I came to a valuable insight the other day about how we approach our workday. You know what is easy to do, some may call it the “default” approach to working? Show up to work and just respond to the inputs. If you’re in a printing plant, those inputs are many: customers, jobs, employee issues, supply chain challenges, your inbox. All day, just respond to the inputs. You end your workday tired, you manage to address many inputs, and you presumably got some things done. So, what’s the non-default approach to work?

The non-default approach to work is waking up from the sleepwalking of just responding to inputs and making conscious decisions about what you’re going to spend your time on based on where you want to take your business. Inputs keep coming; they don’t prioritize themselves. Just because they got to you doesn’t make them the next most important thing to do. When you respond to inputs what is your goal? To get to the bottom of your endless inputs. Good luck with that! Goal setting is more important than ever because we’re all drowning in our inputs. Prioritization is critical and goals help us prioritize.

There are a lot of different words to describe goals for your print business. To name a few: key performance indicators (KPIs), objectives, metrics, etc. I think we all instinctively understand that setting targets for where you want to go is helpful. It’s another place where I think consultants and academia have overcomplicated the issue with the result of turning a lot of people away from the core value goal setting can deliver. I recently read John Doerr’s book Measure What Matters, which I found really informative. Instead of making up lots of complicated language around the process, it really focuses on the execution and accountability. It sure helped that it told firsthand stories of how OKRs (objectives measured by key results) transformed some of the most successful companies on the planet. I highly recommend the book; I listened to it because it is read by lots of people who have used OKRs firsthand. So instead of the author reading about Google, you have people from Google and other companies reading their part of the book.