The Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “progress” as “a forward or onward movement (as to an objective or to a goal); a gradual progressive betterment.”
I think the average person views the results of his or her effort in terms of success or failure. While
success-oriented people look at the results of their actions in terms of progress toward professional growth and maturing expertise.
An illustration will help explain this distinction. Early one Saturday morning, while I was walking through my neighborhood, I noticed this message on an elementary school message board, “Students Progress Reports Due This Week.” My mind flashed back to a time when I was in elementary school and students received “report cards.” Now they call them “progress reports.”
Obviously there is a big difference between a progress report and a report card. The progress report is a measurement of movement toward a goal or goals. While a report card reflects degrees of passing or failing. A report card can also be used to measures an individual against other students in the class thereby establishing a pecking order among peers.
As I reflected on the message of the elementary school board sign I, instantly understood that that I preferred to have my actions graded using a progress report. The measurement being: are you more effective today than yesterday, better this week than last week, more productive this year than last year?
The best way to ensure you are making progress is to ask yourself three question. But don’t answer them quickly or flippantly. Your goal is to determine if you are truly more effective today than you were last week, last month, or even last year.
Are you making progress toward your goal?
To make progress toward reaching your goal, you must first set a clear well defined goal. You can’t achieve everything and do everything. Having a goal sharpens the focus of your plan, and helps to avoid wasting effort on irrelevant and conflicting issues. Knowing what you want to achieve is the first step in making progress toward your goal.
Are you making progress toward getting organized?
Organize around your goals. Organizing forces you to simplify your plan and deal with priorities.
Knowing what to do, when to do it, where to do it, and how to do it enhances your progress toward goal achievement. Don’t forget to organize your time. Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive writes, “Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.” Look for and eliminate time-wasters.
Are you making progress toward integrating actions?
Always connect the goal to your actions. Focus on activities that bring you closer to the goal and eliminate actions that don’t contribute to goal achievement. Identify the actions that will deliver success and then ask yourself, “Are you really doing the things that are required to reach your goals or, do you equate “success” with effort and not results?” Spend more time on results than touting your efforts. Results count, not effort.
Progress is a habit; it is a mindset. And a mindset can always be improved. Strive for daily and weekly improvement in all your actions. Challenge your current commitment to self progress.
Each and ever one of us face the urgent need to make progress —rapid and continuous — in our personal life, our career and our organization. Incremental progress doesn’t work in today’s world. If your idea of progress is small calculated steps toward a distant goal, you will be passed on the autobahn of progress (change) by others with their “pedal to the metal.”
HOG THOUGHT: Progress is made by organizing activities around accomplishing the goal. In the normal course of making progress, Successful people make significant impact getting the right things done by doing the right things.
HOG QUOTE: “Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.” — Thomas A. Edison
HOG ACTION: We are to: Make progress toward our goals; Make progress toward getting organized; Make progress toward integrating actions. The goal is to make progress and progress requires change.
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