Am I chasing the right aim – or just a number?
3 min
The aim you name first is rarely the real one. It's your best articulation of what you want, and more often than not it's a symptom. The fewer hours you're chasing might really be about work you've quietly stopped enjoying. The leads you think you're missing might really be about deals that were never properly qualified. The hire might really be about a decision you've been avoiding making yourself.
I have a client whose aim was to get his week down to twenty hours, and we'd been building toward it. But his real aim was to enjoy his time in the business again and strip out what he no longer liked doing – and reaching that would have landed him near twenty hours anyway. He never called it out, because he never consciously saw it; it was there in the conversations, in his body language, in where the enthusiasm was and where the resistance sat. If we'd kept marching at the number, we'd have missed the point entirely.
That's the trap with a clear aim: when the work is relentless, the meaning gets lost in the effort of meeting it. So before you spend another year marching toward a number, sit with what it's pointing at. Ask what having it would actually give you – then ask the same question of the answer that comes back. Two or three passes in, you usually land on something with no number on it at all. That's the real thing, and the closer you get to it, the more the work means and the more likely it is to take you somewhere you genuinely want to be.
Every word of the video, in plain text.
Have a think about a personal aim you have for your business. You've probably got a number in your head. Is it more revenue or more profit? Fewer hours working in the business each week? A few more leads coming in? A hire you keep meaning to make? Is it something you've decided that's the thing that would really make the business feel the way you wanted it to feel when you started? And have you been marching towards it? Because as they say, a clear aim is what keeps you focused when the work is relentless.
But here's what I've learned about that number. The aim you name first is rarely the real one. It's your best articulation of what you want, and more often than not, it's just a symptom.
I have a client whose aim was to work less. He wanted to get his week down to 20 hours, and we'd been building towards that. But that wasn't his real aim. It was not that he wanted to only work 20 hours, but he wanted to enjoy his time in the business again, and strip out the things he no longer enjoyed doing. And the result of that would have got him somewhere near 20 hours anyway. But if we'd just kept marching towards the number, we would have missed that point entirely. And he never called that out, because he never consciously saw it. But it was there in the conversations we had, in his body language, in where the enthusiasm was and where the resistance sat. The number was pointing at something underneath it, and the number itself was actually never the thing that really mattered.
And that's the trap with a clear aim. When the work is rigorous, the meaning of the aim can get lost in an effort of meeting it, and it gets lost more easily than you'd think. You get so focused on hitting the target that you stop asking yourself whether the target was ever the real thing. And most of the advice you'll be given, most of the tools you'll be handed, will treat this symptom – get you more leads, point you at a better website, tell you where and when to make the hire you named. The harder and more useful work goes after the cause. It asks what the number is really standing in for.
Because the fewer hours you're chasing might really be about the work you've quietly stopped enjoying. The leads you think you are missing might be really about the deals that were never properly qualified in the first place. The hire might really be about a decision you've been avoiding making yourself.
So before you spend another year marching towards a number, it's worth sitting with what it's pointing at. The closer you get to the real aim, the more the work actually means and the more likely it is to take you somewhere where you genuinely want it to be.
See where your own selling sits
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