If It's Important Then Write it Down - The Very Brief Story of How One Business Owner Found Out 2011 was a Good Year for his Firm (Hint: it started in 2010)

“Jeff, I am afraid I won’t be good company for coffee later on today as I am feeling a bit down.”

“What’s going on Derrick?”

I was speaking with Derrick in early October, an ambitious New York City business owner, who was not his usual optimistic self, who was cancelling our coffee scheduled for later in the day.

“Our team did not have a good 3^rd quarter - we missed our revenue numbers and some of my staff did not get as much done as I expected with their projects. There were other things that didn’t happen as well, but I can’t remember them all.  It got me pissed off and now I’m in a bad mood. ”

“That isn’t good Derrick, but that will happen, some quarters will be better than others.”  I was struggling what to say next to Derrick when I suddenly remembered something that I thought might help.

“Derrick, when we met at the beginning of this year, you told me you were excited that you had written down the outcomes you wanted for 2011.  Do you remember those outcomes?”

“Wow Jeff, thanks for reminding me, I forgot all about those outcomes and probably haven’t looked at those outcomes in a couple of months.  Good thing I wrote them down.  If you got a second, I can pull them up.”

“Sounds good Derrick.”  Within a minute or two Derrick had his firm’s 2011 outcomes that he had written down late in 2010 on his computer screen.

As Derrick quickly scanned his 2011 outcomes he started talking,  “Jeff, I don’t know if you remember but I grouped my expected 2011 outcomes into four areas – Sales, Marketing, Staffing, and Operations,” I could a hear a sudden change in Derrick’s voice, he was now excited.

“Why so excited Derrick?”

“So far, we have hit 8 of the 12 outcomes I had written down, like having three additional sales people hitting their quota and making a key senior operational hire which is going to give us a much stronger offer in 2012.  We also surpassed our qualified lead outcome for this past quarter which means we should be set up for a very good 4^th quarter.”

“What about the items you just mentioned that you didn’t accomplish in the 3^rd quarter?”

“Those items are not nearly as important as the outcomes I wrote down last year,” Derrick quickly replied.

“That’s neat Derrick, so I guess we can meet for coffee after all?”

“Are you crazy Jeff, I got to get ready for tomorrow, with a little effort and focus we can end up surpassing 10 out of the 12 outcomes.”

“Ok, we can postpone our coffee Derrick, but I got to ask, what about the two outcomes you won’t make?”

“Well, one just doesn’t make sense anymore, I should have replaced it earlier in the year and one we just won’t hit, it’s too late now.  Although, if I had been reviewing these outcomes, I could have made some different moves and made this outcome as well, so that’s a bit frustrating, but I’ll take surpassing 10 out of 11 outcomes.”

“That’s great Derrick, the only bad news is we won’t get to see each other for coffee.”

Derrick laughed, and said, “let’s put something in the calendar for next week, it will work better anyway for me.”

“Why’s that Derrick?”

“Because I just assigned myself the task to write down my 2012 outcomes ahead of our coffee next week.”

“Glad I can be your deadline Derrick for creating your 2012 outcomes, see you next week, same time.”

If you are not writing down what’s important for yourself and your firm in 2012, don’t be surprised if you don’t know if 2012 was a good year or not.