Growth tips 30 seconds to business enlightenment.

The right sort of visualization.

07-Apr-2011

As each new quarter begins, it is important that you use a disciplined strategic thinking and decision making process to choose your targets and key strategic priorities for the coming quarter.  This ensures your strategic plan remains relevant with the competitive environment, and re-aligns everyone to the overall company strategy.   (We strongly recommend that our clients follow a cadence of reviewing and updating their strategy every 90 days).   

A recent series of articles in Psyblog provides some interesting insights.  Here is our summary:

Visualization for goal achievement.

Many of us have heard about the so called “secret” laws of attraction.  Many popular self-help books suggest that merely dreaming, thinking, and willing something to happen can make it so – that is, if we imagine ourselves achieving our goals, it makes them magically happen.

Yes, visualization can certainly be important in reaching goals.  Research shows that athletes who mentally rehearse and imagine their sporting actions in advance (e.g. shooting free throws in basketball) do enhance their performance.

However, visualizing actions that you already know how to do (like throwing a ball) – is every different from trying to magically bring into existence a new outcome where you haven’t actually been before.  

Studies show that people who plan out the individual action steps that are required to achieve a goal – and who visualize the “process” they will take to get there - achieve far better outcomes than those who only visualize the “outcome.”  This is because thinking about the process helps to focus our minds on potential challenges we may face, how we can overcome them, and how long it is realistically likely to take to achieve our desired outcome.

The bucket analogy.

One way to think about the processes you will require to achieve your goals is to use the bucket analogy.  Imagine you have a bucket, and beside it a pile of rocks, a pile of pebbles, and a pile of sand.  

Your goal is to put all these items in the bucket.

To achieve this, you need put the big rocks into the bucket first, followed by the pebbles, and finally the sand.  (If you try to do it in reverse order - the items will not all fit in the bucket.)

Now imagine the bucket is one of your company strategic priorities for the quarter.  What process do you need to follow to fill this bucket?

Start with the “Rocks” - the big things - the key individual projects that need to be completed during the course of the quarter in order for the overall company goal to be achieved.  These projects commonly take several weeks to fully implement.  

For each of these key projects, try to visualize the process - the key action steps that will be involved, and the time required to execute each step.  Once you have scoped the project out, agree a realistic completion date, and assign one person accountable to make sure the project gets executed by the due date.  

“Pebbles” then become that person’s weekly actions.  At your weekly team meeting, they must be able to answer this question for every project they are accountable for, “What 1 action can I complete this week that is going to move this project forward?  

“Sand” then becomes that person’s daily actions.  Every day they must be able to answer the question, “What 1 action can I complete today that is going to move one of my projects forward?”

This simple analogy explains how you can drive strategic execution using the right sort of visualization.

In summary, successful strategy execution and goal achievement is requires following a disciplined thought process – not merely wishful thinking.

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