Goals are easy to set; yet hard to achieve.

I meet business owners with lofty goals and the ones (entirely) missing the mark. It's as if their goals are dreams - and once we put pen to paper, reality sinks in. In many cases, this reality check is the last time they speak with me. Reality sucks, and goals are not well-thought-out.

Albert Einstein said, "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions."

Use this paradigm in your goal setting and if you fail to achieve your goals.

Here is an alphabet soup of common acronyms to use while setting goals. First, set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), use the proper OKR – (Objectives and Key Results), and set KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

This will help set more reasonable goals; however, it does not solve the problem of why you fail to achieve your goals.

Spend the time in discovery asking questions about why you missed your goal – when you're done asking questions, ask more questions, dig deeper. Don't stop until you are satisfied there are no more questions to answer. Here are some questions:

• Is my goal a results goal or a process goal?

• Was my failure from internal weakness or outside threats?

• Did I assign the proper personnel? Did they understand their task?

• Was the timeline appropriate? Was the goal too grandiose?

• Could my team / myself handle this project at this time?

Consider the movie "Field of Dreams." The movie's premise was centered around a process goal: "If you build it, they will come." The result of "them coming" was never the goal.

Setting excellent process goals provides you with a solid foundation for hitting larger result goals without having your success or failure tied to them.