How Do You Win a Marathon that doesn’t have a course?? 

Imagine it: You work your whole life to win the New York Marathon.   And you have your number and this is YOUR year.   You are near the front of the pack at the east end of Staten Island and the gun sounds.

Where do you go?  How do you win if there isn’t course laid out and they don’t tell you where the finish line is?   No checkpoints along the way.    I guess someone probably would but it would just be the luck of the person going the exact right way.

Are you running your business this way?   If you are not having quarterly goal setting meetings with the Key Players in your group, Verne Harnish of “Scaling Up” fame says you won’t win.

If you don’t have quarterly goal setting and measurement meetings it’s like running a course without knowing where you are toward the finish line.   The minutia of living our lives and the full of people-forces will get you off track.   So every 90 days , you have to stop the “at the desk” stuff and do a status check.

The macro level is

1. Start at core values
2. Use those to set year goals.
3. Break those into quarter goals
4. Set the things that need to happen to achieve those in the strategic
5. Weekly meetings with stakeholders to report up on that

With one of the most overlooked parts being “Great managers explain how their people’s work contributes to the greater objectives of the company…”   This doesn’t mean “because I said so.”

If you don’t feel like you should have to
or need to
or can’t explain this to the key players in your organization, then either you don’t have the right people or you don’t have the best mindset.   If you don’t have players that are at your level or higher to execute – you need new people.   Fix that right now.     If you can’t illiterate it, then you need to get more focused on your goals or you need to build your communication skills.   Fix that right now.

Make being successful more important than being right. 

Do you know your