The Steps To Success

For this weeks reading I read the first two chapters of the book Measure What Matters by Katie Delahaye Paine. In the second chapter of the book Paine said, "Before you can achieve success, you have to decide how you’ll know when you get there." When it comes to measuring your success you need measurable objectives so, with that being said, she gave us a step-by-step procedure for choosing and reaching a consensus on measurable objectives:

1. Understand your background                                                                                                              -This ranges from listing out your goals to knowing who your competitors are. 
2. Assemble your team                                                                                                                            -Every single person from every single position is on board.
3. Ask them what they mean when they say, "Damn, we just got our butts kicked"                                    -This shows how they deal with failure. You want to record their responses.
4. Ask them what they mean when they say, "Congratulations, you really kicked butt last week."              -This shows how they deal with success. Record this as well.
5. Ask everyone what their objectives are                                                                                               -Record their answers to this also and keep asking them "Why does that matter?" and recording those answers too until they have a true, measurable objective that relates to the bottom line.
6. Once responses are up, have people vote on the highest priority. 

Those steps lead you to success, if done correctly. Starting with the first step and understanding your background, if you list out your goals, your competition, to demographic and stakeholders it'll make everything easier when you assemble your team. Having the right people on your team makes all the difference as well, that's why it's important to ask them what it means to them to get their "butts kicked" or to "kick butt" and to ask them their goals. I like to believe that's why it's written down, because that way you always have your goal in sight. Voting on the highest priority will make tasks easier by knowing how important it is and how fast it needs to completed. 

This is kind of how Julie and I did our Storify project, we had our goal, talked things out, such as: ideas, weaknesses, and definitely the competition. So we got together and did the best we could on the assignment. We thought of the negative outcomes and all of the positives but, we had our objective and stuck to it because we had an understanding for why it mattered. That's pretty clutch process to success.