how to stay on track toward your goals amid chaos and confusion.
by bill reeb
without clear direction, every alternative seems like an opportunity.
but with direction comes a course of action, whether that is to preserve what you have or achieve something different.
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knowing what direction you want to head will drive the creation of a plan. and the greatest benefit of planning is that it provides you with a sanity check to know when you are drifting off course.
regardless of whether we are talking about your personal life, career, or business, i believe it is nearly impossible to get to your desired destination or to accomplish your goals in a straight line.
we end up straying from our original course because of the mistakes we make along the way. opportunities become detours. and chaos ensues
i think of navigating life as if i were captaining a sailboat. if you start at point a and are heading toward point b, sailboats have to tack back and forth into the wind to get to the final destination. the trick is not about never veering off course, but to make sure the deviations you take away from your path are not too extreme.
how do you know if you have traveled too far off course? without understanding your direction, you don’t.
i remember a client of mine who was in the cable manufacturing business back in the days of memory shortages (we are talking about computer memory in the early ’90s, not dementia). this company saw an opportunity to make some quick bucks by speculating in the memory market. and they did. however, the resources they committed to this initiative over the next year, in both cash and the time required by executive management, took them so far off course of their core competency of making computer cables that by the time they refocused their efforts, they had lost an important share of their core market.
i see this phenomenon all of the time in business. should the company do a massive upgrade in technology, should it invest in a new plant, should it re-engineer its production processes, should it revamp the marketing approach, should it create a new product or service offering? i could go on and on with options, but the fact is that every one of these ideas could be the right choice. but choosing all of them simultaneously (or not choosing any of them) is not likely an idea with the best chance of success, because almost all of the world is constrained by resources (time, skill and money).
without a strategy or plan, every option will seem like an equally viable opportunity. and if you try to leverage every opportunity, you probably won’t make much headway towards accomplishing any of them.
once you have pinpointed your direction, you can design a plan to get there. your plan – the tactics derived from it, a realistic timeline for achievement, the reasonable outcomes expected – give you the guidance to filter out options that, while they might seem attractive, are not helping you get closer to your charted destination. it is about focusing on less to get more. it is about making real progress on a few fronts rather than minimal progress on many. you can always change your plan, but until you do, your current plan provides you a critical sanity check to keep you going in the proper direction.
i wasn’t always a believer in planning, especially in my personal life. i felt like i didn’t need to go through this exercise because i knew roughly what i wanted to achieve, especially in the short term. besides, it seemed kind of hokey to take the time to write all of it down. so i did a little bit of planning here or there, but nothing consistent or formal. like so many of my stories, i found myself becoming a believer because of my situation, rather than my proactive efforts, dictated a change in my thinking.
in 1991, michaelle informed me that she wanted to quit her job as a product planner (a lucrative job at ibm bringing products to market) and go back to school to become a professor. she applied to a number of schools and was accepted into the doctoral program at the university of texas in arlington, over three hours away from where we lived. the problem was that two years earlier, i had co-founded a new cpa firm with a partner in austin and fort worth, texas. in austin, where i worked in an office with three other people, while we were doing well for a startup, we were not making enough money for me to cover michaelle’s and my finances, living in two cities. however, michaelle and i have always been supportive of each other’s personal growth, so this was not a difficult decision to make. it was simply a decision that would require us to do without for a while. this was especially true when you consider that michaelle truly did bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan – she made far more money than me, and did the cooking too. so, to get her to her destination, we created a plan. we looked at the money we were spending and started cutting costs. we sold our country club membership, we kept driving our paid-off cars, we leased our house in austin and we bought a little place in arlington, texas. additionally, i negotiated with my younger brother and his wife to stay with them during this several-year period while i was still working in austin so that we could make ends meet. with all of these changes and a little saving, we outlined a way to pull this off for the three years michaelle needed to be in school.
the original plan was for me to drive up to spend time with michaelle over a long weekend maybe every other week. at that time, my partners and i were running a typical cpa firm doing tax work, financial statement preparation, and consulting for our small business clients. almost all of my business came from the local geographic area in and around austin. because i predominantly consulted with business owners, the vast majority of my work was performed on-site in my clients’ facilities. therefore, working remotely from arlington serving my austin clients was not nearly as reasonable an option as it would be today.
we moved out of the house in austin, moved everything we could to arlington (it would not all fit because we downsized), and left a bunch of stuff with various family members. as i drove that large u-haul truck to arlington, i realized that this was going to be a long three years as that drive was tedious and boring on a congested highway. i knew i had to find ways to entertain myself given this long round trip i would be making a couple of times a month.
during my first few trips from austin to arlington and back, i talked to myself, sang along with the radio, and a seemingly endless amount of goofy stuff like this. it was about the third or fourth trip that i realized that this travel time was unique and valuable and i was wasting it. i had a little over three hours each way that was time away from every distraction, time i could put to good use. so i started getting books on tape and allocated half the drive to listening to a new book to learn something new, and the other half to ponder important questions, like “what can i do differently in my business so that i can make more money and spend more time with michaelle?”
this reframing and utilization of my drive-time spawned a number of ideas. within a couple of months and after beginning to work more closely with my partner in the fort worth office, he found some work for me to do there. as well, i came up with the idea to touch base with a nationally known professional education provider to become a speaker and trainer. during these trips, i also came up with a new software product that we immediately started developing that was not only successful but was sold to a large public company years later. because of my lack of happiness with my situation with a desire for change, planning became my lifeline … so i grabbed it. within three months, instead of working for two weeks in austin and staying a long weekend with michaelle, i was able to reverse that situation, spending only two or three days every two weeks in austin. within six months, i doubled my income while working mostly out of arlington. by the end of the year, i had tripled it. with planning came focus. with focus and effort, my life changed. michaelle and i were able to live in arlington while she obtained her ph.d., and except for the first few months, we didn’t struggle to make ends meet and really enjoyed our time there (albeit more austere than our life before). two and a half years after the initial move to arlington, we packed up and moved back to austin. while i was still one of the partners in our cpa firm, almost none of my business was in austin by that time and our firm’s clientele was substantially different.
after that experience, we learned the value of having a five-year plan (which we update) and so far in that 20-plus-year period, everything that made the list has been accomplished or completed (with the last item being my book). we don’t write a thesis, we simply jot down ideas for individual accomplishment or growth as well as those we want to achieve jointly. we file this away in a folder in a file cabinet and rarely look at it. but in the back of our minds, when that time comes to buy a new car, join a club or make some investment, we know what to do – whatever supports our plan.
less than a year ago, my wife and i were considering a major remodel of our kitchen and living room. it was a beautiful thing to watch as we were grappling with the floor plan. then, my wife looked at me and said, “having an updated kitchen and living room would be really nice (we cook often at home), but you have wanted to finish your book for years. i know you have set aside time to work on it in the next six months, but you know as well as i do that this remodeling project will end up consuming a lot of that earmarked time. the remodel is new to our plan and your book isn’t, so let’s put the remodel on hold and get this book done now.”
michaelle’s statement was consistent with so many we both have made to each other over the years … before committing significant resources, we always look at what is important to us to make sure we are staying true to our priorities. remember, your plan becomes your sanity check, which keeps you from casually deviating too far off course, but it doesn’t lock you in to your course either. you can always change or fine-tune your plans. however, because the act of changing your plan requires thought, and sometimes a deep discussion as to what is important, revisiting your plan is a great technique to ensure you maintain positive momentum.
have you put together a high-level plan, tactics, timeline, and expectations? are you finding yourself spending time, money, and energy doing things that are not that important to you? what is holding you back from coming up with your plan?