What are your goals for Customer Insight success in 2016?
It’s that time again, when we ask for your goals for Customer Insight success this year.
Last year, you voted fairly consistently for two priorities to deliver in 2015. First, was a measurable commercial difference in your business that could be attributed to Customer Insight, e.g. demonstrate value-add. Second, was to make time for your own leadership development, or as Stephen Covey would put it, “Sharpen the Saw”.
Both these made good sense & colloquially I’ve heard that a number of you made good progress on the former, but still struggled to protect time for the latter. Was that true for you in 2015? What are you going to do differently in 2016 to achieve more?
Hopefully you found the recent sharing of my own experience with goal setting to be helpful. I hope you have a system that works for you. In addition to the advice in the post and our recent reminder as to the importance of getting enough rest to achieve any goals, before our annual poll, just a few more tips for you.
Here’s some other advice on goal setting that I learnt from Michael Hyatt, whose leadership podcast is well worth hearing:
- Be holistic, don’t just focus on one area of your life, set goals across all areas;
- But, don’t try setting too many goals (5 to 7 appears the most effective number);
- Write your goals down (we’ve mentioned previously the power of pen & paper on the memory);
- Be specific in your goals (the S of SMART);
- Make your goals measurable (the M);
- Assign a deadline to all your goals (the T) & as I mentioned before, don’t make it the end of year for all;
- Stretch yourself outside your comfort zone (don’t set goals that either easy or delusional);
- Spend time to know what matters to you & set goals that matter;
- Identify the next step to take for each goal (if you can’t see how to eat the elephant you won’t start);
- Keep your goals visible (a great tip from Michael – put them up on the wall for you & others to see).
Hopefully, at least one of those tips is useful for you.
So, as promised, on to our annual one question poll on goals. Please let us know, what are you choosing as your Customer Insight goals for 2016? If you vote, you’ll also be able to see the most popular choices by your peers:
As you’ll see, I’ve allowed ‘other answers’, so please feel free to enter an answer/category that I’ve missed. It will help refine these options for others as we capture more votes.
Thanks for participating & I look forward to sharing the results with you in a few weeks time. It will also help shape where we focus content for Customer Insight Leader this year (together with the very helpful feedback from the reader survey that many of you were kind enough to complete).
Have a great week & best wishes for clarity with your goals!