The first idea is to change your goal structure: don’t set a deadline, set a schedule. Rather than set a goal to read X number of books by the end of the year, set a schedule of when you’ll read. For example, you’ll read 20 minutes each night before bed, or one hour every Saturday morning. You’ll find that by sticking to a schedule you will meet your ultimate goal of reading more and the likelihood of reading the number of books you originally set out to read will increase. A simple adjustment of more or less time to the schedule is easier to do once you’ve created the habit. Consistency is key. The Secret Of Successful Saving And Investing. Forbes, February 5, 2017.

The trick, I always found, was to find the paradigm that worked best for me or for my team. Just because conventional wisdom and the corporate culture suggested making goals, for example, by choosing instead to set daily activities we found we got more done, and quicker than exclusively focusing in on those goals. Of course, anyone would say that yes we need to do both: set the goal and then pick the behaviors that will be needed to reach the goal.

In planning projects, we sometimes did not have the history of past projects to draw upon to estimate our new project. In these cases, while we still had an educated estimate, the day to day activities we picked gave us the confidence of getting us to the end more than our estimate of what the end would be. Add to all that that some people are best motivated by goals and others by defined daily activities and we had a rich environment that supported success rather than the one size fits all approach.

What are you doing in your planning to help your team to be successful?