The CLEAR Path to Achieve Goals
Setting and achieving goals is probably one of the easiest and most difficult activities we engage in during our lives. I am sure that many would agree that we set goals every day, yet when we look back on our day or week or month – we realize that something happened, and we did not achieve the goals we wanted to. This is why I founded Clear Success Group – to help people and businesses achieve their goals in a new and innovative way.
Who we are and What we do
Over the last 25 years I have worked with hundreds of organizations to implement and achieve growth through process improvements and change management, while at the same time helping people around me to define and achieve goals to grow both personally or professionally. Along the way, I have seen some great successes, been proud of how some have really come out of their shells and have seen some take great strides in growing their careers or starting a business they never thought they could.
I have always been an analytical person, asking the why questions and wondering if there was a better way. I am not like most “analysts” as it is defined in today’s workforce though. I do like the math and logic that many analysts use, but my real passion falls in the people side of how processes work. I have obtained the education and experience to write and understand mathematical formulas to define process flows, however I have always been more interested in the way people act and choose their line at the supermarket. This observing and addressing the “way people tend to do things” rather than defining a formula to describe it is where my passion lies.
So, as I watched the people around me setting, working on, and sometimes achieving their goals or plans, I knew that there were commonalities for how these goals and plans had come into being for a wide range of people, yet I could not yet see it. The topic of setting and achieving goals is after all nothing new and there is plenty of information out there on the topic, yet I am confident that many of the people I worked with would not have accessed the same information. There must be something they were all doing subconsciously that worked? During the last couple years, I had been searching for this commonality thinking that someone must have written about this, and then it came to me one day as I was driving in the middle of nowhere in particular (this is where my best thinking happens by the way), and that was an acronym that spelled CLEAR, which defined the steps that should be followed to succeed with goals.
What started out as a simple idea while I was driving, has grown into a powerful system that we call The CLEAR Process™. At first, I thought it was just about goals, however the more I used it and the more people I talked to about it, I realized that it really does fit any plan, project, path, innovation, you name it – if there is a starting point and a finishing point, the CLEAR Process™ fits and provides the path to success.
The Evolution of a Company and a Purpose
The goal of Clear Success Group is to provide the mechanisms to develop and manage how The CLEAR Process™ is used and implemented in the marketplace today. There are so many people out there that are confused about how to set and achieve goals, with only 20% of the population knowing how to create good goals, and less than 5% of people achieve them. Clear Success Group was founded to provide a place for businesses and individuals to find the support and guidance they need to achieve goals they have always wanted to. Often people give up on goals, or because their goals are vague, or they do not know if they are still working on them. I hope to change that with The CLEAR Process™ as it provides a path to success in any goal, plan, or innovation.
This is why I created this blog and the purpose behind it. I want to share this concept with as many people as I can. I want to get The CLEAR Process™ working for people and business as they achieve their goals. I wanted to create more than a blog that is a combination of new-content that I create, and additional information gathered from other sources. I wanted to create a blog that engages people to think. A blog that does more than share ideas, it engages creative thought. So, the purpose of this blog is to provide guidance and content to help people achieve their goals, while at the same time challenging them to think and learn more about the kind of goals they want to and can achieve.
Our Philosophy of Goals
For most of my life I have tried to keep life simple by focusing on a bigger picture and defining the world around me in terms of fewer things to start with. From these big groups of common things, I can dig deeper for details if need be, however I first remain focused on the big picture. For example, there are thousands if not millions of flower types in the world. Yet when I look at a flower, I see a red rose and not a specific type of flower like a Chrysler Imperial Rose. I see goals in the same way. No matter what change or improvement you want to make, it is quite simply a goal first and foremost. From there we can dig into more detail such as process improvement, strategic plan, change management, business plan, diet, exercise, etc., where the specific details have meaning, yet when you get down to it, they are all types of goals.
Now, I don’t want to mislead – the details are important, and should be included, however where I think many people go wrong is they focus on the details so much, that they don’t see the path to use simple yet powerful systems like The CLEAR Process™ to guide them through to success. They try to find the details of success in a specific type of plan and that is a struggle to do and may not exist. When we want to focus on the beauty and intricacy of a red rose, it may help to understand the specifics of what makes a Chrysler Imperial Rose unique, however we need to know how to cultivate and grow roses in general, not just specifically Chrysler Imperial Roses – that can come later when we know we need to specialize.
Where are we going and What can you expect?
Every Monday I will be posting a new concept, idea, or strategy related to setting and achieving goals that you can take with you through your week. To stay in touch with a big picture view of goals and achieving them, I will often challenge you with concepts more than specifics. A story about whether your company is like a football team or basketball team will provide food for thought, discussing a golfer turned business owner will hopefully make you think about choosing the right goals. As much as I would like to spell out the specifics, I also believe that we need to be challenged now and then to think outside the box and look for connections we had not seen before. If you are ready to be challenged and think in a different way, or have struggled with setting and achieving goals, or are wanting increased value in your career, I hope you find this blog to be a resource to achieve your goals.
Don’t forget to check out our website to learn more about Clear Success Group and what we do. We love to hear feedback and encourage your getting in on the conversation. You can reach us at engage@clear-success.com or go to the Contact Us on our website.