Background

My wife, Leanne, and I are Dave Ramsey fans.  He is very enlightening and very entertaining.  We have been through his Financial Peace University course and it has changed our world. His basic concept is that adults need to act more like adults and be responsible. Since he is a financial guy, this looks like "Don't spend more than you make". Friday, Nov 5th, 2010 we attended his seminar called 'EntreLeadership 1-Day' to get some of his wisdom to apply directly to my business. Dave was in Orlando giving the seminar and it was being broadcast live to 20,000 people around the world. We were hosted at our Elk River location by Dave Jacobson of Financial Fitness of Maple Grove.  The EntreLeadership program was put together by Dave Ramsey and his staff to teach people how to run their business the way he does. As Dave says "This is not textbook theory, this is real life."  He has developed a three and a half day course that he teaches, and the 1-Day events are what he refers to as "The Sampler Platter".  More information about dave's EntraLeadership programs can be found by clicking here.

Dreams, Vision & Goal Setting

Dreams are where things all start.  Without a dream few of us would be in business for ourselves. Someone having a great idea is were most businesses start. But life doesn't hand you your dreams, you need to DO something for them to become a reality.  So, we need to turn that dream into a vision. As Dave says, "Vision is taking your dream and putting work clothes on it." Vision is thinking about your dream long enough to understand some of the risks, challenges and opportunities the dream could create. In code testing terminology, when you have a great idea and you ponder it and even work on some details you are in Unit Testing. The next step is to think about how that idea or code works in it's environment -- Integration Testing.  That is vision. But, again, vision is great, but if one stops there, it is going to be rough sledding to make it a reality.

That is where GOALS come in. Goals take your dream and vision and break it in to bite sized pieces. It is the game-plan for how you are going to reach it. I have always had great dreams and vision, but I definitely needed some guidance with goals -- and, boy, did I get some great stuff. Maybe the biggest take-away from this seminar was that "Goals convert vision into ENERGY." Think about it. It's true. When done properly, goals are very energizing. So, what makes a good goal? 

1. A good goal must be specific. "To loose weight" is a terrible goal. "I want to lose 15 pounds in five weeks" is specific enough to be a great goal.
2. A good goal must be measurable. If you can't measure it how will you know if you will ever succeed?
3. A good goal must be YOUR goal. "My wife wants me to loose 15 pounds" is a terrible goal. You will never do it because it is not YOUR goal.
4. A good goal must have a time limit. Procrastination will always creep in if there is not a specific time parameter around it. Time limits also allow progress tracking, and that is a powerful motivator.
5. A goal is not really a goal until it is put IN WRITING. As Dave says in his Financial Peace University classes, you must do everything "on purpose, on paper!" There is great power in writing things down and for a goal to work and be effective it must be written down.

One of the functions of having specific, measurable, personal, time constrained goals in writing is that they can help you prioritize your time. Here is a simple table that shows where we should spend our time:

The Necessity and Leadership quadrants are where we need to focus our time and energy. For me, I need to categorize tasks better and put them into the correct quadrant. And, I need to devote more time to the Leadership quadrant.