Are You a Mastermind Yet? – Mid-Year Goal Check-in

It’s the middle of the year, and you’re wondering if you’ve achieved turning your company into a mastermind yet. If you haven’t reached your goal yet, don’t panic. Now’s the time to realign. Let’s first revisit the process from the beginning of the year.

Your company set goals:

• To align with your company’s values, mission, and vision.
• With short-term and long-term achievement timelines.
• To be measurable.

After these goals were set, they were implemented by:

• Communicating widely with your team.
• Setting smaller goals within both short-term and long-term goals.
• Keeping your team accountable and regularly measuring progress.

You’ve set your goals, implemented the achievement process with your team, created a game plan as to how to achieve progress, and are keeping your team accountable and regularly measuring progress. You’ve reviewed the numbers that are guiding true measurement and are close to reaching your goals, but unsure where to push more to grow. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to further prompt measurement of goals and if it’s time to adjust:

• What’s limiting reaching your goals? Is it within your company’s control, or are there outside factors such as the economy, unforeseen shifts in the marketing landscape, or ever-changing timeline delays? If the answer is something within your company’s control, work with your team to course correct as soon as possible. If the answer is an outside factor, consider adjusting your goals to align with what you know you can achieve rather than what you hope to achieve. Anything beyond the known is an added bonus that will continue setting you up for success.
• How is the team working together to achieve these goals? Is it truly a team effort, or is the responsibility falling onto one or two team members to carry the vision through? If the responsibility is carried by one or two individuals, see where there may be opportunity to delegate responsibilities, create growth opportunities for other team members within their roles, or consider bringing in a member from another team to help guide progress from an outside perspective.
• Do your goals still align with where the company currently is and strives to grow? If each month up to this point you or someone at your company has continued to ask, “But is this really who we want to be/what we want to do?”, think about the goals you’ve set and have conversations with key stakeholders to see why they think the set goals may not quite be on track. Chances are you’re close to where you need to be, but making a few subtle tweaks can help the full team buy in to the goals and potentially help provide answers to the above questions.

As the year continues to progress, continue having conversations with your team about where your company could grow, what ideas they have to further achieving the company’s goals, whether that be a more streamlined approach, implementing a more effective process or system, or expanding the team to allow team members to stay hyper focused in their designated areas.

• Listen intently and take notes about the ideas the team brings to the table. If it’s not something that can be implemented now, could it be tabled and revisited for next year’s goal planning?
• Stay curious by continuing conversations with clients and industry professionals to see what they are doing, what could be beneficial to adapt for your own company, or what advice they may have to continue growth and goal achievement. Opportunities such as networking events and conferences lend well to these opportunities and ideas, often spurring ideas by getting out of the day-to-day of work and allowing teams to get inspired.
• Start thinking of goals for the future to remind yourself and your team about why the goals that are currently set are important to reach and how they will lend to further success.

There’s no right or wrong way to mark your goals as achieved. Don’t be afraid to revisit the original plans, review where there may be improvements needed to get back on track, and course correct for optimum results.