Brian Tracy explains why executives need to plan five years ahead and presents the GOSPA formula: Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Priorities, Activities. He recommends breaking large goals into smaller tasks and taking immediate short-term steps that build toward long-term profitability.
How to Set Long Term Goals in business, there are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines. Brian Tracy your ability to set long term goals and constantly be thinking about the future of your business has an inordinate impact on the success and profitability of your enterprise. All top executives are long term thinkers. They project forward five years and they think about where they want to be and what they will have to be doing at that time in order to achieve their long term goals. They are constantly asking themselves how to set goals and better their strategic planning process to further their business success. The key to a successful long term strategic planning process is for you to identify the core competencies you will require and then begin immediately to develop or to acquire those core competencies so that you will be strongly positioned for the markets and competition in the future. Your job is to constantly be thinking about the future through your planning process. You must take the necessary steps in the short term to guarantee that you will achieve the profitability that you desire in the long term. This ability to think long term has never been more important or more valuable than it is today. It is a real key to profitability. You've heard it said that when you are up to your you know what in alligators, it's hard to remember that you came here to drain the swamp. Because of the turbulence of today's marketplace, most executives and managers have been reduced to operating almost like firefighters on a daily basis. They are totally preoccupied with short term problems and the need to get short term operating results. They intend to spend more time thinking about the future and and planning, but they don't ever seem to get around to it. They never have the time or are too busy to make time. So what is a long term goal? Long term goals are objects of your ambition or effort that will take time to accomplish. They cannot be achieved quickly, rather they require careful planning and serious commitment. Although they are more daunting than short term goals, the same goal setting concept of chunking applies. Chunking is simply the process of breaking down everything that is required to achieve your long term intention into small segments or tasks. Looking at your tasks in this light allows you to address everything in bite sized chunks. This way you only need to get one small task done at a time. But when all of these undertakings add up, you will have accomplished a much larger long term goal. This approach can be applied to any project. It's important to set long term goals and constantly be thinking about the future. You need to set clear targets for yourself and for every part of your business. In fact, perhaps your most important responsibility to the people is to give them a clear sense of direction in their work. They need this to perform at their best and they can't do their best without it. In fact, according to psychologists, the greatest demotivator in the world of work is not knowing what's expected or or not being clear about your long term goals. There's a simple five part formula for developing a sense of direction that you can use for the rest of your career. It's called the GOSPA formula. G, O S P A. The letters in the word GOSPA stand for goals, objectives, strategies, priorities and activities. Let's start with how to set goals. A goal is a specific place where you want to end up at the end of a specific period of time. For example, your goal could be a certain volume of sales or a certain level of profitability at the end of a quarter or the end of a year. The letter O stands for objectives. These are sub goals that you will have to accomplish in order to achieve your long term goal. If your one year goal is a certain dollar level of profitability, your objectives could be in the areas of sales, marketing, distribution, manufacturing, cost control, staff development, technology and so on. By achieving these objectives, the goals are achieved as well. The third letter stands for strategies. Your strategy is the method that you're going to use to accomplish the objective on the way to your goal. For example, with regard to sales, your strategy could be to build an internal sales force or your strategy could be to outsource all selling to a professional sales organization. And there could be numerous sub strategies within this single sales strategy. The fourth letter in the GOSPA formula P stands for priorities. Throughout the strategic planning process, you must know what are things that you have to do first and what are the things that you have to do second. Which items are more important and which items are less important. You always have to be setting priorities. The final letter in the formula is A which stands for activities. These are specific daily functions that are clearly dedicated to specific individuals with standards of performance and specific deadlines. If you have thought out this process completely, each activity will be determined by the current priorities. The achievement of the priorities will lead to the accomplishment of the strategy. When your strategy is carried out, you will achieve your objectives and at the end of the time period you will have reached your goal of a specific level of sales or profitability. One of the primary qualities of executives in high profit businesses is that they are continuously going through the strategic planning process. They are always playing down the board they're always thinking about the future and about the various different things they can do and how to set goals in order to make their desired future a reality. Now, we'd love to hear from you. So our question today is, are you thinking about your future? Leave a comment below and we'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And as Brian says, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now.
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