Skip to main content

Fundamental questions to answer to achieve goals.


We humans are constantly chasing something or the other, endeavouring to achieve goals. It is just our nature. Yet many, fail most of the time, in the bargain paying a huge price in resources, time and well being.

Success is achieving what one set out to achieve, and therein lies the problem. We are in such a hurry to achieve success that most of us are unclear about what exactly we are pursuing. While our self confidence may be high, our goals are usually fuzzy.
To achieve success one has to consider the endeavour as a journey.
And like all journeys, we need to know the starting point and the destination. We need to know how we will make that journey, the route to achieving the objectives. Finally we need to know what we will need in terms of equipment, resources, skills, knowledge, networks etc. and how we will get them.

Too eager for action, supremely confident of ourselves most individuals and organisations not only fail to plan they rarely address the fundamental questions.
  1. Where are we? (Reality check)
  2. Where do we want to go? (Set the goals and milestones)
  3. How do we want to get there? (Tactics and Planning)
  4. What do we need to get there? (Obtaining and mobilising resources)

These steps appear obvious, yet it eludes the majority. as a result failure is guaranteed even before starting.

It is easy to be impressed and misled by bluster, glitter, pomp, money and style, however confidence is not a substitute for planning and effort. The devil is in the details.

________________

Suppose we want to go on a journey.
  • We would need to know where we are, (point A).
  • We need to know where we are going, (point B).
  • We need to know how we are going to get from point A to point B
  • We must be able to verify whether we are making progress towards our destination point B and make course correction.

It's shocking, that most individuals, managers, owners, and so called leaders often cannot answer these fundamental questions. What then would be the future of an organisation or even a nation under such leadership?

Not everyone is born to lead and sometimes we have to to be good team members working along with a good leader. We have to be careful of the choice of leader, for we often support someone with just charisma, but that by itself is insufficient.

Leaders who possess, capability, integrity, agility, capacity for envisioning, planning, detailing, ability to raise resources and effectively deploy with hard work and a dash of luck are inevitably almost always successful.

A goal, without a well thought out plan is a mere fantasy.


Interesting Links:
Blogger - Facebook - GDNLife -  Instagram  - linkedin - SikhNet - SoundCloud -
South Asia Analysis Group - Tumblr - Twitter


Ref: G0747
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Office Efficiency - Central Social Institution, Prague, 1937

The offices of the Central Social Institution of  Prague,  Czechoslovakia. April 1937 “The offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague, Czechoslovakia with the largest vertical letter file in the world. Consisting of cabinets arranged from floor to ceiling tiers covering over 4000 square feet containing over 3000 drawers 10 feet long. It has electric operated elevator desks which rise, fall and move left or right at the push of a button. to stop just before drawer desired. The drawers also open and close electronically. Thus work which formerly taxed 400 workers is now done by 20 with a minimum of effort. Ref: B196_095071_3660 Date: 26.04.1937 Compulsory Credit: UPPA/Photoshot”
Post a Comment
Read more

You have to play the game to win it.

In life its not sufficient to be merely efficient but to also be effective. Someone once asked my father Man Singh ji, 'What is the secret of your success?'  He remarked, "I do not always make right decisions. I make decisions, and then almost always make them right" Read more ..........
11 comments
Read more

The neck of the bottle is always at the top.

        F requently requested to assist organisations large and small, I observe a common and recurring theme.  The issues revolve around the struggle of owners /managers to manage effectively. This is visible predominantly in companies that have started small and are growing, in family run businesses and families themselves. They are invariably puzzled that management approach, style and methods which worked so well in the past, now just don't work anymore. They resort to even more hard work and effort, yet the situation only worsens. Finding themselves in unfamiliar situations they dart here and there implementing fads, half hearted strategies alien to their thinking and character. They do this because they are getting frustrated and doing something is considered better than doing nothing. They change staff and managers. They churn product mix, vendors and even customers and markets. They try so many things but nothing seems to work. They chang...
20 comments
Read more