KAPs – Key Accountability Points for the Journey Ahead
Have you heard the expression that “life is a journey, not a destination”? Well, when it comes to setting goals for your law firm, accounting firm or professional service firm, life is a journey on the way to a destination.
Destination goals (such as revenue and staffing targets and other specific outcomes) are important, but you’re not going to reach them without specific stepping stones. Journey goals (such as improving your skills and relationships) are those steps that will get you there.
If you find yourself rushing to the finish line and then wonder why you and your people keep falling short on your goals, here are five key points that will bring your attention back to the journey:
- Development - If you donʼt develop your people, at best they will only be as good next year as they are right now…at best! How can you break the stagnation cycle and help them be better?
- Ask versus tell – How can a person grow if you tell them what to do and how to do it? If you help your kids with math homework by giving them the answers, they WILL fail their next text. What do you need to be asking instead of telling?
- Enabling - Give a man a fish he eats for a day; teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime; it’s no different in business. If you keep enabling your people by doing things for them, they will keep letting you. The change must come from the top. No change = no growth. How are you enabling your people and what are you willing to stop doing for them RIGHT NOW?
- Tolerating - It takes two to tango. Allowing and tolerating unproductive results and behavior leads both parties to “you know where” (nowhere, no accountability). Are you contributing to your people’s success by challenging their shortfalls, or contributing to their failure by tolerating them? What is one thing you can stop tolerating today?
- Lead the journey – Your job as accountability leader is to help your people identify their journey goals and support their development. Run alongside them so they can reach their destination goals, and so you can reach yours! When will you schedule a conversation with each team member to discuss their journey?
Each of the Key Accountability Points above contains an action question, giving you a great start for increasing your workplace accountability. Not only that, but by focusing on the journey, and not just the destination, you greatly improve your chances of reaching your goals and targets.
Destination Goals and Journey Goals
“In the absence of defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” – Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer
Goal setting is an important part of the RUG foundation of your accountability system. It’s a big topic, and today I just want to hone in on one distinction that my clients have found really helpful.
Most professional service firms are pretty good at setting targets, and that tends to be what they focus on. That’s a destination goal. Destination goals are an intended end point (think performance, results).
What are some examples of professional destination goals?
- Gaining five new clients this year.
- Retaining 100% of existing clients.
- Recruiting and hiring eight new staff members.
- Cutting expenses by 15% this year.
- Realization rate at 101%!!!
When you’re only focused on results, what’s missing is developing your people to empower them to reach those destination goals. And that’s where journey goals come in.
A journey goal is what you must do in order to reach the destination goal. What will help you get there?
Some examples of professional journey goals are:
- Improving active listening skills (we can all certainly grow here).
- Expanding one’s business network.
- Finding and developing talented people.
- Learning how to better pick low-hanging fruit (cross-selling, referrals, add-ons).
- Becoming a better leader.
When leaders focus only on destination goals, they almost always encourage stagnation. If people are not encouraged to strengthen, stretch, and learn new things, how can they develop? How can you grow and keep up with the times? How can you gain, retain and grow your client base? If you don’t focus on journey goals, at best, you’ll only be as good this year as you were last year.
When your focus is only on the destination goals you are being too near-sighted.
When your focus is only on the journey goals you are being too far-sighted.
In order to have 20/20 accountability vision you need BOTH destination and journey goals.
