5 secrets to achieving your goals, according to business leaders

The Harvard Business Review suggests personal or professional goals are famously hard to achieve. If the effort outweighs the perceived reward, we are tempted to give up on our targets.

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So, how can you turn that situation around and achieve your professional and personal goals? Five business leaders gave us their top tips.

1. Create manageable targets

Bev White, CEO at recruiter Nash Squared, said professionals who want to set meaningful goals must know what they want to achieve.

"I call this understanding your why and your purpose," she said. "When you're clear about those areas, think carefully about what will help you get there and set your goals."

White told ZDNET it's vital professionals break long-term targets into manageable chunks.

"Someone's goal might be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, but there are many steps along the path to that destination: training, fitness, kit, logistics, planning, travel," she said.

"So, break your big goal down into constituent parts and work on them."

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White also said that professionals must be realistic about their goals.

"If it becomes apparent a goal isn't achievable or you've changed your mind, don't be afraid to change tack," she said. "This is part of the learning and growing process."

On the other hand, if you do stick with your target, make sure you celebrate small successes along the way.

"This keeps your motivation up and inspires you to keep going," she said.

"It's also good to share your goals with a mentor or someone you know and trust because that makes the goal more real. They can encourage and share with you in celebrating your successes on your journey."

2. Embrace your naivety

Chris Kronenthal, president and CTO at FreedomPay, encouraged target-setting professionals to start naively and be prepared to become as practical as possible.

"You need that naivety to try to do something highly improbable at the time," he said.

Kronenthal gave ZDNET the example of entrepreneurs starting an innovative business. Most startups will fail, yet statistical probabilities shouldn't put you off pursuing your dream, whether reaching the top of your profession or spinning out a successful business.

"It's going to be hard. But to take your first step, you must be naive and believe that you will be that 1% who succeeds," he said.

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Kronenthal suggested there are two critical success factors for achieving personal goals.

"One is a mentor, and that's not someone who just hangs out with you in your free time. That's somebody who will critically engage in your growth and who's done it before," he said.

"And the second part is that achieving your personal goals takes longer than you think. You won't reach your goal if you quit. Instead, you must think your success is just a matter of time."

3. Collaborate with people

Jeff Palmiero, technical vice president at Raymond James, said achieving your personal goals means being relentless.

"I always try to expect as near to perfection as possible," he said, before explaining how his command center uses dashboards in its Dynatrace observability platform to check the performance of enterprise applications.

Palmiero said that while green is good, red indicates a slower transaction, and purple shows a problem, such as a generic HTTP 500 server error.

"Success is about the constant scrutiny of those dashboards and, where you see red and purple, you challenge the command center and say, 'This is unacceptable. Let's not whitewash,'" he said.

"Every indicator doesn't always have to be green, but, where we're having problems, I want people working with the developers towards perfection. I will routinely say, 'Why is that red? Are you guys looking into it? Are you collaborating with the development team?'"

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Palmiero told ZDNET that collaborating with people outside your department can help you achieve your goals, which is something he sees when setting objectives at Raymond James.

"Maybe the outcome of those discussions is that 800 milliseconds is the best response time we're ever going to achieve because of the nature of what must happen during a process. Maybe it's very computationally or IO-intensive," he said.

"At that point, we'll agree to set the threshold the business helps us set. As a developer, it's easy for me to say, '10 seconds is good,' but the business has to agree and say what threshold is palatable."

4. Push the boundaries

Madoc Batters, head of cloud and IT security at Warner Leisure Hotels, said grit is the key word for people who want to set and achieve personal goals.

"You need determination," he said. "I do quite a lot of long-distance running, so I practice setting targets outside of work. It's given me a mindset to overcome obstacles. You've got to keep pushing the boundaries."

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Batters told ZDNET it's crucial to listen to advice from trusted experts, but you must also have faith in yourself.

"You've got to take it on board. But while they are part of the decision-making process, you are too," he said.

"Success requires you to collect as much data as possible to make the best decision you can at a point in time."

Batters also encouraged professionals to consider how their past and future selves would view the decision-making process.

"Try to take a step back from the here and now and understand how a decision affects the future," he said.

5. Build a network

Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard said setting and achieving personal goals is about staying open to fresh challenges.

She spoke with ZDNET at a hotel in London during a recent tour of the company's European operations and talked about her career evolution.

"A couple of nights ago, I did a panel in France and a question came from the audience, 'Did you plan to become a CIO?' And I didn't. Maybe some people do, but I didn't," she said.

"The way I've approached my career has been to look at different opportunities, get out of my comfort zone, and try new things."

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Stoddard said she volunteered for stretch assignments during her career.

"Sometimes, I liked what I did, and sometimes I didn't," she said. "However, at least I knew I had experienced that job and could cross that area of work off the list."

Stoddard reflected on her journey to the top and said achieving your targets is about building relationships.

"Success is about getting people to know you and what you know, what your interests and capabilities are, and then raising your hand to volunteer for different things," she said.

"And that's how I've moved through companies. That's how I built a network. And now I'm here at Adobe."

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