The 1 Thing Keeping You From Success…3 Tricks To Accountability

So dust off your VCR and pop in “City Slickers” and fast forward to Curly sharing the secret to life…”1.” That’s right, one thing more than any other is the secret. I’ll spare you the existential version or debate omnipotence or destiny and share that from all I’ve seen there is, in fact, one success determinant more than any other, and that is Accountability.

The reason accountability is so universally applicable to success is that success itself is a highly customizable destiny. It is personal, relative and absolutely variable. What isn’t quite so variable is the relationship between success and accountability is nearly absolute. When we measure success, and that takes in the human emotional elements beyond the material, we see that those who have set goals with whatever success criteria they select, are most likely to achieve them in direct proportion to how they hold themselves accountable.

Every conquest has challenges and every success plan has obstacles, where accountability comes in is taking responsibility for what needs to be done: to do, to overcome, to circumvent, to deal with, to conquer. It’s also easy to see accountability in general or vague terms but when the application is systematic, even if by instinct, then the path to success gets recalculated as surely as that GPS lady will tell you, “recalculating route” when you miss your turn. When you take responsibility for whatever happens or confronts you and re-plan accordingly your accountability reroutes you back towards success. Those who become victims of the roadblocks and detours blame the elements and often give up the journey or settle for where they’ve landed.

3 Tricks For Professional Accountability…

Whatever your goals are and however specifically you’ve described them; SMART documentation or dreaming a vision, applying accountability tactics is the surest strategy to stay on course and reach your destination.

1) Translate Goals Into Behaviors

Goals are an endpoint. They describe accomplishment and sometimes what will be encountered or need to be overcome. For every success there is a corresponding behavior, or more likely a list of them that need to done to get to the endpoint, or around the obstacle. More so, these behaviors often need to be sequenced, have dependencies or can be dead ends. A full plotting of the behaviors needed to drive to a goal, how often they need to be done, when you will do them and behavior planning for the variables puts you in a position to drive actions that will lead to the goal and make clear why or why not you are finding success.

2) Find an Accountability Partner

Even the most diligent among us can be a pretty good rationalizer. We forgive ourselves what’s not our fault and readily find a parking spot for procrastination. Having a partner of equal devotion to success means you will have someone to detail your behavior plan to and the follow up on the doing, or trying, is far more important than discussing the results. In reciprocating, helping hold someone else accountable can be a mirror that helps you face behavior shortfalls honestly. Sometimes things work sometimes they don’t but how many times do you win without trying? Making a weekly list that you share and review with a partner means you have someone else to help you do what you say and know you should do and so do they. You don’t need a nag or a scolding to demotivate you but a little guilt knowledge so you won’t have to confess what you didn’t do can be just the urging you need to keep you driving on the right streets.

3) Embrace Measurement

Of all the factors on the road to your success by far the most ignored or manipulated is measurement. We use gut feels or approximations and are sure we know the big stuff but the very process of applying measurement creates inherent accountability. You are better off measuring effort than results, actions over achievement so it comes back to behavior. Don’t make measurement so micro or macro that it loses meaning or becomes an irritant but you know that if you want to lose weight it’s a very different process, and result, if you step on that scale every morning. The variations will be accepted when the long trend lines appear and the fact that you will measure your behavior means you are more likely to do it and the accountability circle is complete. Success, you have reached your destination…

(c) 2017 MyEureka Solutions LLC. For more articles see www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts or follow Tom on Twitter @TomFoxTrainer.

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