Strategy Before Execution (Part I)

While leaving the gym recently, I noticed an advertisement they had up for the *insert description here* public to take notice to. It simply said, “Goals Are Just Ideas Without a Plan”.

Thank you Boston Sports Club…

After thinking about it for a bit, I realized how true, and how insightful this actually was. Furthermore, I realized how much we as a general public breeze through our lives spewing our goals. Family, career, education, exercise, are just a few of the arenas we (should) constantly set personal goals for.

Too often we catch ourselves aspiring to reach goals, without actually thinking/knowing/planning on what it will take to achieve them. Lacking direction, lacking a “reverse timeline”, if you will. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, it’s pretty simple. You take what your final goal is, then go backwards noting the individual steps it will take for you to get there, starting at the finish, and ending at the start.

The reverse timeline is what created my wake-up alarm setting…And the ability to hit the ten minute snooze button only once…Never more.

So, as a challenge to you (and to myself for that matter), think about something you want to achieve. From there, list out all of the things that have to happen, and how long each will take to accomplish. Not only will this provide you with your action plan, but it will give you an accurate timeline as well.

One of the things I’ve realized in my current role within EMC is how important these reverse timelines are. Often times, businesses have incredible goals but do not understand the necessary tasks at hand in order to achieve their goals. Goals such as cloud, virtualization, and disaster recovery are hefty projects, and our customers are going through these journeys at a blazing (and successful) pace. Not because they have a larger budget than others, not because it’s easier for them, but because we’ve worked as a team to strategize a reverse timeline. They know what they want, and they now know what they need in order to make it happen.

Here at EMC, our reverse timeline is simple, and is why I believe we and our customers have been able to achieve our goals together.

“Strategy Before Execution”

So tell me, what’s your goal?

You ready to talk?

–

Dan

To be continued…