I’ve been contemplating this article by Patrick O’shaughnessy. In the article he proposes a concept of success with setting goals.
Instead of setting a goal with a timeline focus on the path. What are the steps to take to get where you want? Then break those down in to daily habits.
By focusing on momentum and creating habits, you will improve and get better each day, week, and month. While focusing on goals will only get you a success/failure status. Reaching a goal is great but most of the time you fail. And failure discourages progress.
This is easily applicable to personal life. I’ve been successfully doing this after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I use it in my morning checklist. I use it with my exercise. And I even use it with my diet.
My Things application generates a set of daily tasks that have become routines. These routines align with where I want to be in the future.
I think this is applicable to businesses as well. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll spend more time vetting whether it can or can not. I think it’s healthy for businesses to have big yearly goals but why couldn’t you break up the path to get there into company routines and habits. I think scorecards fit nicely in this mix. This is also a result of struggling to implement OKRs at my third company now.
I think it will work and I’m inspired by The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh. He did something similar with the San Francisco 49ers. By focusing on how his team carried themselves before stepping on the field, he was able to turn a dumpster fire of a team into a multiple Super Bowl winning organization in record time.
Other teams were likely fixated on winning the Super Bowl (a goal). His team was focused on the correct way to wear their uniforms.
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