Seagulls

On 22nd of July 2018 I was sitting in a room of around 100 people listening to Bob Proctor. At one point in the meeting we started looking questioningly at each other – “what is he talking about?”

Bob was repeatedly mentioning ‘seagulls’ and we were thinking “what have seagulls got to do with anything?” The slides came up on the screen and resolved the question – Bob was talking about ‘C goals’.

You and I are very familiar with the concept and various techniques of goal setting, and I doubt there are many people who haven’t been encouraged to set ‘SMART’ goals relating to what they should be achieving at work as an employee or as a business owner.

According to my friend and coach Phil Olley, and I agree –
SMART goals don’t work.
SMART goals aren’t goals.
The acronym means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.
Usually they’re couched in terms like “Our goal is to increase sales by 10%” – which means ‘just do what we’re doing, but do it harder and faster’ – in other words, the ‘how’ is known and understood.

In Bob’s thesis these aren’t really goals although they might qualify as what he calls ‘A goals’, otherwise known as Actions to be taken or Activities to be carried which are part of an overriding A goal which is a Plan.

So what about C goals and of course B goals, how do they fit in?
C is the highest order of goal. In truth it’s not really a goal at all, but a Vision or Dream. You’re C goal (and there can be only one at any time) is the ultimate vision of what you want, really want, in your life.

It is, for now, your ultimate chosen destiny. C goals don’t last forever, they’re usually set for five, or a maximum of 10 years, cause life changes, our environment and our situation changes and when we achieve the dream (in 10 years from now) we will inevitably, without fail, that developed another dream, another C goal.

When you and I construct our C goals, we’ll have a clear idea of the outcome we’re looking for, the more detailed the better but we need to allow all the ‘little details’ to develop along the way because things will change and what’s available for us now will be superseded with something better.

The definition of our C goal should always end with ‘this or something better’ to allow for circumstantial and environmental changes.
The essence of a C goal is we know ‘what’ we want but we most likely have no idea ‘how’ we’re going to achieve it, so the next step is to break it down into ‘B goals’ – key components or blocks of the overall vision, each of which, taken separately, we have ‘some idea’ of the approach to take but still perhaps less idea of what the ‘how’ involves.

A B goal is an area of the vision which is ‘separate’ from other elements of the vision so the C goal can have an unlimited number of supporting B goals breaking the Dream down into parts writhing which we can develop the nitty gritty goas – the A goals which form the ‘plan’ for achieving the B goal.

This is where the ‘action’ starts. The A goal is something you know exactly how to achieve – exactly what to do and exactly in what order things need to be done.

We could compare this with the ‘SMART’ which is often a ‘continuous’ process aften relating to something we’ve done before and know how to achieve by working ‘harder or faster’. ‘A’ goals however have characteristics not included in ‘Smart’.

First, they must be carried out in the right order – a basic project management technique, and within the activities. Second, they are small, simple, straightforward and finite – ‘one-off’ activities and not continuous processes.

The only proviso with A goals is the ‘how’. They may not be things we personally know how to do, in which case it’s a question, as Dan Sullivan would put it, of ‘who, not how’. You or I may need to find someone else who knows ‘how’ to achieve the outcome we’re looking for.

We go from our ‘big picture’ C goals to a series of activities/actions within the ‘plan’ for each of our B goals, but here’s the catch. As one of my former mentors Trevor Mills said when addressing an assembly of MBA students at Warwick Business School “A plan is no use until it deteriorates into action”.

Find your Seagull, Create your Goals, Make your Plans – Go!