Written by Mike Gruley on March 21, 2019
So, this one is for all my golf friends who own businesses.
What if the PGA decided to eliminate individual pars for each hole, meaning that there would no longer be birdies, pars, or bogeys? And, what if, instead of a scorecard to mark each hole’s score, you only had a blank piece of paper on which to mark a hash for each stroke you made?
If the primary goal were still to complete the round in 72 strokes or fewer, would you be able to know how you’redoing on hole number five if your total shots were 23?
Okay, you’re on hole number 14, and your score is 58. How are you doing?
It’s difficult to say isn’t it. In fact, you may not really know how well you’re doing until very late in the round, unless you’re a math whiz, and by that time, it may be too late to adjust your strategy.
In golf, you take a long-term goal of 72 total strokes and boil it down to 18 unique “pars” for each hole based on length and difficulty. This enables you to track, at any time during the round, how well you’re doing toward your end goal of 72. Using benchmark terms like birdies, pars, and bogeys for each of the 18 holes, gives you immediate feedback on where you are in relation to the end goal of 72 or less,and you get this feedback 18 times during the round!
If you are a golfer who seeks improvement, this makes the game engaging, fun and sometimes addicting, because it offers immediate feedback about how you are tracking toward your end goal. What’s more, it allows you to be proactive during the round and make adjustments and corrections along the way.
If this works so well with your golf game, why don’t you do this with your business?
In your business, if you want to achieve your long-term goals, you must treat it like you do your golf game. Take your long-term goals and boil them down to short-term priorities and live in a hole-by-hole world until your long-term vision becomes a reality.
With EOS® (The Entrepreneurial Operating System®), organizations bring their long-term vision down to the ground and execute on it, living in a 90-Day World™ and pulsing on a weekly basis, making birdies and pars, always knowing that the long-term vision they set to achieve is already in the cup.
Next Steps:
- Download a free chapter of Traction by Gino Wickman.
- Download the EOS Scorecard™ from the EOS Toolbox to learn how to maintain an absolute pulse on how your business is doing.