflect on what makes their business world-class as they explore foreign markets and seek out experienced exporters for mentorship and market insights.
• Assumptions can be dangerous. Some 70% of new Canadian exporters begin in the U.S. market — one of the world’s most mature and competitive. With emerging markets offering attractive opportunities, companies should carefully evaluate whether the U.S.-first option is for them.

Stage 2: Become an exporter

• Canadian companies should boldly promote themselves abroad, localize their efforts and manage risk through staggered growth and risk sharing.
• The most successful exporters transform themselves into local players.

Stage 3: Win as an exporter

• Exporters can re-invent themselves by absorbing new technologies and business practices. They benefit even more through opportunities to collaborate with foreign partners to innovate and build scale.

Exporting can help our companies and our country raise productivity and become more competitive. It’s time for Canadian business leaders to step boldly and decisively onto the global stage.

To navigate the path to smart exporting, read The future of productivity: Smart exporting for Canadian companies. 

                           “PRODUCTIVITY AND COMPETITIVENESS”
                                           Emphasis on SME Sector
       (from presentation by Richard Peters to Seneca School of International Business)

• SMEs have been more successful than larger firms at taking advantage of growing opportunities in global markets.

• SMEs account for significant proportion of Canada’s exports to markets beyond the US and the EU. SMEs account for high proportion of Canadian exports in many large growing markets, such as South Korea (52.8 %); India (65.1%); Indonesia (44%); Turkey (60.6%); Egypt (63.3%).

• 41,710 SMEs export and represent 87.5% of all Canadian exporters and account for 44.8% of the value of Canada’s exports.

• Exporting firms have higher productivity levels than non-exporting firms.

• Exporting does not appear to lead to improved productivity, but more productive firms make more successful exporters.

The Golden Age of Innovation

Despite stereotypes of entrepreneurs as fresh-faced youngsters, new research has found that older workers are more likely to innovate than their under-35 counterparts.

Peach-fuzzed entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, 19 when he founded Facebook, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both 23 when they developed Google, have created a collective image of the successful innovator as youthful, brash, and brilliant. In turn, we’ve been taught that with middle age come calcified habits, outdated skills, and an aversion to risk. Sounds bad, right? Hey, it gets even worse when you consider that, by 2030, the average age will rise from 37 to 39 in the United States, from 40 to 45 in the European Union, and from 45 to 49 in Japan. The implication is that such figures, plus the post–baby boomer decline in birthrates, could leave swaths of the world with a deficit in creative potential. The question then becomes whether these places can continue to compete, grow, and create wealth with an aging pool of prospective entrepreneurs and workers. According to several new studies, the surprising answer is yes. 
 

It turns out that many of the most common stereotypes about aging are dead wrong. Take the cliché of the youthful entrepreneur. As it turns out, the average founder of a high-tech startup isn’t a whiz-kid graduate, but a mature 40-year-old engineer or business type with a spouse and kids who simply got tired of working for others, says Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa, who studied 549 successful technology ventures. What’s more, older entrepreneurs have higher success rates when they start companies. That’s because they have accumulated expertise in their technological fields, have deep knowledge of their customers’ needs, and have years of developing a network of supporters (often including financial backers). “Older entrepreneurs are just able to build companies that are more advanced in their technology and more sophisticated in the way they deal with customers,” Wadhwa says.

And the age at which entrepreneurs are more innovative and willing to take risks seems to be going up. According to data from the Kauffman Foundation, the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has shifted to the 55–64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34. And while the entrepreneurship rate has gone up since 1996 in most other age brackets as well, it has actually declined among Americans under 35. That’s good news for one very simple reason: baby boomers are now in their prime, startup-founding years, which will unleash what Kauffman researcher Dane Stangler expects to be an entrepreneurship boom. Since new companies create the vast majority of jobs, the positive impact on a post-recession economy could be great.

Part of the reason that companies started by older workers don’t get much recognition is because they don’t generally produce hot Web apps or other easily understood products. Instead, they tend to involve more complex technologies like biotech, energy, or IT hardware. They also tend to sell products and services to other businesses, which consumers rarely see but which do most of the heavy lifting in powering innovation and economic growth. In fact, America’s fastest-growing tech startup, according to Forbes Magazine’s Fast Tech 500, is First Solar, founded by a 68-year-old serial inventor in 1984. The founders of No. 2 on the Forbes list, Riverbed Technology, were 51 and 33 when they started their networking company. Even the Internet is no longer just the province of young adults. Zynga, the company behind Farmville and other infectiously popular games, will likely pass a billion dollars in revenue next year. Its founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, is a stereotype-defying 44. In sectors such as biotech and energy, Wadhwa estimates the average entrepreneur to be even older.

So if entrepreneurs don’t necessarily fade out with age, what about regular workers? One of Germany’s largest companies had a researcher examine its system for continuous improvement, expecting the findings to back up its policy of pushing workers into early retirement. The numbers, however, showed that older workers not only had great ideas for making procedures and processes more efficient, but their innovations also produced significantly higher returns for the company than those of workers in younger age groups. Birgit Verwonk, a Dresden University of Applied Sciences economist and author of the study, says the findings were so surprising for the company (which wasn’t named in the study) that it is now phasing out its early retirement program.

Given these sorts of results, why is the notion that older people are less productive or innovative so entrenched? Part of it is because there are deep stereotypes and cultural narratives at play. In a series of landmark studies on creativity in the arts and sciences, David Galenson, a University of Chicago economist, identified two types of creativity. One was based on radical new concepts, at which young innovators excel (think Picasso or Einstein, who were both in their 20s when they revolutionized their fields), and the other built on probing experimentation that coalesces later in life (think Cézanne or Darwin). The second type of innovation is more hesitant, probing and often a work in progress, which Galenson argues leads to some of the conventional wisdom regarding older genius. That misconception has some ugly side effects, according to Wadhwa. It becomes the reason why some venture capitalists often don’t return calls from 40-plus entrepreneurs. “The VC people boast that they’re financing all the whiz kids,” says Wadhwa. But given the rates of entrepreneurial success for that group, “they should really be embarrassed.”  

The way companies tend to be organized is also to blame. Companies often put new hires fresh out of college on their most innovative projects, while making older workers do routine jobs with existing systems, says Verwonk. Also, too few companies spend enough on continuous training to keep their employees’ expertise up to date. But workers themselves are at fault as well. Many older workers coast into premature obsolescence instead of keeping their skills current. In the European Union, for example, only 30 percent of employees over 55 participate in any kind of job-related training, compared to 50 percent of their younger colleagues.

One thing is clear: a change in the prevailing mindset about older entrepreneurs and workers won’t happen by itself. Mixed-age teams, such as the ones automaker BMW is using, are one possible approach and have the added benefit of minimizing the loss of knowledge that occurs when older workers retire. Siemens, the Munich-based technology conglomerate, has instituted a “cross-mentoring” system under which older employees show younger ones the ropes while getting an update on the latest skills from these new hires. These shifts are a start, but a lot still has to be done, says Verwonk. Demographic and economic pressures will soon force workers, businesses, and entire economies to rethink certain stereotypes; in a post-recession world, assuming that someone can be phased out due to age will be a luxury no one can afford.