How setting building blocks breaks down big goals into small, meaningful action plans
It is almost January. The time of year that feels full of possibilities. It’s the time we set resolutions. Plan for our year. Dream up the possible. That is until February!
How does the excitement of the first two weeks of January, become a feeling of dread? All too often we hear people say they don’t reach their goals because the goals suddenly felt impossible. They felt too big. The little stuff of our day-to-day life creeps in and the big, important things never get worked on.
While there is no shortcut to achieving a big goal there is a secret. Make big goals into little goals. You read that correctly. To achieve big things, we must break them down into manageable pieces.
I learned this lesson from my first leader. She helped me map out the goals of our sales team and how to break goals down, so they laddered back up to our shared success. I relearned this lesson from a running coach while training for my first marathon as part of the Team in Training running program. He often spoke about our training plan as building a brick foundation wall. Each training run (and rest day) was a brick. Each brick had its role, and at the end we would have a strong base to reach our goal — the marathon. So, while 26.2 miles is daunting your weekly training runs are manageable and help make 26.2 possible.
At TEAMES & CO, we have built this mindset into our work. We set aside the first week of January for building our plan for the year. Sometimes I get ambitious and do this in December, but I keep coming back to it the first week of January. Why? My mind is fresh. There is something about closing the year, taking a bit of time off with family and friends, and then the first week of the year making the new plan.
Now making the plan does not mean setting our goals. We built our goals in December, now we are making the plan to execute those goals. So how do we do it?
Making the Plan
Find a quiet time in your day. I prefer to do this first thing in the morning, because yes, I am one of those morning people! A cup of coffee in hand, I find a large table and lay out my strategic plan, organization goals, team goals, and individual goals.
With a fresh perspective after a few days off, I read each and make sure they all align. As a business owner, I double-check check, to ensure the organizational goals support the strategic plan. Do my team goals support the organization’s goals? Do my individual goals support my team goals?
Note as a leader, you may skip the first step, and focus on do your team goals support the company goals, and do your individual goals support the team goals. As an individual contributor, you may only ask yourself the last question.
After this quick double-check, we make the plan. Each of your goals should be SMART* (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound). Because they are Time-Bound you can create building blocks.
Building blocks are the smaller tasks you will complete to reach the overall goal. For example, you may have an annual sales goal. You must sell 100 widgets between January 1 and December 31. You can break this goal down by quarter then by month then by week. This way each time you look at the goal you are not figuring out how to sell 100 widgets this year, you are aiming for a milestone within the overall goal. Or you may have a project due on April 1. If you think of it as one big goal, it can be overwhelming. Checking off little goals that help you reach the big goal — that is easy.
Creating Building Blocks: Examples
Example 1 — Sales Goal
Let’s start with the example of an annual sales goal. First, we want to break it into quarters. This may be an even split or you may have a seasonality to your business, so each quarter may be different. Let’s assume your breakdown of selling 100 widgets is selling:
- Q1- 15 Units
- Q2–25 Units
- Q3–35 Units
- Q4–25 Units
We will now break down Q1 into monthly goals. So, if in this example we say we aim for the following monthly goals:
- January — 0 units
- February 5 units
- March — 10 units
You may ask, “why do we not have any widgets sold in January”. This example is potentially for an organization that has hired a new sales team where in January they may have non-selling tasks to complete to set the stage for your sales. If your team and processes are more developed, this may not be the same approach.
In this case though, you may need to identify customers, set up intro calls, set up sales meetings, and prepare sales presentations. Each of these will help you reach your goal later, but it means you are selling fewer widgets right away.
So now you have your monthly numbers now you want to set your weekly goals. Thinking about the full chain of the process, you can create stronger building blocks. So, the steps in an overly simplified sales process could be:
1) Create a sales prospect list
2) Call prospects to set up a meeting
3) Prepare a presentation for the meeting
4) Go to the sales meeting with your customer prospect& send follow-up information
5) Receive Sales order
By knowing these steps, you can identify your action plan i.e., build a prospect list or make a sales presentation.
You can estimate (or use data you have from previous efforts) to make each goal measurable, so you have a clear goal.
So, if you estimate out of 100 sales prospect calls, you can set 20 meetings, and out of 20 meetings, you will make 5 sales. You can use these numbers to build a weekly plan to sell 100 widgets in a year.
That sample plan could look something like the below weeks:
January Week 1
- Outline my weekly sales plan.
January Weeks 2 & 3
- Build a prospect list of 2000 customer prospects.
- (2000 is based off the above assumption you made that you would get 5% conversion for sales with each customer only buying 1 widget for total of 100 widget — Real numbers will differ vs example) You may decide you need to split this out into more weeks i.e., maybe you make a list at the beginning of each quarter vs building the full list at the beginning.
January Week 4
- Call 12 prospects a day for 60 Calls (Goal: set 12 meetings.)
- Enter all call notes into our CRM
February Week 1:
- Make Sales Presentation Template that can be personalized for each customer.
- Call 10 prospects during the week — set 2 meetings
Note: As you build your goals think about efficiencies. For example, in this example, setting up meetings are slated during the last week of January vs. making the sales presentation template that week. The thought here was if you set up meetings in January, these will most likely be scheduled towards the end of February as meetings take time to set up, meaning you would have time to build the presentation after the meeting was set up. This schedule would mean the first week of February could be used to make the presentation and continue to set up meetings for March and beyond. If it was done in reverse, you would have your presentation ready at the end of January, but no meetings set up.
From here you get the point. You will map out what you need to do calls, meeting prep, presentations each week through March.
Each month based on your achievement the previous month you will revisit and update your building blocks. So, the last week of January you want to add a note to review your progress, and update February goals. Same for February and in the last week of March, you want to set some time to breakdown your goals for Q2. You will continue this process throughout the year. This will help you have the big picture i.e., the yearly and quarterly targets, but also a more tactical plan that you can adjust month to month and create action plans to get back on track or accelerate as needed.
Example 2: Project Based Goal
Let’s say we were to break down a goal focused on delivering a project. You may look at your annual goals and you have a project due on April 1 to build a product roadmap for a new offering.
For this, we will break down the key building blocks by month. Now, these may not be dollar-focused, but more tactics-focused.
- January — Build Project Team, Cadence & Strategy.
- February — Gather Customer Insights & Personas and Internal Stakeholder feedback
- March — Build Roadmap
- April 1— Present to Leadership for Approval
So, for January, your weeks may look like the following:
- January Week 1— Build team members list and gain leadership approval. Invite team to a kick-off meeting.
- January Week 2 & 3 — Set Team Charter, Define RACI, set up Meeting Cadence — Gain executive Sponsor sign off on all deliverables.
- January Week 4 — Create a discovery plan for the customer and internal stakeholder personas, feedback, insights, etc.
As you can see with both types of goals, your weekly plan is a set of actions that gets you closer to reaching your goal. The key to building blocks is mapping the actions that when achieved add up to the bigger goal.
Optimizing the plan.
Now many may say, “great I have my plan let’s get to work”. We recommend one more look at your building blocks. This time when you read through your action plan, you goal is “can I adjust anything to reach my goal earlier?” In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”
The potential upside is two-fold:
1) This helps you add some buffer for unexpected delays. For example, can you pull in your timeline to aim for March 20th or March 23rd for final project delivery vs April 1st? If so, you gain 7–10 days of buffer or time, in the end, to polish your presentation, do a practice run with your leader, etc.
2) If you can aim for 110 widgets and sell 105 widgets you can exceed your original goal of 100 widgets.
Now the trick here is to still be realistic. You do not want to aim for something unreasonable that does not give you a chance to be successful. For example, you probably do not want to set an unrealistic plan to deliver your project on March 1st. This would not let you build accurate building blocks and time for key steps along the way. So, keep it realistic (remember that the ‘R’ in SMART goals is ‘Realistic’).
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, this helps you map out a realistic plan that helps you take small wins and turn them into big wins. Best of luck with your goals this year. May you reach and exceed your most impossible dreams.
Sources/Notes:
*SMART Goals are credited to George Doran, Arthur Miller and James Cunningham in their 1981 article “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management goals and objectives”.
