Force Field Analysis: A Strategic Approach to Goal Planning

goal setting

Force Field Analysis is one of many goal planning techniques that you can use as a small business owner or online marketer.

Often you will find that your approach to goal planning and goal achievement proves to be inadequate or incomplete (the evidence lies in the fact that you may not achieve your goals). The beauty of Force Field Analysis for goal planning is that it offers a strategic way to approach your goals. It is easy to use, but incredibly powerful.  It can give you new insights into what is getting in the road of your goals, including lack of awareness of your strengths and the inability to capitalise on them.  It will also help you identify the things that you need to work on and strategies you need to employ to achieve your goals.

I’ve used this approach, as an organizational consultant, since the early 1980’s with small business owners, managers in organisations (public and private sectors), university faculties and doctoral/masters students. I have also used Force Field Analysis with colleagues in action learning groups as we planned our career transitions.

[Image credit: Goal by Sean MacEntee]

How to use Force Field Analysis for goal planning

Force Field Analysis was first used by Kurt Lewin in 1946 when he was working with minority social groups.  What struck him was how people were becoming stuck in their disadvantaged position in society.  He needed a way to help them move beyond where they were now – to achieve their life goals.  

Lewin was acutely aware that many things conspired to maintain the status quo.  He realized that what gave effect to the current situation for these people was a group of hindering and helping forces that created the current equilibrium represented by the status quo.  He recognized that if you analyzed these forces and put in place strategies to address them, you could change the equilibrium and move towards your goal.  Hence the name, Force Field Analysis – analysis of the helping and hindering forces within a particular arena (field).  Lewin was able to create major social change by using this method with people who were suffering social disadvantage.

So it is with any goal you wish to pursue, whether expanding your small business, developing your small business marketing online or improving personal productivity.  Once you identify what is helping you move towards your goal (helping forces) and what is hindering you (hindering forces), you can plan concrete strategies to address these forces.

Specifically, you can work out ways to strengthen the helping forces and weaken the hindering forces – thus changing the equilibrium of the current situation and enabling you to move towards your goal.  It’s this two-way approach that creates the major shift.  So it is not enough just to work on the hindering forces, you also need to strengthen the helping forces.

Force Field Analysis: An Example of Goal Planning

Let’s assume that you have set a goal, “To be effective in small business marketing online”I have developed an example Force Field Analysis based on an imaginary set of forces (helping and hindering) that are impacting on your goal achievement.  Ideally, you would do this analysis with at least one other person, but you can definitely do it by yourself. 

So what you have here is the second rung of goal planning – you have a goal in mind and now you have to establish sub-goals and strategies to move forward.  Force Field Analysis helps you to do this as illustrated in the example below:

FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS 

GOAL:  To be effective in small business marketing online


Hindering Forces


Helping Forces

1. lack of time

1. good brand recognition
2. lack of knowledge

2. motivated

3. don’t know where to start 3. have a good speaking voice
4. not a good writer 4. have friends who are good at small business marketing
5. have no presence on social networks 5. access to good online resources
 6. don’t know how to create a WordPress blog 6. prepared to have a go

 

So now you have to decide which helping forces you will strengthen and which hindering forces you will work to reduce. So some options might be:

In relation to the helping forces, you might employ two or more of these strategies to strengthen the things that are working for you:

  1. develop a podcast blog (to build on your speaking capability)
  2. set clear, achievable milestones to maintain your motivation
  3. use specialists in online branding to strengthen your brand online
  4. talk to your friends about what works for them
  5. study up on your online resources with a particular focus and goal in mind
  6. join a small business online forum or group on one of the social networks.

To reduce the impact of hindering forces you might decide to do two or more of the following:

  1. use your online resources to build your knowledge (in a focused way)
  2. purchase a resource that covers “small business marketing online”
  3. outsource your writing
  4. start with one social network that you are comfortable using, e.g. Squidoo or LinkedIn, and build from there
  5. outsource the design of your WordPress blog to a web design service.

Force Field Analysis has many applications including evaluation of outcomes and processes.  MindTools.com explains how to use Force Field Analysis for decision making and offers a free worksheet for using the tool. 

Force Field Analysis offers a comprehensive approach to goal planning and has been proven over many years to help small business organisations and individuals achieve their goals.

Procrastination: The Enemy of Productivity

procrastination flowchart

procrastination flowchart

 

Procrastination can have many manifestations but ultimately it impacts heavily on your productivity.  Some authors suggest that procrastination is putting off important tasks in favor of less important tasks or doing tasks you enjoy rather than tasks that will lead you to your goal.

There are many reasons why we procrastinate.  In my personal productivity course I discuss fear of failure and fear of success as possible causes.  In this blog post, I will look at procrastination in terms of pursuing our preferences, over doing what we should do in order to be productive.

[Image credit: Procrastination Flowchart by jean-louis zimmermann]

Procrastination: doing what you love rather than what will make you productive

One of the manifestations of your procrastination could be that you avoid the mundane, routine tasks that are necessary to realize and maintain your goals.   If you are a creative-type person, you will find yourself spending time on creating new things – new websites, blog posts or other endeavors – at the expense of doing things that are necessary to move you closer to your goals – things that would enhance your productivity in terms of goal achievement.

Sometimes we can become productive in the wrong things – we can concentrate on the 80% of things that don’t lead directly to our goals and ignore the 20% of tasks that do.  Yaro Starak describes this 8o/20 rule in the following terms:

… the important thing to understand is that in your life there are certain activities you do (your 20 percent) that account for the majority (your 80 percent) of your happiness and outputs.

If you focus only on the things that you enjoy, then you will avoid the things that are less exciting but that contribute more to your goals.  In fact, one of the things that have been identified about successful people is that each day they do first the things that they don’t like doing but see as necessary for goal achievement (before they do the things they like).  This daily discipline is a way they overcome procrastination to improve their productivity and achieve their goals in life.

So if you want to improve your personal productivity, it pays to look at the important tasks that you tend to avoid because they are routine or boring.  Ask yourself how you could give them a new priority, instead of leaving them to last (when you invariably have no time to complete them).

It may be you are putting off social bookmarking, writing that important blog post, updating your browser or making simple (but important changes) to your website – all in favor of enjoying endless interactions on websites such as Facebook or Squidoo.  Alternatively, you may be avoiding engaging on these social networks because you find logging in, reading and commenting boring tasks. 

You really have to take a close look at your procrastination and determine what is going on for you, if you want to improve your productivity.

7 Ways Focus Improves Your Productivity

Improve productivity through focus

 Improve productivity through focus

I’ve been reflecting on how focus has helped me to improve productivity with respect to blogging.  Over the last 3 months, I have written 80 blog posts for my Small Business Odyssey blog (from 400 to 1000+ words each), while in the previous three months I wrote only one blog post.  This improved productivity is the result of focus. 

One of my early posts on this blog was about the benefits of focus for small business marketing.  In this current blog post, I want to discuss how focus improves productivity – as it has obviously done for me with regard to blogging. 

[Photo credit: Close Focus Lens by SqueakyMarmot]

7 ways to improve productivity through focus 

There is no doubt in my mind that focus was one of the key means that helped me to improve productivity.  In reflecting on this, I identified 7 key ways focus contributed to my productivity improvement: 

1. Focus builds momentum 

Early definitions of ‘momentum’ described it as ‘the power residing in a moving object’.  You know yourself that once you get a heavy object moving, it gains momentum and is a lot easier to push (e.g. trying to push a broken-down car).  For me, momentum is the key benefit of focus.  Once I decided that I would focus on writing a blog about small business marketing, I began to overcome the resistances (the heavy objects) that were residing in me – the barriers to productivity.  Once I started writing blog posts with my new-found focus, I began to gain momentum – writing blog posts became easier and I looked forward to writing them. 

2. Focus is motivational 

Once you become focused, you start to achieve things that seemed impossible before.  You become more disciplined, avoid distractions and build sound habits that help to improve productivity.  The sense of achievement you gain is motivational – it provides the intrinsic reward, a sense of satisfaction, that keeps you going.  Extrinsic rewards, in the form of increased traffic and revenue usually follow, but it is the inner sense of achieving a worthwhile goal that provides the initial impetus.  Focus enables you to gain this sense of achievement and the resultant motivation that leads to improved productivity

3. Focus channels energy 

Focus brings an alignment of your energies (mental, physical, emotional) so that you are able to pursue a single goal or direction with increasing energy.  You know yourself that a lack of focus dissipates energy – you are ‘all over the place’.  Focus, on the other hand, results in harnessing energy towards a single goal.  I think of the analogy of using a magnifying glass to focus the energy of the sun’s rays to burn a hole in a piece of paper (as we used to do as kids).  The sun’s energy is there all the time, but it is unfocused unless you capture it with a magnifying glass (or nowadays with solar panels to produce electricity).  It is the focus (or the focusing instrument) that channels and concentrates energy.  This channelled energy helps you, in turn, to improve productivity. 

4. Focus creates a new significance 

Lou Tice, famous organizational psychologist, used to talk about the power of organization vision to ‘create a new significance’ – visioning is about focusing on a desired future state that you want to work towards achieving.  He explained that the process of visioning, focusing of some desired future, activates a part of the brain called the RAS (reticular activating system) which is responsible for arousal and activating the conscious mind.   So, for example, you may be driving to work in a ‘mindless state’, almost on remote control.  Then suddenly you see the rear lights of the car in front of you turn read (the brake light).  It is the RAS that tells your body to take evasive action (your brain has recognised the significance of the red light – you are going to crash if you don’t stop or swerve away).  TheRAS brings you back to a heightened state of consciousness.  And so it is with focus in any arena of life, especially in small business marketing.  The consequence is that you start to see things you did not notice before, new resources come to your attention, and you recognise new resource people – your brain has created a new significance around your focus and this new consciousness helps you to improve your productivity because you become better resourced and informed. 

5. Focus attracts productive people to you 

Other people value focus because it demonstrates commitment and achievement – a goal that many people aspire to but cannot achieve.   People who have achieved in life are attracted to other productive people and recognise their expertise.  Here’s a simple example from my own experience.  I decided a few years ago to spend a year acquiring expertise in Squidoo and eventually attained the level of Giant Squid100 (100 excellent Squidoo lenses determined by Squidoo itself).  This enabled me to write many blog posts about Squidoo and create an e-book on Squidoo Marketing Strategies which I sold via Paypal.  As my expertise developed I came to the attention of Mari Smith, Facebook expert, who asked me to run a webinar for her on Squidoo for her Social Media Certification Course.  This gave me increased exposure and access to resources and contributed substantially to my visibility, branding, motivation and productivity.  Mari is a great example of how focus attracts others, builds expertise and increases personal productivity.  

6. Focus improves efficiency 

Efficiency is about achieving more in less time – the hallmark of productive people.  With focus you are able to avoid distractions and use your time better.  You can overcome information overload because your focus gives you the basis for ignoring, or attending to, the endless bits of information that you are bombarded with.  You can sift through information quickly and attend to only those things that further your goal (your primary focus).  As you become more time efficient through your focus, you improve your productivity in terms of achieving your goal. 

7. Focus taps emotional energy 

It is very difficult to sustain a focus unless there is some emotional attachment to the goal underlying your focus.  So in my case, the focus on small business marketing contributes to two key goals of mine – the promotion of my own HR consultancy business and the development of a future stream of revenue when I wind down from running workshops.  I have a very strong, emotional commitment to both these goals which are interrelated and intertwined.  This enables me to tap into the emotional energy involved in my focus and to improve my productivity.  The positive emotional energy sustains me when the going gets hard – writer’s block, downtime on my computer, the pressures of my offline business and illness.  A key lesson here is to align your focus with a goal you find emotionally energizing and your focus will help you to sustain and improve your productivity. 

For further information on ways to enjoy the benefits of focus and learn to improve productivity in your small business marketing, subscribe to my free e-course on how to be productive