It’s that time again — end of quarter, when we all pretend we’ve had a neat, linear three months. But real life? Bit more zigzag, bit less spreadsheet.

For my own little business, I have met my Q1 objectives. My clients are also on track for their year-end expectations, with their Q1s reviewed and their Q2s set for (we hope) success.

Reflect

So having sorted out my clients, it’s time to think about my own achievements and goals. Let’s take a look at what happened in Q1.

As you can see from the chart, I made little to no progress against my objectives for the first half of the quarter (the red dots). This was deliberate - I was too busy with ‘stuff’ outside of my business and I set my objectives based on that.

That dip is not me making negative progress. I was exceeding my goals (the blue dots), which was great, but why? Upon review, it was because I had over-estimated the time/effort a goal would take. This meant I had the opportunity to do more, so I pulled in some things from Q2.

Some take-aways:

• Lack of progress isn’t always a bad thing. Unplanned lack of progress probably needs your attention.
• Don’t make goals and wait until the last minute to review them. I check my (and my clients') goals at least weekly, and each check is a time to reflect and adjust.

Review

OK, Q1 came in as expected, so Q2 is ready to go, then? No.

Do I have my Q2 objectives set up? Yes, I set them up when I planned the year. And I tweaked them when I brought stuff forward into Q1.

But, they still need reviewing, and either confirming or adjusting (or throwing out and restarting). Things change; how/what you deliver to meet your strategy for the year needs to be able to change, too.

A case in point. Part of my strategy for this year is to write a book. I simply broke this down into quarterly objectives such that each quarter I complete a quarter of the book. (“That sounds too simplistic”, “What about finding a publisher / cover designer / illustrator?” - I know! They are things I will have to consider, but right now I don’t frankly care; if I can’t create the content, they are irrelevant.)

Anyway, in Q1 I exceeded my goal (I have 30% - 40% of the book complete), so I have some options:

1. I can adjust future quarterly goals and complete the book before the end of the year. This assumes that I will have the same capacity to write the book as I had this quarter, and that nothing else will come in. (If I get a new client, I’m not going to turn them away because I have a book to write.)
2. I can keep the quarterly goals the same, giving me a perceived capacity to do more on my other goals or bring in new goals, or have more ‘me’ time.

Not all goals are equal. As I alluded to above, a new client is more important to my business than publishing a book (right now). So I’m not going to adjust the quarterly goals for this particular objective.

But that’s not the end of it. Reviewing individual goals in isolation is important, but decisions need to be made based on the whole picture - the strategy and all it’s moving pieces.

So I’ll be spending the rest of the day (and probably a good proportion of the next couple of days) going over everything. Based on what I’ve learned in Q1, I know I want to make some serious adjustments to my quarterly goals for the rest of the year, but my overall strategy (my vision, for want of a better word) is still achievable and remains the same. Spending this time each quarter is time well spent. It’s planned, I expect to do it and, although it’s not revenue generating (which is a big deal for my little business), it’s really important.

By the end of Q2, things may have changed dramatically, but that’s fine. It’ll not be a surprise, and I’ll have the time to adjust.

More take-aways:

• It’s very rare that a goal can be considered in isolation.
• Not all goals are created equal. Weight your goals based on importance/relevance to your strategy.
• Plan in time to review, reflect and re-plan.
• Expect things to change. This includes your strategy. This is easy for me to deal with in my business, but clients sometimes have trouble with strategic change - particularly where there are stakeholders to keep happy.

If you’re sick of continually missing your targets, or just want someone else to look after the complicated stuff so you can do what you do best, drop me a line.