Culture Focused Practice

Hey. Hey. Welcome back. This is Dr. Tara Vossenkemper, and and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice Podcast. Welcome, welcome.

So we are gonna be talking about goal setting, so basically why goal setting fails and how we can fix it in our practices. I am notorious. Man, I am just thinking about goals that I've set over the years and how it's taken me literally years to achieve them.

I wanted an intra office website, you know, four years ago. I think I had the idea back in 2000. I fuck 19 or something. And guess when I finally did it? 2024, I think. Maybe 23. No, it was 24. Holy wow. Yeah, it was 2024 by finally. I say had a wild hair, but honestly it's a combination of a variety of things, including having enough mental space and time to just even throw something together.

So I can't wait to get into this. Um, because there's goal setting of course, which is kind of fun, you know, it feels really productive. It feels like, yeah, we've got, we've got goals, we're gonna get things done, and then it falls flat. And there it goes. It just goal setting is fun and feels productive.

Achieving those goals is not productive all the time unless we are doing certain things to ensure that we are achieving our goals, which is again, sort of the point of this episode is to talk about why goal setting fails and seek to solve that problem. Make sure that we don't fail with our goal setting.

You know, some people might feel guilty if their goals fail. I don't, I don't feel guilty. I, you might, I, maybe you set a goal and you feel guilty for your team, or because you let you know, maybe you think you let people down, or you're just broadly speaking frustrated because you want the thing done and it just continues not to get done, and you keep setting the goal every year or every six months or every two years, whatever it might be.

It doesn't, it just, it doesn't have to be that way. Let's, let's just break this down. It could be, just hear me out. If your goal keeps failing it not, it might not be you, so lemme say that again. 'cause I stutter. If your goal keeps failing, it might not be you. It could be your system is faulty or. You don't have a system, there's no system in place for achieving goals.

That's what today is about. So there's a variety of reasons why goal setting fails. Of course, one can be that there's no system in place. We'll talk about that. But let's just, let's just get into a few common reasons for why goal setting fails.

One is that there's a few different things. One is that your goals are just that they're just too vague. You know, the goals are too vague. Or they could be overly ambitious, like I'm gonna, you know, revamp my whole onboarding process, including training videos and, you know, smooth, clean segues into all of, all of these additional resources in two months. Probably not, not while you're also running a group practice and maybe you're in too many roles and maybe, I mean, sure you could do that, but that's pretty, that's a pretty, that's a pretty ambitious goal. I'm gonna hire 10 people within two months, probably not. If you're a giant conglomerate, sure, you might have the funding and the resource to be able to hire people in bulk, but for most small to mid-size practices, that is a, that's a large number of people in a, in a small amount of time.

So your goals could be too vague. They could be just overly ambitious, or this is the one I often struggle with, there might just be too many at once. So we, too many goals at once is just not possible. Again, depending on what they are and what your role or roles are, what your role is, or what your roles are at your practice.

I'm notorious for thinking I can get way more done than what I can actually get done. You know, the idea of achieving a goal or a goal in and of itself might seem simple. In the context of running a group practice or being in a leadership position at a group practice and having some sort of life, and maybe you get sick and maybe a fire comes up another, you know, like a work related issue, a big one presents itself and you know, there's all the stuff we can't account for.

So having too many at once can be problematic.

Another problem. So why goal setting fails? So again, we're talking about too vague, too ambitious, or too many at once.

Another problem is that there's not any clear accountability. So you might set a goal and think, yeah, so that that seems like it should be so and so. They should get it done. Then it's never documented or they're not held accountable or it's not clearly communicated or dot dot dot fill in the blank if there isn't one person responsible for the goal. It's not going to happen unless you do it, and the reality is that you probably have too much on your plate already, so it's just not going to happen.

Third reason why goal setting fails. Shiny object syndrome. Most visionary entrepreneurs are gonna fall prey to this at some point in their life. If you haven't already, maybe you are the exception. I would say this is more the norm than the exception. There are just so many exciting things to do. I am not ever short on ideas.

I am constantly short on capacity and time. So saying yes and coming up with shit to do exciting things, things I wanna chase, things I wanna create, things I wanna, you know, learn, whatever it might be. That's. Shiny object syndrome, you know, so again, we, we can have systems, we can put things in place to try to stop this from happening, but it's, it's pretty common occurrence.

And then the fourth thing would be lack of tracking. So. In essence, if you're not measuring this goal in some way, how do you know if it's ever achieved? Like we have to have something in place. I'm sorry. How do we know that we're making progress? Excuse me, which of course ties in with achievement. So if we're not measuring our goal, how do we know that we're actually making progress on that goal?

We don't. New flash, we don't. And I don't know about you, but I know myself and I know that once I'm in the process of doing something, I am constantly looking ahead at the next bar, but I'm not really thinking about where I've come from or what I've done. I'm just interested in what I'm doing next. I'm, I'm sort of constantly forward looking in that way, not in a, uh, it doesn't, that probably sounds like I'm really critical or something.

I'm, I'm not, I'm just excited. I'm, I'm excitable about moving forward and doing things, you know, so kind of maybe ties in with shiny object syndrome a little bit, but we do need to be able to measure what we're doing because that is a, a way that we can figure it out if we're actually making progress.

Um, there's a few different ways to set your goals and, and achieve them, excuse me, to set and achieve your goals in practice.

There's four key things I'm gonna talk about here, and I'm gonna try not to get into super depth with them because I am, I really, really like this topic. So, um, I like a lot of topics, so let me, I'm gonna try to be, be very clear and concise when I talk about this. Gods speed to us all. Wish me luck.

First step, we need to set fewer goals and they need to be clearer. So we should have fewer goals. I think Gino Wickman says no more than, hmm, no more than three to seven rocks in a quarter. A quarter being a 90 day world, you know, January, February, March is a quarter is literally quarter one in the year. No more than three to seven rocks in a quarter. And less is more.

Less is more. Don't take on all seven. Less is more because then we can laser focus in on what is most important to get done. And Gino Wickman, for those who don't know, he is the author of Traction. There's a whole traction library, a variety of books that he's written. He's written, excuse me. Um, traction is the sort of foundational text, can I say seminal text when it comes to business books, just like Semial seminal text for the entrepreneurial operating system, which is also known as EOS. And I use EOS very actively in my practice and I help folks learn how to use it and it's, it's an incredible structure for businesses.

According to Gino Wickman, no more than three to seven goals in a quarter, again, a 90 day world, and we want less. So my preference is three. I don't like people having more than three goals in a quarter. They also have to be SMART goals. And for my therapists who are listening, people in a clinical field, you know what SMART goals are for people who aren't in a clinical field.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable slash attainable. I've seen it both ways. Realistic slash relevant and timely, or time sensitive. So basically making your goal detailed, measurable, realistic, and achievable. So for example, instead of something like improved client conversions as a 90 day goal, that doesn't tell me anything.

The goal should be increased client conversions by 15% within three months. That's a goal. You are saying what you want to happen, you are giving a timeframe. You are saying what you want it to increase by. Whether that's achievable is a different conversation, but let's just go with it 15% in three months.

So step one is set fewer goals and make them SMART. You need to set fewer and clearer goals. Again, I would say SMART goals. SMART is an acronym. Uh, if you didn't catch that all, all caps on the SMART. The word smart. Excuse me.

Step two is breaking your goal down into achievable steps or milestones. We had an EOS implementer come, he sort of just was a guest at one of our leadership team meetings, our L 10 meetings and gave us, um, we, we were are doing a lot of things right, but one of the things he said that really, really helped was this thing in particular that really helped me and my team think about our 90 day world. Think about our quarterly goals, our quarterly rocks, and what we, we, we started doing, excuse me, what he recommended and what we started doing. What we've done since is implemented milestones with our goals. So at the end of month one, what does success towards this goal look like?

But at the end of month two, what does it look like? And by the end of month three. That's when we expect the goal to be done. So for example, if once you have a 90 day goal set you, it's so easy, you just wanna start working backwards. So you wanna look at it based on we, I like monthly. You could do monthly, you could go so far as to do weekly if you really wanted to.

But if our goal, for example, is to increase client conversion by 15% in three months, it might be by the end of 30 days, we are reviewing all of our current scripts. So whoever's responsible for this goal, which we'll talk about, is gonna review all the scripts, the email script, the phone script. They're gonna figure out, they wanna look at everything with fresh eyes.

They're going to double look at their systems and processes. So it's basically gonna be review all systems and processes. Is there anything in here that's overkill, that's too much? Am I seeing people leave at a certain point in time. They're also going to identify the main leads and the leads that we end up having.

The highest conversion rate. Is it word of mouth? Is it Google? Is it a direct referral? Like what are the who, who are we getting the most, or is it a specific referral partner? For example, that's by 30 days. It's almost like information gathering and assessment of current information, and they're gonna continue tracking. So of course if there's tracking set up, they're gonna continue along with that.

By the end of 60 days, maybe they've developed and have started beta testing a new phone script or a new email script. They're continuing tracking. They started a text message campaign. They started that would be by the end of 60 days, and then by 90 days it's that they have fully implemented the most effective script and systems for client conversion, and they're continuing tracking and seeing that increase up to 15%.

Again, I think 15% three months is high. So let's just say seven that might be more realistic. So you see by 30, 60, 90 days, there are very clear actionable steps for a person to take or milestones to achieve that goal. So. Less goals and then clear steps along the way. Step. I've seen steps a lot. So again, we're talking about how are we actually now setting and achieving goals in our practice.

Step one is setting fewer clear goals. Step two is breaking it down into actionable things like milestones. Step three is assigning ownership. One person is responsible for ensuring this goal happens. That does not mean there is only one person working on the goal. It does mean that one person is heading up this goal completion, so it might be my intake coordinator, or in my world, like we call her client care coordinator.

My client care coordinator is responsible for increasing conversion by 7% in three months, but she might have to collaborate with my marketing director. She might. Excuse me, she might have to collaborate with my clinical director, my director of clinical ops. She might have to collaborate with my biller. She might have to collaborate with my integrator. She might have to collaborate with me. That doesn't mean that nobody else is involved, but it does mean that she's the one responsible for this thing getting done and for keeping us on track with our milestones.

So last step in all of this. So again, we've got setting fewer clear goals. We've got breaking it down into milestones. We've got assigning ownership. One person owns a goal, do not give it to multiple people. That is not how it works. So one person has ownership of it.

The last thing is we have to track progress. So like we said earlier, if you don't, or if you're not tracking progress, you don't really know if you're making it and then also at the end of it, if you don't have a clear goal and you don't know if you've achieved it or not. So tracking progress, you can do this in a variety of ways. Again, we are an EOS based practice, so on a weekly basis we do an L 10 meeting. This is a level 10 meeting. It's got a very clear, incredible agenda.

Keeps us really hyperfocused on what's most important. In that meeting agenda, we are reviewing our quarterly goals and we are saying that's one of the items. It takes no more than five minutes per week. The only thing we're allowed to say about it is whether it's on track or off track, and we, all of us can clearly speak to this goal because we have milestones.

So I know by the end of February, I need this thing done to be on track for my goal. That's on track. That's all I'm saying. Just on track or off track, if you don't do L 10, if you don't know EOS, you don't do L 10, fine. This can be a five minute meeting on a weekly basis, you absolutely need something scheduled.

Do not say, well, just send 'em an email check in. No, don't do it. Create a scorecard. Create some sort of tracking mechanism. Schedule a weekly recurring meeting, 15 minutes at most. You don't need a lot of time. You just need to know, are you on track? Are you hitting your milestones? And if they say no, that's where that 15 minutes might come in handy.

You say, okay, what do you need help with? Where are you stuck? Boom. We're staying focused. You're staying on track. We know the progress we're making, we're, we're working through this together, so, okay. Keeping going. God, I love EOS. This isn't all EOS, but I mean, this is like, there's so much, so many EOS based concepts that are infused in this, this discussion right now.

It, it, it, in my mind it is EOS, basically as it's one component of it. So those are the four steps to basically setting and achieving goals.

Some pitfalls and how to avoid them. One is falling back into old habits. So if you're not, this is where you need to set something recurring on the calendar to check in, either with yourself, do it for yourself, or to check in with the person who has a goal at your practice that you know, like, we need to get this done work, both working on these goals.

So schedule it out. Once that goal, once you decided this is a goal for the next 90 days. Put a recurring weekly meeting on the calendar for, again, 15 minutes. You know, you don't need a full hour to review someone's goal. This isn't a status update. This is a, are we on track, yes or no? Boom. Done 15 minutes every single week. Same time, same day, standing meeting. And if you do L 10, you know it's already in the agenda, so I don't need to tell you this twice. Don't flake on that meeting. Don't, don't do it. 'cause if you are not scheduling the check-ins, things are just gonna fizzle and you're gonna get to the end of the quarter and say, wait, what the fuck happened?

Why, how did we not, do we still not achieve this? Really? Don't flake on that.

Uh, number two, there's sometimes people get afraid of adjusting their goals if you are. If you are working on a goal and you realize this, something is not like the milestones we set are way off, like, oh gosh, the milestones we set are off, or the goal is like we need it broken down more, like this is actually too ambitious.

You get started and you realize the goal is too ambitious, or the milestones are way too intense or way too lenient, like, I'm gonna be done with this by next week. Just adjust it. You don't, I'm not saying don't abandon the goal. If, if the goal is too easy to achieve, then expand on it. If your milestones, if it's too ambitious, break it down.

Make it two goals, this goal for this quarter, and then that goal for next quarter. Now you've got your next quarter's goals too, so you can adjust things based on the data that you have from tracking your progress. Don't do it because you haven't gotten started. If you're two months into the quarter and you haven't even looked at your goals since you set it, that's not, that's not where the adjustment comes in.

It's because you're tracking progress that you realize, oh fuck, like I, this is off. We need to make an adjustment. That's an informed adjustment. That's not a, whoop, I dropped the ball. Woo. You know, it's not one of those types of things. Not that I've ever done anything like that, you know? Yeah. But never, I've never dropped the ball on my goals.

No, sir. Yes, I absolutely have. In case you didn't hear my story in the beginning, where I've wanted an intra office website for four years before I finally did one. What's really funny about that, it wasn't even a goal, I just did it because again, I had some space and time because I had people in the right seats and things delegated and anyway, uh, okay, so one more common pitfall.

Um, too much perfectionism. It, man, I'll say this much. This is not something I relate to. Perfectionism is not something I struggle with. I am very particular, but I don't give a fuck if something is perfect. I just want it started. I want it started, and I wanna know that it can evolve as I go. I think because I know things evolve consistently, that I always know my starting point is not my end point.

Like, because I need feedback, I'm, I need to hear about, I need to see it living, and I need feedback from people who are either interacting with it or around me to, to be able to make adjustments. You know, how do you evolve we don't have input or feedback. And even if it's internal, like, I'm using this and I'm like, oh God, I don't actually like the way this is.

That's still feedback. It's internal feedback, of course, but it's still feedback. So too much perfectionism is gonna be a pitfall. It done is, is much, much better than perfect. You just need something in process. It's process over perfection. I say process. I remember saying that with a clinician years ago talking about we were doing supervision and that was like a recurring theme where it's no, no, no, it's process over perfection, not progress.

Process, just be in process with something. It's going to naturally evolve, it's going to progress, but just think about as, as, as being an ongoing process. That's all that we're after. So really, really quick, let's do recap this. This is fast man. This is down and dirty baby.

So problems, why goal, the problem, why goal setting fails too big, too ambitious, too many at once. No clear accountability. Shiny object syndrome. I know y'all know what I'm talking about. Or lack of tracking. And again, if you're not measuring it, you don't even know what progress you're making.

How we fix it, we set fewer clear goals. We set SMART goals, we break them down into actionable steps or milestones. We assign one owner per goal. Do not argue with me on that ever. I will karate chop you through the screen. You have to have one owner. That's it. Just one person responsible for one goal. Again, they can be collaborative. That person can work with others, but there is one responsible party. And lastly, we track progress.

Doesn't need to be complicated. You don't need a whole ass, you know, Trello board or Gantt chart, or you can have those, but ultimately you just need something to indicate whether you're on or off track.

So, and again, the pitfalls. By falling into old habits and not scheduling things by being afraid or being afraid of adjusting your goal if you are, if you realize something about it is not working. So again, based on your tracking and your progress, you realize something's not working. Don't be afraid to adjust your goal. And also having too much perfectionism, just too worried about it. This has to be perfect before I go live with it. No, it doesn't. No, you don't just go, just do what you need to do. Just get it started and you, it can evolve from there.

If you are interested in going deeper on any of this stuff, I need you to join me at my membership Culture Focused Practice Membership. It's a steal of a price. You get me live twice a month for a q and a for an hour, and a training for an hour that is informed by what the people want.

Private group, of course, private Facebook group, but as well as a portal with a variety of resources in there for you. If you are more EOS inclined and you want help with implementing that, join my wait list. I do an EOS Mastermind twice a year. That's come, well, I don't know actually the timing of this or when you're listening, but I do an EOS Mastermind twice a year.

Join the wait list. Go to my website, taravossenkemper.com. Join the wait, wait list there or the membership, taravossenkemper.com, join the membership with the Culture Focus Practice, or if you just want a little free EOS something. I've got a Facebook group called the EOS Collective for Group Practices. Search it out facebook.com/groups/eoscollective and stay up with me here.

Make sure you subscribe to this podcast to stay up on all of the episodes. And, um, yeah, I would love to hear from you. Let me know what's on your mind. Let me know what you need help with. I hope this, I hope this was helpful for you and get to cracking on your goals.

Thanks. See ya.