‘GS&R’ for short is perhaps the most high impact meeting type I’ve used. I started using them in 1986 when I worked with College Pro Painters, and over the years I’ve learned how to make these meetings extremely effective.

GS&R is a one-on-one meeting that you have with each person who reports directly to you, and so on down the line. It’s when you set goals with your direct reports for the week coming up and ensure their goals are aligned with the objectives of your team and the company. I’ve even used this meeting very successfully in coaching franchisees.

These meetings are meant to be a blend of direction, development and support—it’s not an opportunity for task or project follow up.  This is a weekly thirty to sixty minute meeting during which you coach your team one-on-one, demonstrating to them how to be more effective in their roles. It’s also when a ton of ‘situational leadership,’ an idea developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, gets used.

Done right, GS&R will eliminate 80% of the emails between you and your direct reports during the week. How? Instead of emailing each other with random questions and ideas, you add those to a list to be discussed at GS&R, saving you both tons of time during the week.  Needless to say, it also saves a lot of frustration caused by the miscommunication that occurs in email.

If you’re not routinely meeting with your direct reports on a weekly basis in a format similar to this, start today and you’ll see improvements quickly.

pic: from the movie ‘Fracture’ with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins (I hope your meetings go better than theirs)

The four areas that SMART Goals in your business are needed for are:

1. Revenue. Determine a solid revenue goal for the next twelve months.

2. Profit. Employees need a profit goal to guide them.

3. Customer Service. I highly recommend using the Net Promoter Score here. It’s the single easiest way to measure true satisfaction.

4. Employee Satisfaction. I also recommend using the Net Promoter Score for establishing the benchmark for employee satisfaction as well – one number from one easy question.

For each of these areas, leadership needs to determine a goal for each area. To ensure that the goals they come up with are SMART, I use these guidelines to help me (mine feature a slight variation on the popular business acronym):

S – Shared – Sharing goals with a coach, mentor or team member adds a little extra pressure to hit them.  I even share them with suppliers and clients.

M – Measurable – Put a number on each goal so you can easily say if the goals were hit or missed. Make the goals clear. Hazy goals produce hazy results.

A – Attainable – Your goal has to be remotely possible for it to be included.

R – Relevant – Ensure that all goals are worth working on.

T – Time-based – Put a date on goals if they’re due before December 31^st.

Once you have the goals set and the team is committed to hitting them, the next thing you need to do is discuss boundaries. That is to say, yes, you want to hit these goals, but to what extent? Would you work 90 hours a week to hit them, or at maximum, 45?  Would you give up equity in the company to raise money to help you hire people to hit the goals? What won’t you do?

Here are some example points that are worth discussing while you create your own list of boundaries:

· Amount of debt you’ll take on

· Number of hours you’ll work

· Number of days traveling you’re willing to put up with

· Percentage of profits you will share, 0-100%

· Percentage of equity you will give up in the company, 0-100%

· Will you complete any acquisitions? If so, how many?

· Would you fire ‘C’ or ‘B’ players? When?

It’s critical to have the discussions in advance.  Boundaries are like values–you can’t compromise them to win.

Before committing to complete a project or set something up as a goal, ensure you spend some time thinking about what the potential return on investment is. That is, what is the return on your investment of time, money or resources in doing this project going to be?  Is it really worth it?

It’s often not about picking which projects to do, but rather it’s about picking which projects NOT to do that will set you up for success.  Recently I had a debate with a woman on Twitter.  She was telling people to spend one hour a day on Twitter, and I said, “Really? Really? Do you really want people spending one out of eight hours every day Tweeting?  Why?” What’s the ROI they are looking for from it?  If you were going to spend 12.5% of your time on one activity such as using Twitter, then in my mind, you’d damn well better have a goal or ROI in mind before starting out.

Every year, about three to four months before the start of the New Year, I mentor CEOs on how to have an Annual Planning Retreat to come up with the top three to five goals for the company. They’ll decide on goals tied to revenue, profit, customer service, employee satisfaction and perhaps something on systems. These annual goals provide the framework for setting quarterly goals going forward.

Every quarter, each business area and each person in your company should be setting up the top three to five goals they will achieve during the quarter to drive the company’s yearly goals.  Imagine the focus your company would have if you knew what each of the top three to five goals each person in your company was achieving every quarter.  Imagine how focused and aligned everyone would become.

High-performing people set goals religiously, track them religiously, they obsess about whether they’re hitting or missing, and why.  Otherwise life just passes by.

When you’re hiring people, ensure you hire people who already set goals in their personal and business lives. Then it won’t be such a stretch to have them setting clear goals in the business each quarter, month and week.

Life isn’t just about goals for your business, though. My goals also include the amount of free time I want in my life.  I set goals for the amount of “Free Days” I’ll have.  A “Free Day” for me is a twenty-four hour period with no email, no business journals, business magazines, newspapers, not a single phone call–it’s just a twenty-four hour period of free time to spend time on the fun stuff in life with people I love.

In 2009, my goal was to have one hundred twenty Free Days.  I had more than one hundred fifty Free Days in the end, however, I got a bit sloppy and checked email randomly from my darn iPhone. I took close to ninety Saturdays and Sundays off, not working at all.  I also took twenty-one perfect Free Days at our cottage in the summer and physically left my iPhone and laptop in Vancouver.  I’m doing it again this summer for sure.

Simply working hard isn’t what it’s all about. As a business coach and mentor, I believe that having the discipline to even take Free Days is the kind of focus you need to give yourself real work life balance, too.   What goals are you setting?

It’s not as much about setting the goals as it is about getting the damn stuff done.

Too many people write lists.  Lists are great.  I use them too.  However getting stuff done isn’t just about lists and setting goals.  That’s only the starting point.

REALLY getting stuff done is about deciding exactly when you’re going to do it and putting that task right into your calendar at a specific time based point.

a) What are you going to do

b) When are you going to do it

All the CEOs that I mentor and coach use this as a tip in getting their way to their goals effectively.

Try that for a week… Prove me wrong.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.