How do you stop playing Whack-a-mole with your goals?

Most people that I know want it all. They want success. They want happiness. They want to be envied, loved, and cherished. They want to achieve all sorts of goals.

Some people take this desire and turn it into motivation. They start working towards their goals.

Some people become overwhelmed. They see all they want and decide to do nothing. Rather than working towards something that is difficult and unlikely, they quit.

Being the director of operations for a growing company, we have numerous meetings where we discuss top priorities. In those meetings we address those important objectives. We outline what we want to achieve as a company. Just as the individual who wants it all, we have to be careful we use this to create motivation. We have to make sure it doesn’t overwhelm our staff, creating an environment where they feel it is impossible to reach the targets.

One thing that we do during those meetings is we cut things from the list. The reason is simple. If we try for too many, we won’t reach any of them. If we reduce them and focus on a few crucial ones, we can usually put resources behind them so we can succeed.

Often it becomes a balancing act. We have to decide where to pull resources from. Then we put those resources towards our most important initiatives.

But as soon as we do that, someone will point out that the area we pulled from is now going to be producing less than it was. If we aren’t careful, we will let other areas turn into problems. As those problems surface, we move resources to address them, but other problem areas pop up.

In previous work environments it felt as though we were playing the game Whack-a-mole. In the game, there are several holes in the board where a small plastic mole would appear. The goal is to hit the mole on the head, so it goes back down into the hole.

The game can be fun. But in real life playing Whack-a-mole with important goals and desires can be draining. As we start to make real progress in one area, another problem surfaces. We fix that problem but then another problem comes up.

We found two ways to fix the Whack-a-mole problem. This allows us to fix a problem without creating other problems.

First, we develop priorities and stick with them. We do this by making sure we align he most crucial elements of the business. If we say developing new product X is most important, then we have to be willing to put the resources towards it. This means that other areas might suffer a bit as we get product X up and running.

We call this setting the priorities. We have a lot of important elements that we have to address. Addressing all means failure. So, we make a list and start through the most important priorities first.

The next thing we do is change from solving one-off problems to looking at things systematically. We want the problem to be gone but we know we can't band-aid fix them or they will manifest in another way soon.

So, we look at each problem or new initiative as a system. We ask, “How we can we change our structures, processes, procedures etc. so this problem cannot surface again?”

This is different than what most people do. Most people want to alleviate the symptoms of the problem. So, they reach out to the angry customer and give them a refund instead of figuring out why the order got messed up. This takes away the symptom of the problem (angry customer) without working to fix the reason why the problem happened in the first place.

But if we address the symptom and the system, we can make sure we tighten up our operations. This helps to avoid making a similar mistake in the future.

Whenever we have a new initiative, we lay out the process before we jump in. We want to understand how this new project is going to impact the rest of the business. We build the structure so it can sustain and scale. We don't do it so it can provide quick benefit but cause issues down the road.

To stop playing metaphorical Whack-a-mole in business or in life, learn to create clear priorities and work them from the top. Don’t assume we can do everything all at once. Then tackle problems or new opportunities in a systematic way. This will allow you to build a foundation. Then you can build on top of that foundation rather than starting over from the bottom at each pass.