Goals and dreams that seem exciting and doable when we prepare our strategy and plan can feel impossible a short time later once we're drowning in operational madness. If we're not careful, we'll forget all about our good intentions and shift into survival mode - only to wonder why we couldn't pull it all off at the end of the year.
It doesn't need to be this way!
Here are 5 things you can do to stick to your dreams after they oxidise with reality.
1. Make your intentions visible
Put your goals, objectives or plans on the wall. Stick post-its to your monitor. Make it your desktop background. Include your goals in the header or footer of your meeting agendas. You're significantly more likely to stick to things you remember
2. Build little things (while you wait for the big things)
Putting together a new risk management framework, but you won't have it until August? In the meantime, develop a speedy checklist for making decisions that won't be perfect but will be much better than nothing. Launching a new website? Update your most visited page to get you started. Find the minimum viable version of your goals and do them as fast as possible to make your ideas real.
3. Build in reflection sessions
Quarterly is not often enough. Every month, look at what's working, what's not, and what you've learned or been surprised by. Update things accordingly. Communicate openly and make uncovering surprising mistakes and errors a fun game.
4. Replace your list with a lens
Your strategy probably has an ambitious list of new workstreams or projects you have no idea how to fit in. Instead of worrying about your list, use your strategy as the lens for how you do the things you're doing anyway. Once you know your priorities, everything from your email signature to your meeting structure should reflect them - get tweaking.
5. Don't believe your overwhelmed brain
When you took the time and space to step back and look at your business, you could see the potential. You could see how capable you all were of achieving amazing things. Now that you're drowning under the weight of minutiae again, it's easy to think you were being unrealistic.
You weren't. You had a perspective that you don't have right now. If you're choosing who to believe, believe Strategy Day You. Keep the faith and decide to channel that energy today.
Alicia McKay