As a leader, there are a number of things you can do to improve the likelihood that the goals set by and with your team are reached. The steps that follow are specific and direct things you can do to improve the success of your team in achieving their goals:

• Visualize. Visualization will help make the goal more real, and realizing our goals allows us to realize our goals. The bigger the goal, the more important visualization becomes. As goals get bigger, it is important to make even more effort to help people visualize not only the end goal, but also the major milestone points along the way, and even to visualize success in managing the plan itself.

• Flex. You need to be willing to flex your plan and your timeline to meet new realities, and maybe even flex the goal itself. Plans are important and they will be more effective when they are flexible.

• Implement consistently. As a leader, if you are serious about goal achievement, you must feverishly focus on implementation.

• Provide time. Google is famous for giving people one day per week to work on whatever projects they want — outside of their “regular” job. Although you may dismiss the idea out of hand as Silicon Valley silliness, the practice has led to innovations that are significant contributors to their bottom line (Google Mail is just one example).

• Schedule time. If you are serious about achieving the goals you have set, and you want your team to be serious too, put goal time on the calendar. Until you schedule it in everyone’s calendar (including yours), you won’t achieve as many of your goals as you could.

• Provide resources. As a new leader, you may not realize all the resources you have at your disposal, but you have them. Use them abundantly in support of goal achievement.

• Make it a priority. If the goals aren’t a priority for you, they certainly won’t be for your team. If they are a priority for you, make sure you are showing obvious and outward proof of this fact