October 8, 2014

College of Veterinary Ophthalmology 

Ft. Worth, TX 

Leslie will be speaking about Buying Into or Selling a Veterinary Ophthalmology Practice:  Envision Success

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Goals:
A personal and professional construct

Fall is nearly upon us, and the time to reach your yearly goals is running out. Change is hard, and by this time of year it is tempting to scale back your expectations or even abandon your goals altogether. Too often, if we don't reach our goals, we place the blame on ourselves, or on others. "My willpower just wasn't strong enough."  "She didn't understand what I wanted." Sound familiar? In reality, the problem may be with the goal itself. So pull out your list of goals (or start a new list) and let's see if a little refinement is in order.

SMART GOALS

You've probably heard of SMART goals - Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-Specific. The purpose of these goals is to help you put enough thought into your goals that you have a good chance of achieving them.

Let's look at a typical goal and put a SMART framework around it.

Be more profitable. This is a very common goal for veterinary practices. However, the goal itself, "be more profitable" is too vague to be useful. You can't be more profitable until you know how profitable your practice is now.  So let's assume that right now, your practice's profitability is 10%. If profitability increases to 10.1%, has your goal been met? Maybe. Or did you want profitability to grow by 10%? 20%? This is where the "specific" part clicks in. A specific goal is "increase profit by 10%." 

Is it measurable? Because you have already defined what profit is and know how to calculate it, yes. It is measurable because you know where you are now (10%) and where you want to be (11%).

Is this goal achievable? Can you do it? How will you make it happen?  Capture more charges? Reduce costs? How? If your goal is "achievable", is it practical? - something you currently have the readily available resources to do?

Now let's make the goals realistic. If you become 10% more profitable by reducing costs, can you honestly see yourself laying off members of your staff? Staffing is a huge system; you won't bring large-scale changes overnight. If reducing the size of your staff is the method, are you prepared to make tough, unpopular decisions?

Finally, SMART goals are time-specific, meaning that there is a deadline. To make our example time-specific, add "by the end of 2015." Having a timeframe can be an impetus to get started on the goal.

Using SMART goals, you can create a process for outlining goals, and a map for how to achieve them. Even so, SMART goals have problems. SMART goals are somewhat self-limiting. Not every goal you may have for yourself is achievable or realistic given your current situation. Does that mean you should never have a big, hairy, audacious goal? Heck no! So let's leave SMART goals for a minute and talk about HARD goals.

HARD GOALS

HARD goals, according to Mark Murphy's book, Hard Goals:  The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (McGraw-Hill), are Heartfelt, Animated, Required and Difficult. In contrast to SMART goals, HARD goals are intended to help you visualize what success looks like. Murphy discovered that goal success isn't determined by daily habits, raw intellect, or writing numbers on a worksheet. It actually depends on the engagement of your brain. HARD goals can help you do that.

Heartfelt: "This goal means something to me." You need to care about your goal and see how achieving it will benefit you or others.  If you are deeply connected to your goal, you will be motivated to make it happen.

Animated: "I have a vivid picture of what success looks like." Create a clear picture of what success looks like, including imagery, emotion and setting. Add some action to the picture, such as jumping up and down with delight or pumping your fist in the air. Make the goal your own.

Required:  "My goals are absolutely necessary." There's no satisfaction in achieving a goal that means nothing to us personally. Required goals simply must be done.

Difficult: "I must learn something new and leave my comfort zone behind." This is the antithesis to a SMART goal, which is achievable and realistic. But isn't that where some of the "ho-hum" of goal setting resides? If you don't have to push yourself a little, if you can accomplish it with resources you already have, is it really a goal? By setting a goal that pushes your boundaries, you set yourself up for growth.

Let's convert our SMART goal into a HARD one.

SMART Goal: Increase profit by 10% by December 2015.

Is this heartfelt? It's hard to make a numbers-oriented goal touch your emotions, but it isn't impossible. Consider what the extra profit will mean to you. Will you worry less about money? Buy better monitoring equipment? Attend specialized training? Feel a deeper sense of pride in your practice? Create that emotional attachment. Animate the goal and create a clear picture of what the extra profitability will allow you to do. Why is the goal required? Why is it so important to you that it can't wait another day? How will more profit allow you to enrich, prolong and improve the lives of your patients? Finally, how difficult will it be to increase by10%? Is that enough of a challenge to cause you to push yourself, to overcome obstacles, to seek alternatives when your initial plans don't get you there?

Creating a list of goals isn't enough. You need the motivation to get started and keep working. Whether you make SMART goals, HARD goals, or something in between, be sure that what you strive for is specific. If this year didn't take you where you wanted to go, get back on track today. Review and restate your goals until they represent something personally significant. Only then you will find the motivation to succeed.