The finish line.

When you read those words, what do you think? And what do you feel?

Do you imagine, or recall, experiences of:

- Soaring across a finish line?

- Struggling to cross it?

- Missing a finish line altogether, despite your best intentions and most dedicated preparation?

If you’re like most people, your experience with finish lines – and goal achievement – covers the full range from exuberance to missing the mark at times.

Goal-setting and goal achievement is, of course, on the minds of many people now, as the year begins.

If you’re setting goals for this year, try these steps:

1. Think back on your greatest achievements.

Recall what helped you see your way through to achieve them. Was it:

– Setting a clear vision of what you wanted to achieve?

– Seeking customer feedback, whoever the customers were for your work at the time, and letting that guide you forward?

– Following a thread of promising results, wherever they led?

– Concentrating on team or individual development so you’d be well-prepared for a future challenge?

– Did you use some other approach or strategy? If so, what was it?

2. Based on what you discover, what does it tell you about what may work best for goal-setting now?

– Do you need to create a clear vision of your goal, or a strong “felt sense” of achieving what you want now, and next?

–  Do you need to seek customer feedback to guide goal-setting?

–  Do you need to focus on what’s working well and use that to guide you to what’s best for you in the months ahead?

–  Or do you need to concentrate on developing skills or those of a team you lead so that you’re primed for a bigger goal in the future?

–  Is there yet another strategy that would guide you best as you prepare to achieve well in 2012?

Speaking for myself, when I do this exercise, I follow several approaches.

First, I create or refresh the vision that guides my work over several years.

Then I look at what worked well the prior year, and what I need to improve.

I use that information to set aggressive, yet grounded goals for the year ahead.

Next, I create a few annual performance measures to monitor and manage progress.

Finally, when it works best, I convert those annual measures into monthly and weekly measures. I use these to focus and produce steady progress.

These more frequent measures provide me almost instant feedback so I know if I’m on pace, and on-track to meet my goals, or if I must adjust my processes, resources, or perhaps the goals, themselves.

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Failure – well, partial failure – on a recent vacation activity reminded me what NOT to do when training someone.

In this case, I was a trainee.

Here was the situation:

A group of six of us had gathered on the beautiful Oregon coast, traveling from five different locations throughout the US to share the Christmas holiday.

Our daughter and her boyfriend, the most knowledgeable about Oregon, had looked for activities we might all like, in addition to enjoying each others’ company, cooking together, exploration of the beautiful area, and long beach walks.

Anne and John suggested crabbing which is, essentially, going out in a boat in waterproof clothes to catch your own seafood dinner.

Were we open to the idea?

We were.

The adventure, if nothing else, sounded like fun.

The day of crabbing arrived.

We donned our waterproof gear of boots, gloves, and warm, water-resistant clothes.

We paid for our boat, bait and other fees and bought our permits.

We listened quietly and earnestly as one of the owners of the crabbing company explained the process we would be following, what to look for, and which crabs were illegal to catch, and so had to be thrown back.

The lessons were simple, and we were sure we understood them. The woman training us seemed to be sure we were ready, too.

Her husband led us out to the boat we would use, and helped us get launched, providing lessons there on using this particular boat.

We headed out to the open water, a bit nervous but ready for the fun work ahead.

Soon, with patience, practice, purposeful experimentation, positive attitudes and a little friendly competition, we started to catch cioppino-bound crabs.

We filled every minute we had and headed back to port, buoyant, cold, tired, a bit wet despite our waterproof clothes, and feeling somewhat lucky and happy about our five-crab catch.

We also felt good about our teamwork and the process we’d “mastered” as much as we could in the few hours’  learning and experimentation we’d had for the task.

We sized up the afternoon’s work as a relative success.

Or so we thought.

Here’s the problem:

As we took off our gear, the owners of the crabbing company started getting crabby, and then accusatory with us about some unexpected holes in the nets.

We’d noticed one, too, as we worked, and wondered how it had happened, but tried to adapt by tying knots from a few of the seemingly chewed through ends of the cording.

We had followed their training to the letter, and reiterated that to these angry people, as they drove away future business in their process of defending their nets.

They blamed, accused, and turned what had been a fun adventure into, frankly, a baffling and maddening one.

I quickly tired of their accusatory tone, and replied, “We don’t know what you’re talking about. REALLY! We DO NOT UNDERSTAND what you’re talking about!”

Nothing they described as having happened to the nets on our watch, and none of the ill intent they attributed to us had been true.

Trying to make heads or tails out of this unexpected situation, I added, “Those things you’re describing make NO sense. Why would we do something to let the crabs OUT of the net? It was our goal to CATCH them.”

Part of me wondered if part of the way this duo increased their short-term profits (thinking nothing of the probable long-term effect) was to charge each boat an additional $40 for a net, after the fact.

And as I write this, I still wonder about that.

And in a negative sense, it was amazing to be reminded what a major impact a bad attitude from one or two people can have on a group, and how it can come close to ruining a otherwise-great experience…unless you actively counteract the effect.

I was also amazed that the owners of the company were not taking any responsibility for the training they provided.

As the experience wrapped up and we drove off with our crabs and distasteful memories of those crabby owners, we STILL didn’t understand what went wrong with the adventure of the nets.

We DO know a few things, however:

- We were glad to have shared the good part of the adventure.

- We were glad we’d caught enough crab for dinner, since we’d invested time, effort and money in the process.

- We would go crabbing again…just not through that company.

Here, then, are a few recommendations, if you train other people, in anything, for any reason:

1. Mistake-proof the process as much as you can. Teach the mistake-proofed process.

2. Help the learners understand the big picture, goals and process they will be using.

3. Provide the significant details that can ensure success and cause failure, if you know the things that may happen with novices at the helm.

4. Provide visual aids that learners can easily refer to as they work, if need be.

5. If you see the learners doing something wrong, correct them during the process.

Don’t wait until after the fact to inform them they did something wrong, and worst of all, to do it in an accusatory manner. That’s essentially lying in wait, hoping they’ll fail so you can be “right.”

However, if they fail at the process, and you see it happen…whether you trained them on those details or not…but do nothing to correct it, the fault is yours. You have the power to prevent a problem that they, who are less experienced, may not even be able to see yet.

6. Assume good intentions on the part of the people you’re training.

It makes no logical sense that someone would want to spend their time, energy, and money, if that is also involved, doing things wrong.

7. Take responsibility for your training design, detail, and effectiveness.

8. If you think you’re training effectively, and you want to make sure you are, you’ll ask learners for their feedback, as well as objectively assessing their successful application of your training attempts.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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