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Creating Long-Term Strategies For 2007
This is the time of the year that I set my business goals at work. It got me thinking how we can take this corporate approach and apply it to our personal goals. Let me explain.
All of my 2007 business objectives are connected to a long term business strategy. How many of you have a long term vision or strategy for your life? Do you know where you want to get to, who you want to be, what you want to have?
Without this in place a New Year's resolution is merely wishful thinking and it's no wonder we get bored with it by February.
At Cadbury Schweppes, once we have our long term business strategy – our goals – we then set our annual objectives; what we aim to achieve in 2007. The difference with these is that they are exciting.
Energise
We use phrases and words like "be the best," "exciting," "superb products." The reason we do this is that we have to energise over 60,000 employees to help deliver the objectives.
On a personal level, you could say that in "2007 I want to get fit." This sounds very dull. How about "I want to be superbly fit and healthy and be in the best shape I have ever been in my life." A bit more exciting!
Think about how you would communicate your New Years resolution to 60,000 people and get them excited.
Implications
Finally, you need to think about the implications of not achieving your resolution. In the corporate world the pain is clear – our share price goes down, we get less bonus, I look bad to my boss which impacts my promotion chances... and so on.
For each of your 2007 resolutions you need to understand the implications of not achieving them and you need to feel bad – if the visualisation of not achieving your resolution doesn’t make you cringe, worry, get you angry or instil any other reaction, it isn't a resolution you are going to act on. So change it.
If you do this well you will have a set of 2007 objectives that are aligned to a long term vision which will be so exciting that you will act on them and see them through right through to the end of 2007. Now isn't that worth the effort?
