How do businesses approach and measure success? We know generally, they always set a target on what needs to be accomplished in each coming financial year. 5% Year-on-Year revenue increase? 15% growth in the customer base? It could be anything, but there is one thing in common. No company wants to be in the exact same situation or worse than they were in the previous year. And at the end of the year, someone is held accountable.
Maybe this is where we need to look in order to gain inspiration to drive our own personal goals. What if we can also quantify our own goals/targets so that we can hold ourselves accountable each year.
Organizations use data to make decisions. They use data to better understand the market, customer behaviour, and areas to improve efficiencies. In today's data-driven world if there was one thing you would say you have the most data/information on, what could it be? It's probably data about our individual self! We are always recording data points everywhere we go, and in everything we do. We know what we like to eat, what we ate, where we went yesterday, today and all the thinking and planning behind it. Presumably, we are walking around with 2.5 Petabytes of capacity in our brain memory to store all this information and powerful processor to digest all this information in real-time.
I've set my own little ritual to think like a business and create a mechanism to hold myself more accountable. Each year on my birthday, I go to the mirror (or something less dramatic, like my desk) and have a board meeting. For each next meeting I have, I strive to not introduce myself as the same person I was last year, the needle needs to have moved (somehow). The extent to which it has moved is what can be discussed but being in the same situation as the previous is unacceptable. Personally, I narrow it down to investments and career progression, but it could be anything that gives one a substantive amount of happiness or pushes them closer to what they find to be of value in life.
This is by no means an approach to immediate gains. You can have longer-term multi-year goals that you have set for yourself too. But nonetheless, there are steps to take towards that a larger/long term goal. Even as an employee or someone with less control of timelines, nothing should stop one from aspiring to grow with the business or industry they invest their time in.
Finally what happens when you end up in a situation where you find yourself in a dying market, economic crises, or affected by automation? It could be more personal such as health and fitness, or relationships. Highly distracting challenges that certainly do throw one off the rails of the progress train. All these factors summed up can put us in a position where we are in the same situation as last year or even worse.
I guess that would be the time to make tough decisions. And its no deviation from the organizational behaviour analogy. When companies announce their financial results and are stagnant or making losses, they often have to make tough choices such as lay-offs, restructuring, re-adjusting strategies, or changing the product/target market altogether. None of these decisions is easy, certain, or at least enjoyable. The only thing that would be certain is that a change is needed. Companies respond to the market, and so should we. So maybe learning and expanding on your skills, cutting off negative people, or restructuring your lifestyle to allow for more family time is what needs to be done.
See you at the next board meeting!