AW Spring Planning
At AW, Spring Planning is unique from Summer and Fall because this is your last chance to update your 1-year goals.
3-Year Vision
But before we dive into any of that we review the 3-Year Vision you created at the beginning of the year. We use this process to help you zoom out at the big picture of what you want to create. Maybe now you are working on generating income but the big picture is you want to buy a second home or sell your business. Three years can seem arbitrary but we’ve learned it’s enough distance to allow yourself to think bigger while still being close enough that you can imagine it. Once you have that picture, it’s easier to set goals that are aligned with what you really want for the year and the quarter.
1-Year Goals
We believe it’s important to set 1-Year Goals at the beginning of the year because it gives us a container for what you are working on each quarter. But most goal setting is an approximation of something that is hard to measure and put into words until you’ve lived into it for a while.
Mostly, the changes we see are
- You completed the goal faster than you thought.
- You have more clarity on the goal itself, so you want to rework it to be more accurate.
- You have decided this isn’t actually something you want to work on right now, and you either let it go or replace it with something that is more in line with what you want for the year.
Once we complete the review of the 1-Year Goals, it’s a lot easier to plan the quarter. Most people come into our calls having thought a lot about their quarterly goals but not as much about their bigger 1-Year Goals.
We are so good at thinking in quarters or seasons. But holding a whole year at once is harder. So having revisited the bigger picture is a good practice. I think people really appreciate being brought back to what they said they wanted. By the 3rd and 4th quarters, your 1-Year Goals feel very familiar. But one quarter in, you can be surprised how much you forgot about what you said you wanted.
Planning Your Quarter
It’s really about the 1-3 Goals you want to focus on. We always encourage a separate goal that we call “Personal Foundation,” which supports you being able to accomplish your goals. This means for some people they have to pick and choose what they want to work on for the quarter because we allow 3-5 1-Year Goals. Some people don’t take our advice and want to work on all their goals every quarter (myself included), but I’m always reminded in those instances that less really is more. So I’ve been really cutting down on my Quarterly Goals so I can focus. This quarter I have 2 Business Goals and 1 Personal Goal.
That’s pretty typical for our clients too.
Strategies
One thing that’s really important to getting started on any goal is to know how you are going to go about it. We help people define their goals through their strategies. So if you want more clients, how would you go about that? What’s worked in the past? Where did your current clients come from? And so on. The goals don’t change, but we are pretty consistently checking in on strategies to make sure that what you think is going to accomplish your goal is actually working. This is so important.
Weekly Commitments
Everyone will leave this week’s planning calls with their action items for the week, which we refer to as “Weekly Commitments.” After the planning call, we will check in on the Quarterly Goals and strategies every few weeks, but the crux of our work when it comes to accountability is these weekly commitments. These are the things that you mean to do but can easily get pushed aside or forgotten without accountability.
The word I heard again and again, after the break, is ANCHOR. People love having this weekly anchor of deciding each week what is important. Once you’ve decided and committed, that’s it; you know what to do, and it’s a matter of doing those things. Otherwise, we can be scattered, confused, and wondering – where do I put my attention?
3-Month Vision
We end with your vision for the quarter. We ask you to imagine it’s the end of June, and you’ve done what you said you were going to do. How are you feeling? Where are you at? What’s going on with you?
And then you tell us, and we capture it so we can remind you throughout the quarter what it feels like to be complete with your goals.
We hear things like “excited,” “productive,” “ease,” “organized,” “ready for summer,” and “accomplished.”
That becomes fuel in the hard weeks. We make sure to remind you of your vision during the messy middle of our program.
Planning Complete
So now that planning is done, goals are set, and commitments are made, we are ready to do the work of a great quarter ahead.
If you’re getting a lot done but not the right things, that’s exactly what we help with. Let’s talk.