Goal Setting – Monitor & Review

LESSON 6 – Review your Action Plan and Goals

Now that you have a set of actionable planners that integrate your day-to-day with your goal-setting journey, don’t think it ends there. Reviewing goals and your progress towards your goals is critical if you want goal-setting success. This lesson explains why and how.

At the end of this Lesson, you will be able to:

• Explain why it’s so important to monitor and review your goals and progress
• Explain why your goals and action plans are dynamic and must be flexible
• Turn ‘failure’ into valuable lessons for the future.

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Why Monitor and Review?

Goal setting is a dynamic process. Over the long term, your vision will change – goals you had when you were a kid were different to those as a teenager because your needs change, and so does your situation in life. As the Australian TV advertisement surmises – success in your 20’s is making out, success in your 30’s is taking a break, success in your 40’s is making money, success in your 50’s is making more money, success in your 60’s is taking a break, and success in your 70’s is making out.

So, it is good practice to go through the whole goal-setting process every year or 2 and at least every 5 years, or if your life takes a sudden change in direction – for example, starting a family – to ensure you are always chasing the right ‘Big-Picture’.

You can monitor the current ‘truth’ in your goal-setting journey by periodically asking yourself “does this still apply to me or has it changed?”. By doing this you will pick up any early signs that your life is wanting to take a different journey to the one you’ve planned, and this is perfectly normal and in fact expected as your life progresses. The key thing is not to see a change in plans as a failure, it’s just a refocusing exercise.

Even short term goals need to be flexible enough to accommodate things that are out of your control (for example, other priorities on your time), or even things that are in your control but you just underestimated during your goal setting exercise (for example, underestimating how long it takes to quit a habit).

And don’t worry if your goals don’t go exactly according to your action plan, as long as you’re making progress in the right direction and make sure you update your action plan to suit so that it is still meaningful to you for achieving your goal. Remember the SMARTER components of your goal always need to apply.

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Goal Progress Review

Some goals by their very nature take a while to achieve, so it’s important to review your progress from time to time to make sure that you really are progressing and not just going around in circles. Using mini-goals helps a lot as you will be able to measure your progress by the achievement of these mini-goals, but it isn’t always possible to set mini-goals for all goals.

What do you review? Your gut instincts will give you a clue here, but here are some tips.

• Measure your progress: Goals need to be able to be measured so you can monitor progress. How you measure your goal (eg ranking system, actual measure such as weight, etc) should be established at the start of the goal-setting process, along with your starting measurement. By determining your current measurement and comparing it with your starting point, you will be able to see whether or not you have progressed towards your goal. Does your current measurement indicate that you are on track or ahead of/ behind schedule? If you aren’t on track (and particularly if you are behind schedule), you need to identify ‘why’, as this could undermine your whole goal setting and achievement process.
  
  
• Is the goal still relevant: Goals are established based on your situation at the time of setting them. Has your situation relevant to this changed significantly? If there has been a significant change, is it still necessary or are you still able to achieve this goal? Is this goal still what you really want to do? Remember, goals MUST be relevant otherwise you won’t have the motivation to achieve them. Remind yourself why this goal is really important to you, and ask whether this is still the case.
  
  
• Are you using your Action Plan: Your action plan is your road map to achieving your goal, which is your end destination. If you’re not using your map, how do you expect to get there? Think about how you have set up your action plan and whether there is another method that will suit you better. Are you achieving the deadlines on your action items – if not, why not? Deadlines are there for a reason – to keep up momentum! Perhaps your deadlines were unrealistic (don’t worry, this is common!) or your time has been directed to other more urgent activities – either way, think about why so you can adjust your action plan.

  Do you need to alter your action plan/ time frame? If you said “No” to either of the above, you need to make an adjustment to your plan. Remember that action plans need to be flexible enough to allow changes where necessary and to keep the plans relevant, but don’t change the goalposts too often – try to plan more realistically in the first place.

• Resourcing: Is your level of resourcing (money, time, information, support) adequate? Is this holding you back from achieving your goal or do you find that you are really struggling? Don’t spread resources too thinly – extend the deadlines if you have to. Identify any additional resource needs and where/ how you might find them.

Other questions to ask yourself about your goal include:

• Is this goal easier or harder than expected?
  
  
• Can you take on more, or do you need to take smaller steps?
  
  
• Overall, are you happy with your progress? If you are, then great! If not, work out why and fix the problem.
  
  
• What are you doing well towards this goal? …and keep doing it!
  
  
• What do you need to do better to achieve this goal? …and do better!
  
  
• Are you enjoying this goal, or at least excited about the end result? Reward yourself for achieving mini-goals and milestones to keep you on your journey. Remember, the end result needs to be something you really want.
  
  
• Have you been honest and ethical in your progress towards this goal? Your highly moral subconscious won’t let you achieve goals if they have unethical components or if you haven’t been honest with yourself. Is this holding you back?

A goal progress review checklist is attached.

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Success/ Failure Analysis

As you progress through the goal-setting journey, you will have success and you will have some failures too. The important thing is not to give up when you have a failure, but analysis the failure so you can build on that knowledge and improve future goal-setting processes.

It’s equally important to analyze your successes, as this analysis may be able to give you a clue as to what really works for you.

So for every goal completed, it is important to review the goal and the process – you’ll go from strength to strength if you do and will be a goal-setting guru in no time!

Goal success or failure can occur at any step of the goal-setting process, which is why it is so important to put the right amount of effort into each stage. Remember though that the key to success/ failure analysis is to identify what you did well, what you didn’t do so well, and most importantly how you can improve/ what you can do differently next time. And give the failed goal another go if appropriate (you can always try to quit smoking again).

Teach yourself how to follow the pattern of success and stop yourself from falling into the pattern of failure.

A template for a Success/ Failure analysis is attached.

Downloadable: successfailureanalysis.pdf

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Activity:

I’m sure you’ve already achieved some goals and failed at others, even though you may not have specifically set them as SMARTER goals.

Think about a success and a failure and try the above analysis. What are your main findings? Does this fit in with the concepts discussed in this E-course? Are there any take-away messages to apply to your future goal setting?