Design your future by using learning, behavior, and performance goals

Many business environments have competing demands that make it difficult for any one person, team, or company to focus. It’s one reason so many firms struggle to keep up everything—from working through growth plateaus to achieving something new, especially when everyone is already “busy.” Unfortunately, these are the very challenges that hold organizations, teams, and individuals back, especially when setting goals. Researchers Edwin Locke and Gary Latham wrote about Goal-Setting Theory in A Theory of Setting & Task Performance (1990) and suggested multiple attributes affect goal attainment. The essence of their findings is very relatable and practical for daily activities. In short, setting no goal creates a lack of focus; an easy goal fails to provide positive challenge and motivation, and vague goals are too undefined. Moreover, criteria must be met in order to help ensure successful goal attainment. If a person doesn’t have the ability, resources, commitment, or objective feedback on progress towards goal attainment, then they’re less likely to successfully persist toward completion. There is, however, another way to think about setting goals.

Reverse Engineer Your Future

When thinking about Goal-Setting Theory, there’s a totally different way to think about success and engagement. Here are three ways to increase your confidence as a business leader by using learning, behavior, and performance goals.

1. Leverage 3 different goal types. First, get a handle on where you want to go before you start going anywhere. Using these three types of goals to grow will help to frame your desired future state, the end result, or objective. Once your future is in hand, turn it into a SMART performance goal. An example could be, “increase net income by 10 percentage points by DD/MM/YY.” Second, build two behavior goals around it. These behavior goals are the kind of ongoing activities that serve as measures of effectiveness or efficiency towards achieving your performance goal and create key performance indicators along the way. To continue this example, behavior goals could include “achieve 40% customer retention rate through DD/MM/YY” and “get customer acquisition costs to x$ per by DD/MM/YY.” Then, finally, develop and implement three learning goals that complement your behavior goals. In this instance, they could be “measure current customer churn rate by DD/MM/YY,” “identify the current cost per lead by DD/MM/YY,” and “develop and launch a lead generation funnel by DD/MM/YY.” By reverse-engineering your end-game, it makes the process of learning, behaving, and performing more manageable. And, soon, your future will become more tangible.
2. Answer four questions about goal commitment before starting. Make sure anyone involved is up for the task. These four questions will help to determine the likelihood of success. If you can answer, “yes,” to all four, then you’re set. If not, then you need to rethink your goal, strategy, plan, or all of the above. It’s important to construct goals in a way that ensures the proper ability, resources, commitment, and feedback are in place. Otherwise, as Gary Latham and Gerard Seijts suggest, success could be compromised.
3. Use STRE.ME’s free Strategic Boost Template to develop a manageable, actionable, and measurable work plan. As a busy professional, you know how sometimes it feels like quite the accomplishment just to check email, let alone get ahead of anything else. This free template is made for those moments when fear, anxiety, and panic set in about a new project. STRE.ME’s Strategic Boost Template will give you a manageable, actionable, and measurable work plan to create value. Moreover, you’ll gain confidence, focus, and a clear vision of success.

Bring Your Future To Life

While pursuing a goal, future state, end result, or outcome may seem overwhelming, this process can make the process more manageable and increase your confidence. And, when that happens, you’ll increase the likelihood of success and engagement towards goal attainment. Moreover, the more you consistently engage in goal pursuit, the more confidence you have, which will help you to build and sustain an abundance mindset. Finally, STRE.ME’s Strategic Boost Template makes the process that much more pertinent. Everything you need to increase your confidence as a business leader is in hand. Just start by designing your future with performance, behavior, and learning goals.

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Increase your confidence by harnessing the power of learning, behavior, and performance goals

People from all walks of life set goals. The actual numbers vary, depending on quoted or misquoted research. There’s no such data here, but it’s easy to imagine how many people feel the need to gain clarity about the future by setting goals. Or, sometimes goals are set just for the challenge of it. But, in reality, many people flounder or fail when setting goals because the goals, themselves, are too general or simple. And sometimes the individual is simply not committed enough to attain the goal. Then, there are times when goal completion can be unsatisfying because it’s too easy and fails to stretch the individual. The point is, people can easily lose the true value in setting and achieving goals. But, there’s another way: harness the power of three different types of goals.  

Steps to Maximizing the Value of Goal Attainment

One of the first steps to maximizing the value of goal attainment is to look at the different types that exist. According to Latham and Seijts’s Distinguished Scholar Essary: Similarities and Differences Among Performance, Behavioral, and Learning Goals (2016), “three types of goals are described: performance, behavioral, and learning,” all of which apply to individuals, teams, and organizations. 

Performance goals are the kind that shows the outcome, desired result, or future state. In business, they often include things like revenue generation, cost reduction, cost per customer or acquisition, and the like. These can be the most obvious, yet difficult to achieve. Behavior goals are more operational in nature and describe the way business should be conducted. They demonstrate and measure the effectiveness of activity within a given period of time. Capacity utilization levels, the Net Promoter Score, website bounce rates on target landing pages, and conversion rates through the marketing or sales funnel are examples. And, last but certainly not least, are learning goals, which all about acquiring, building, or improving something like knowledge, a skill, or product when an individual has yet to master whatever is being acquired or built. 

When looking at these different types of goals, it becomes easy to think about how to apply them to almost any skill. If you want to golf, then a learning goal is to learn how to grip and swing the club. A behavior goal is to have a consistent backswing and tempo, and a performance goal is to break 80. If you want to be a jazz musician, then learning goals could include learning how to play the instrument and understanding the idiom’s theory, harmony, and language. Behavior goals include comfortably playing through the changes of a given tune, and performance goals include making it through something like Giant Steps at 260 BPM without being kicked off the bandstand. In the business world, you may have a goal to:

• Learn how to use a new software application;
• Regularly use the software to become more productive (i.e., behave); and
• Complete a project with the new software (i.e., perform). 

Understanding the Flow of Goal Types

There’s a natural flow to goals when you understand what types of goals exist. Since learning goals acquire or build something, behavior goals are about the individual, team, or organization’s effectiveness during a period of time, and performance goals are the outcome or desired result, the relationship looks something like this:

And, much like the difference between an abundance and scarcity mindset, this relationship can easily turn into a virtuous growth mindset, which increases self-efficacy and confidence. When confidence increases, you become more engaged in goal setting and attainment and, in turn, more open to possibility.

More to the point and also from Similarities and Differences Among Performance, Behavioral, and Learning Goals (2016), Latham and Seijts suggest, “Individuals with high self-efficacy engage in goal-directed behavior such as developing a plan or strategy, information search and testing potential relationships among variables more so than those with low self-efficacy.” Moreover, they continue: “Individuals with high self-efficacy reported more commitment to the learning goal than those with low self-efficacy.” 

Again, when self-efficacy and confidence increase, you become more engaged in goal setting and attainment. The more you do this, the more open you become to possibility. It’s a virtuous growth cycle, especially if you can say yes to these four goal-setting questions.

Using Learning, Behavior, and Performance Goals to Grow

If you start with a learning goal that builds or acquires something, then you will better understand how to effectively behave and perform at a higher level and increase the likelihood of achieving your future state. Continue the process and your confidence and engagement in goal attainment will increase, which puts you in a virtuous growth cycle. The more you overcome adversity, the easier it becomes to move beyond barriers or other challenges.

Here’s the big takeaway: the more you overcome adversity with higher self-confidence, the more you build positive resources. The more you build positive resources, the more you draw upon them to proactively cope with a situation, which enables you to control emotions while making decisions. You make better decisions and overcome adversity with greater ease. This is how you can use these three goals types—learning, behavior, and performance—to grow, personally and professionally.  

Get the Strategic Boost Template to set manageable, actionable, and measurable work plans to start pursuing goals with greater clarity and confidence. >>>

You choose whether to see the world from an abundance or scarcity mindset and to act accordingly; all of which affects your business.

Mindset can be defined as, “as mental attitude or inclination” or “fixed state of mind.” It determines how you think about things, make decisions, view the world, and choose to exist. If you view things with abundance, then your experience is full of positivity, generosity, mindfulness, thinking of others, and taking advantage of opportunities. The opposite is true for scarcity, where it’s all about negativity, lacking something, or being myopic. It’s also the difference between being open and closed or growing and declining, both of which apply to every business and its people.

A Scarcity Mindset Drains Resources and Decreases Confidence

Business owners have lots of pressure to support others, including customers, staff, and vendors. Sometimes simply paying the bills is a challenge, let alone yourself, as the owner. Constantly reacting to unplanned situations, putting out fires, and living in the tyranny of the urgent is draining—physically, intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually. There are improvements that could be made. Always. But, fear, anxiety, and drudgery often creep in when thinking about tackling something new. When this type of thought process creeps in, it can be difficult to remove. Suddenly, it feels overwhelming to find a path forward and, before you know it, succumbing to adversity is the norm.

Then, when this loop occurs, business owners and leaders get caught in a vicious growth cycle that drains resources, like energy, time, and money, and decreases confidence, especially when you need it most.

Sound familiar? If so, then you’ve been introduced to the scarcity mindset. It’s unwieldy and brutal. A scarcity mindset closes you down to the point of being completely myopic and in survival mode. Tunnel vision sets in and potential is compromised. Unfortunately, this negative mindset is full of challenges that decrease the likelihood of success. In short, it’s usually the beginning of the end. And it’s a trap that only gets worse as clarity, motivation, and structure lessen. But there’s another way to lead and operate your firm.

An Abundance Mindset Makes Business Ownership Worthwhile and Increases Confidence

Do you aspire to do what you want, to have manageable and actionable paths that help to overcome adversity, and to achieve goals by being a better version of yourself?

If so, then please meet the abundance mindset. As the name suggests, it’s all about being open to possibility and being grateful for what you have, as well as embracing a future state. Here are three ways an abundance mindset can grow your business.

1. Clarity — an abundance mindset is achieved when clarity enables you, the owner and leader, to articulate what you want to do.
2. Structure — this will help to anticipate and cope with the inevitable adversity when it arrives. Your ability to create structure via manageable and actionable paths to overcome adversity will increase because you have higher levels of self-efficacy, which encourages you to make progress.
3. Motivation — you build more motivation to keep the good momentum going and to become a better version of yourself, all of which is driven by self-efficacy. Suddenly, it seems feasible to solve key issues and to say no to whatever distraction may captivate you at the moment.

Navi Radjou’s concept of frugal innovation shows what happens when people do more with less. This phenomenon occurs when economic, environmental, and social values increase while resources, like time, capital, and energy decrease. Being in an abundance mindset means acting with others in mind through wisdom (i.e., clarity), unity (i.e., clarity), ingenuity (i.e., structure), and (com)passion (i.e., motivation). Having a scarcity mindset is the complete opposite: being self-centered, fearful, and desirous while seeking power. Frugal innovations occur with an abundance mindset because you become more purposeful when values increase and resources decrease.

Open Yourself to Possibility by Enjoying Ownership and Leadership

The more clarity you have, the more you can do what you want. In turn, the more structure you have, the easier it is to overcome adversity. And when that happens, you have more motivation to improve and become a better version of yourself. Lastly, and most importantly, owning a business becomes worthwhile because of the virtuous growth cycle you’ve created and perpetuated. This simply means you can do more of what you want, overcome adversity with greater ease, and continue to become a better version of yourself.

An abundance mindset opens you to possibility. The world opens up and you can make connections sooner and stronger. You gain more clarity, structure, and motivation. In turn, this creates a virtuous growth cycle that increases your confidence and makes the whole experience more worthwhile. To this end, you have a higher likelihood of success.

Would you rather have an abundance or a scarcity mindset? You choose. If you want to work towards a future state, then STRE.ME’s Strategic Boost Template will walk you through the process of identifying an objective, key results, and more.

Bring more clarity, structure, and motivation to your business with STRE.ME's Strategic Boost Template. >>>

Virtually every business needs or wants more customers. Why? To stay in business. As CB Insights found in their analysis of nearly 300 failed start-ups, no market need (i.e., customers seeking a solution) was the top reason for failure. To this end, if you have customers, then why stay in business? Many answers exist, but the essence is to serve a need (i.e., solve a problem). To continue solving a problem—or creating value—many businesses must grow, which can mean different things to different people. The more a company grows, the more resources it can devote to creating value. Growth comes in many varieties, including financial (e.g., gross margin or net income), customers served, personal (e.g., leadership and professional development), and mindset (e.g., abundance instead of scarcity), amongst others. The bottom line is customers, especially new ones, validate a business's reason for being. Otherwise, failure, idling, or decline occur.

Business growth occurs in four ways, all of which revolve around your product or service offering and its market (i.e., distribution). Igor Ansoff was an applied mathematician and business manager who consulted and taught at many distinguished universities. He’s known for developing strategic management and corporate strategies—one that suggests growth occurs through one of four product-market strategies called the Ansoff Matrix. This happens when existing or new offerings (i.e., products or services) are introduced to existing or new markets. The result creates different go-to-market strategies that support each growth goal.

Why Customers Are the Key to Growth

One option is to increase your market share. It’s easy for businesses with existing customers and an established distribution channel (or more) to select this path. This is the best option if you want to grow an existing market with the same product or service. Customers, offerings (i.e., a given product and/or service), and a distribution channel are used as the foundation for growth through increased market share. And, ideally, your market is growing. But, in short, this growth path means you intend to take customers away from competitors.

In addition to taking customers away from competitors, increasing your market share typically means your business has the ability to incorporate additional marketing tools. Discounting and promotional options are common tactics that, when added to your competitive advantage, create growth potential. As a business leader, this path also means you have a lower risk tolerance and want a smaller, more immediate return than developing a new offering and/or market. If this sounds like you, then here are five ways to increase your market share.

Five Ways To Increase Market Share

1. Leverage your assets and opportunities.  Many challenges seem overwhelming to consider, let alone overcome. As a result, it’s easy to repress them and hope they go away while they linger and actually get worse over time. That’s why STRE.ME’s Value Shift process uses clarity and structure to develop solutions that are based on your unique goals, challenges, assets, liabilities, opportunities, and threats. This is a great way to start the process.
2. Create or refine a sustainable competitive advantage to overcome your competitors’ weaknesses. Sometimes this is as simple as refining and repositioning a product. You can also clarify your message by understanding your customer and problem(s), offering empathy and authority in a handful of steps, and showing success or failure in all marketing assets. StoryBrand is an amazing way to develop and implement this approach.
3. Find a way to increase promotions, marketing, and distribution support with your refined competitive advantage. Creating a sustainable competitive advantage will make it easier to increase relevant promotions, marketing, and distribution support. It gives you something to talk about through all media (in person, digitally, and through print). In turn, it will help to convert sales by solving customer problems. Benson Shapiro’s Harvard Business Review article, “Improve Distribution with Your Promotional Mix,” provides a great structure for putting this into action.
4. Experiment with temporary price reductions or product bundles to convert sales. These short-run tests can help to spur sales and qualify leads. Just be sure to track conversions through your sales funnel and into your CRM. This will help to assess lead quality and customer retention. Competera’s blog, “How to Use a Bundle Pricing Strategy to Increase Sales," outlines the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
5. Think outside the box by acquiring a rival or refining your product. This can be beneficial if you’re able to integrate both firms’ operations, cultures, and distribution channels. This Angel Investor Report post, “Growth Plans and Investment: Growth Through Acquisition,” outlines good considerations for growth through acquisition.

Outcomes from Increasing Market Share

To recap, increasing your market share is the way to go if you have:

• An existing offering (i.e., service and/or product), market (i.e., distribution), and customers
• The desire to take customers from competitors (i.e., increase market share)
• The ability to increase your marketing efforts and mix (e.g., discounts, bundles, promotions, etc.)
• A lower risk tolerance
• A desire for smaller, more immediate returns

This whole process will enable you to develop and implement a vision for making money, saving time, and reducing risk. The more you follow this path, the more your business will create a growth cadence around the priorities that matter most. And, the more you consistently focus on this path, the more you increase the likelihood of success by leverages what makes you better. There’s no sure bet here. But, as the saying goes, luck favors the prepared.

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