There’s a lot written in business books about setting goals, and writing them down to make them concrete. It’s a good concept, and one that successful people tout in books and presentations to business leaders.
An overlooked facet of setting goals is: What timeframe should they be? Do you want to reduce your number of false dispatches by 20% in the next year, or within six months? Do you want your false alarm rate to go down from 1.2 to .8 over the next two years, or would you rather accomplish that much more quickly.
Joe Gibbs, the former Washington Redskins football coach, and a successful NASCAR business owner, spoke on this issue at ESX in Charlotte last week. He encouraged attendees to look at short, definable goals. Rather than spacing out what you want to accomplish, he said you should look at the shortest timeframe possible to achieve success.
It might not be a planetary alignment you achieve in the next three months. But a laudable goal might be to find your five worst customers when it comes to unnecessary alarm signals, and work with them to reduce their false dispatch numbers to zero. That’s a strong accomplishment. You can easily define, track and measure it.
Look at your business model for little steps you can take to reduce those unwanted dispatch calls to police. Write down what you want to do. Then go do it. You’ll get a sense of accomplishment, help a customer, and maybe find some extra business as a side benefit.