Closing Your Goal Gap

It is easy to overlook a goal gap when you are focused on completing an important goal.

In an ascent to the summit, a hiker or a rock climber has to constantly assess where they are in relation to their destination. They need to know if they need to pick up the pace or if they are right on track to reach the summit at the designated time.

They also might need to correctly understand the distance between where they are now and the summit so they can take decisive action should a storm blow in or some other obstacle make their progress difficult. A business owner would be wise to also be keenly aware of where they are in relation to their goal.

In other words, they need to understand their own personal goal gap – the distance from where they are in their progression and where the goal lies.

The problem is that a large number of business owners aren’t entirely sure how much further  they need to go in order to reach their goal because they aren’t sure where they currently stand.

Imagine a hiker walking blindly, only vaguely sure they are going in the right direction to meet the summit. If you asked this kind of hiker how long the rest of the hike could take, you can imagine their estimate is very likely to be off by several hours.

That’s not really a hiker you’d want to follow, is it?

So how does a business owner deal with their goal gap? How do they successfully navigate the vast distance between their grand intentions and the realization of those intentions?

If a hiker were unsure as to where they were in relation to the summit, they might take a few steps that we can all follow in order to close that gap. With a small amount of time devoted to the art of analysis, we can all close the goal gap and more confidently continue on the path.

Here are some steps that can help to close the goal gap:

Establish where you are. Sit down with your team and establish where you are in several different departments. Where are you financially as a company? Where are your with clients? Where are you with product production? Where are you with team management? This is where you get your bearings. If analysis reveals that you are actually doing much better with your client list that you thought, then that summit just got a lot closer.

However, if finances reveal that you’re further away from your goal than you’d like to be, then you now have the power to address that.

Establish a course. If analysis reveals that in order to reach your goal as a company you need some more very specialized people to join your team, you can more effectively decide on a path to attain those people. Or perhaps the analysis reveals that in order to reach your goal you need a better way of handling clients, then establish procedures and policies that address that problem. You can only make effective progress toward your goal if you set your stride in the right direction.

While on your way to reaching your goal, you need to occasionally stop and evaluate where you are >>click to tweet <<

Re-assess the situation periodically. While on your way to reaching your goal, you need to occasionally stop and go back to the step of establishing where you are. Look up from  your long hike and make sure that the summit looks closer than it did before. It is very  helpful to do this with your team so that everyone sees the progress being made and  everyone can help in keeping the company on track.

Understanding where you are in your business in relation to where you’d like to be, essentially  the distance between point A and point B, is crucial to moving forward in a meaningful way.

Any hiker, regardless of whether or not they know where they are and where they are going, can continue hiking until their heart’s content. But only the hikers who have a plan and know what exactly stands between them and the summit will reach the end successfully.