Goal Setting – The ARC System

Goal setting is easy, maintaining the habits that move up towards that goal can be harder.  Often it’s not our intentions that let us down, but the small micro decisions that we make on an hourly and daily basis.  Building habits is a topic in itself, but a critical foundation component is to set meaningful goals that we are connected to.  So that’s what I’ll be looking at with this system.

I’ll talk about this in a personal goal setting context, but the system can be equally applied to a team or organisational situation.  Whether it’s a personal or professional goal, the critical factor is that we are genuinely connected to it.  Let’s look at the stages of the system which establishes this connection.

Aim

This is simply the goal itself.  The destination you want to reach.

Reason

This is your motivation.  Why do you want to achieve this goal?  What will it give you?  What will this achievement mean?  If you want to dig down, use the ‘5 Why’s’ exercise and keep asking why until there are no more why’s to ask.  This should help you drill down to the bedrock of your motivation.

Resources

What will you need to achieve this goal?  These resources might be external, such as time, equipment, software, people, etc.  Alternatively these resources might be internal.  Progress might require training, personal capacity, resilience, adaptability, etc.

Control

What elements or factors are withing your control.  Also, what critical factors are not?  It’s important to identify these as we can have our progress derailed by something we have no control over, yet still blame ourselves for the outcome.  Recognising this helps to create and maintain our resilience.

Consequences

This is where we get to the deeper connection.  Cast your mind forward and imagine this goal has been reached.  What has this done for you? What does the success look and feel like?  Then flip this and imagine the goal hasn’t been reached.  Again, what does this look and feel like?  Sometimes we are driven by the will to succeed, sometimes we are more driven by a fear of failure, more often it’s a mix of both (especially withing a team).  By keying into these outcomes we can tap into all the motivation we have.

Checkpoints

We rarely get there in one leap, so wat are the checkpoints along the way that will evidence your progress?  Identify these so you can ensure you are moving in the right direction and making positive progress (which includes failing and learning).  Each checkpoint also gives us something to celebrate.  Then when we reach the final checkpoint (our initial aim), we can reflect, reset, and create the next set of goals.

For large goals we might want to do this in a formulaic process, for small goals we might just use this system to frame our thinking.  Either way it helps us to set well formed and meaning full goals that we are connected to. The stronger the connection, the greater the chance of success.