Goals Goals

This weekend I just completed my goals for 2009. No, its not new year resolutions. I tend to set and track my goals twice an year - during Christmas vacation (and in Jun/Jul), as I go to my village and in the serene coconut grove, its lot easier to introspect how I spent the last year and what should I be doing for the coming year. I run the first set of goals with my support group and after incorporating their feedback, I'm done. This is a practice, I've been doing religiously over a few years and this year is no different.

I was asked by a few friends and colleagues to explain my process of setting up the goals and hence this post (few resources at the end of the post!)

First and foremost is to come-up with a personal mission of sorts. I found out mine to be "Facilitating Impact through Innovation. Contribute. Learn. Enjoy". I don't know whether this represents a mission, but this statement has worked wonders for me. It helps to both set and evaluate goals.

In 2006, I ran into an article The ABC's of a Kaleidoscope Career in which the authors argue that there are three parameters for individuals to take stock of their career decisions and make changes and transitions to meet their needs for their lives, families and themselves. These are:

• an individual's needs for challenge, career advancement and self-worth juxtaposed against
• a family's need for balance, relationships, and caregiving, intersected by the person's need to say,
• "what about me?", "How can I be authentic, true to myself and make genuine decisions for myself in my life?".

Stephen Covey, in his First Things First, recommends setting goals keeping in mind the roles that one tends to play - your role at the office (engineer, manager, accountant etc.,), parent, spouse, volunteer at an organization etc., I liked this idea and next define the primary roles that I play.

Once the primary roles are defined, I go about setting top level goals for the each role and in the second pass further subdivide the same into quarterly/monthly goals and a measurement criteria for each of these.

Finally I do a check. Are the roles inline with the ABCs mentioned above? And are the goals inline with the mission described above? If I pass this test, I take it to my support group for feedback. The whole process usually takes about 2-3 weeks. I review the progress usually in April/May during the summer vacation.

Here are some resources:
1. Franklin Covey's Mission Statement Builder
2. Franklin Covey's Outlook add-in PlanPlus for weekly planning
3. Creating Desired Future workshop
4. www.43things.com - List your goals, Share your progress, Cheer each other on
5. Joe's Goals - Habit tracker
6. Suggested Reading: (no specific order)

• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
• First Things First - Stephen Covey
• 10 Natural Laws of Time and Life Management - Hyrum Smith
• The Magic of Thinking Big -David Shwartz
  
• The Richest Man in Babylon - George Clason
• Mastery -George S. Leonard
  
• BrandYou 50 - Tom Peters
• QBQ - The Question behind the question -John Miller
  
• Now Discover your Strengths - Markus Buckingham
• Jonathan Livingstone Seagull -Richard Bach
  
• As a Man Thinketh - James Allen (free e-book here, registration needed)
• Simple Steps to Impossible Dreams - Steven Scott
• The Art of Possibility - Roz and Ben Zander