What to do when you’re missing your goals.
Image you have started a new job and you and your boss set up your goals. You're off to set the world on fire and prove to your boss she made the right decision in hiring you. Then, you start missing your required results to hit your goals. There are many reasons you might miss your goals. Maybe, you are not working hard enough or perhaps the market has changed. Either way, a simple Root Cause Analysis or RCA can help you get back on track.
For many, just mentioning root cause analysis makes them cringe and run and hide; however, if you break the process into pieces, then eating the elephant is not that hard. Root cause analysis is an approach for identifying the underlying causes of an incident, so the most effective solutions can be identified and implemented. It’s typically used when something goes badly, but can also be used when something goes well. Within an organization, problem solving, incident investigation, and root cause analysis are all fundamentally connected by the following basic questions and then acting on them:
- What’s the problem?
- Specify the problem, What about the goal keeps you from being successful?
- Evaluate the problem. What will be done to prevent it from happening again?
- Solve the problem. Create an action plan.
- Measure the outcomes.
Define the problem:
To figure out what went wrong, you must first define what the problem is. Let’s say you have a goal of selling three cars per week and you only sell one per week on average. The problem is clearly you are not selling enough cars per week. The real question then becomes why I am not selling three cars per week.
What keeps me from reaching my goals?
It is important to first decide what about your goal is causing you to miss the mark. The reason could be one or more of these factors: environment, people, materials, equipment, methods or measurements.
- Environment: Location where a task is completed.
- Department: Specialized functional area within an organization or a division, such as accounting, marketing, planning.
- Materials: Refers to the items needed to complete your job, such as paper for printing or nails for construction of wooded objects.
- Equipment: Refers to specific tools or machinery needed to complete a job, such as a saw to cut wood or a computer to create reports
- Methods: The process used to collect information and data for the purpose of making business decisions. This may include publication research, interviews, surveys and other research techniques.
- Measurements: Scales of measurement refer to ways in which variables/numbers are defined and categorized.
- People: Refers to co-workers, manager, supervisors, vendors and customers
Once you have decided which factor is causing you to miss your goals, you are ready to move to the next step. It is important to note there may be more than one factor causing you to miss your goal. There is one more important factor not listed, that must also be accounted for. Are you getting in your own way or are you doing or not doing something you should be doing, but chose not to? If the answer to this is yes, then you could still do a RCA, but you may not need the analysis. Just change your work habits and get back on track. There is a good chance your boss has done a RCA and has decided you are the problem for you not reaching your goals.
What about the factor is causing you to miss your goal?
Let’s continue to use the car sales goal. Let's say you have decided the reason you cannot sell more than one car per week is because of the methods used to sell cars. When you started working at the dealership, maybe you were not trained in successful methods of closing the deal. You should ask yourself why did I not get trained or why did I not understand the training.
Solve the problem:
Once you have decided what is causing you to miss your goals, then you can set out to solve the problem. In our example as a salesman, you need to seek out training on how to close the deal. This training may come from your supervisor, another salesman or maybe an online course.
Measure the outcomes:
After creating the RCA, it is important to make sure your plan is working. In the case of our salesman, are you now selling at least three cars per week? If not, it is possible there is more than one factor that is causing this to happen or possibly the person who retrained you did not effectively train you on how to close the deal. Regardless of the reason, it may be necessary to do another RCA or at least reevaluate the RCA you created.
Although RCA’s can be daunting, by breaking them into smaller pieces and answering the questions, it will be easy to develop an action plan to help you get back on track. When creating a RCA, involve as many people as possible. Often times, a problem you are having has been solved by someone in your organization and you are not aware. The trick is to complete the RCA, ask for help and keep working on obtaining your goals.