Remove Obstacles to Performance

BETWEEN YOU and anything you want to accomplish in your business or personal life, there will always be obstacles to overcome and roadblocks that you will have to go over or around. Your ability to deal with the inevitable obstacles to success in life is a learnable skill. This ability can do more to help you achieve your goals than perhaps any other skill.

In goal-setting programs, I always ask the question, “Once you have determined your goal, what are all the obstacles that stand between you and your goal at this time?”

Another way to phrase this question is, “Why aren't you already at your goal? What is holding you back?”

People often mistake a goal for an activity. They say, “I have a goal list for each day.” But it's not a goal list; it's a “to-do list.” A goal is something bigger, something that requires overcoming difficulties and solving problems. A goal is something that requires courage, persistence, and determination to achieve. It is not simply an activity or something “to do.”

Determine Your Goals

Begin by determining your most important goals in your work. Why are you on the payroll? What goals have you been hired to achieve? Of all the goals that you can achieve, which are the most important in determining your value and your contribution?

You then ask, “Why aren't I already at this goal? What is holding me back?”

The Principle of Constraints

Eliyahu Goldratt, a management consultant, first wrote about the principle of constraints in his book The Goal, and it is perhaps one of the biggest breakthroughs in management. His idea is simple and can be revolutionary for you.

Goldratt said that between wherever you are and wherever you want to go, there is a path that you need to follow. But along this track there is a choke point or constraint that determines how fast you achieve that goal.

The key question is, “What one factor determines the speed at which I achieve this particular goal?”

When we work with sales organizations, we find that the number one goal of almost every company is high sales. We then define the problem or constraint by saying, “Our sales are not high enough.”

But what else is the problem? We have found that there are as many as twenty-one different reasons why a company's sales are not high enough. And in most cases, the companies are working busily to solve the wrong problem. They are not dealing with the real constraint or bottleneck at all.

The 80/20 Rule Revisited

With regard to constraints, or the factors that are holding you back from achieving your goals, we have found that the 80/20 rule applies. In this case, we find that 80 percent of the reasons why you are not successful in achieving a particular goal are within yourself or within your business. Only 20 percent of the constraints are on the outside, contained in the market, the competition, or other factors.

The starting point, then, of identifying and alleviating your constraints is to ask the question, “What is it in me that is holding me back?”

When you begin by looking into yourself or your business for the reasons, you will often find out exactly why you are not achieving the goals that you have set for yourself.

Identify Individual Constraints

As a manager, one of your most important jobs is to help your employees to identify the key constraint that is holding them back from achieving their most important results. Whether the constraint is a lack of instruction, resources, facilities, money, time, or something else, whenever possible, it is your job as a manager to help employees remove that obstacle or constraint so that they can perform at their best.

Once you have defined the key constraint, focus all your time and attention on alleviating that constraint or limiting factor to success. Concentrate single-mindedly on that one element, that one constraint, to the exclusion of every other activity. Once you alleviate or remove your biggest constraint or obstacle, you'll start to make more progress, faster, than from any other activity you engage in.