Having projects, objectives and goals is inherent to the human condition. This means that we all, to a lesser or greater extent, have projects and objectives to meet. What changes from one personality to the other, from one story to the other, has to do with what we do to achieve it and not with the objective itself. There are people who have an iron determination and, against the tidal wind, continue on the road to their goals. Instead, others are disappointed at the first stumble and give up.
But, if you are one of those who do have a professional objective and it takes away their sleep not to achieve it, surely you can ask yourself, what is it that makes us sometimes not achieve what we want? I give you my answer in a simplified version: lack of direction and lack of strategy.
Let me give you MY personal model for achieving professional goals, a step-by-step scheme to know how to achieve what you want and succeed in your professional career. Each step, with an example so that you fully understand its meaning. As it is a bit long, I have divided it into two articles (so you don't get tired of reading). Follow it, and you will be successful in what you set out to do. No secrets or tricks.
This is MY personal model for achieving professional goals:
What is your address?
I never tire of telling you (and writing to you) that it is very important to know what you want to achieve. If you don't know where you will go on vacation, how will you know if you can go by car or by plane? But please don't forget, you must define it in depth.
What specifically do you want to achieve? Includes details. This will help you dig deeper and find out what you want behind what you say you want. For example, one of my clients decided that her professional goal is to have a successful business of her own, one in which she could help working mothers to make their working life compatible with the upbringing of children under the age of 10.
You see it? That is specific. She is not looking for any successful business, nor is she going to help moms who don't work, or workers who aren't moms.
What is your purpose?
This is also very important. What do you want to achieve this for? In addition to being your motivator, it helps you detect inconsistencies. I give you an example, your objective, your direction is to achieve a prestigious and well-paid regional management position in your company, and your purpose is to be able to give more to your family. Does this sound coherent to you? At first glance "regional" to mean trips to different countries, right? (Well, some companies will be able to handle the virtual world in a spectacular way, but as far as I know planes are full of people traveling for work.) And "giving your family more" could be just money, or it could also be time, energy, affection. Something very difficult (I did not say impossible) to give at a distance.
What are your limits?
This is fundamental. Knowing what you are NOT willing to do to achieve your professional goal is essential. Why? Because it determines which paths you cannot take. Or rather, you should not drink, because otherwise you would be crossing your limits and in addition to feeling bad, you will not last long on that road. For example: one of my mentors has a young son and always says that she could earn much more money and be even more recognized if she did her workshops and seminars in other parts of the world. But she knows her limit is there. Your priority is to raise and enjoy your child and you will not break through that barrier. All your decisions and strategies are within the field of action that is surrounded by your limits.
What options do you have?
There is usually no one way to achieve what you want. Here you have to use your creativity. The more options you evaluate, the better. Don't leave them buoyant on your head. Download them to paper. Don't dismiss them mentally. Write them down on a piece of paper and then evaluate and discard them. Many times an option does not seem very good, but when you see it written then you associate another idea and discover another option. Many times the best options are combinations of various ideas.
For example: one of my clients wanted to have a technical mentor (she is a person who has the same profession and knows the job technically and has more experience in the field so that she can teach you). On the one hand was her boss, which was very convenient because of the closeness, but she was not happy with her boss's interpersonal skills and was not comfortable adopting him as a mentor. On the other hand, I had long had a teacher who met my client's expectations but she always had a lot of work and it was not possible for her to make the necessary encounters to mentor my client. Until she discovered that one possibility was to change companies and work with this person. That way I would be her boss and I would have the closeness and the opportunity to train her and my client would achieve her goal.
What obstacles will stand in your way?
Thinking that everything will be perfect on the way to achieving your goals is as unrealistic as thinking that everything will go wrong. The ends are not recommended. So a good technique is to know what obstacles stand in your way and prepare for them. For example: when I left my job safe to give strength to my own business I knew that the first obstacle that was going to appear is the instability of the income. We all need to pay the bills and the fixed salary makes ends meet. But when you have your own business, nothing is fixed. Knowing that this was going to happen helped me prepare. I sharpened my home financial planning (I was always a fan of this planning, but made it even better) and did the same with my business financial planning.Preparing for "the problems" helped me to be more efficient with my accounts since instability did not take me by surprise and made me leave.
With this part of the model, you are now in a position to define your career goal and start exploring the path to that achievement.
What do you need to achieve it?
In another article I told you about "creative tension". It is the difference between what you want to achieve and what you have today. Doing an analysis of what skills or abilities or knowledge you need to achieve what you want, puts you in a strong position of personal knowledge, which helps you prepare better (and usually with more time and less pressure) for your professional objective. For example: one of my clients is today the head of a technical area in a major company. His professional objective is to have a managerial position in 3 or 4 years. When we did this exercise, he discovered that what he lacked was more political touch and more contact with managers.Now that he has discovered it (and that he has 3 years to prepare) he does not waste any opportunity to attend meetings where he can learn and even “practice” without pressure and without risk (because there are no expectations of this style on him yet) his new political skills. His preparation will probably help him achieve his goal in even less time than he expected.
How can you do it?
Nobody is born knowing, so it is quite common that you need to train yourself and learn techniques and strategies to achieve your goals. Unfortunately most of the knowledge or skills or talents you need to achieve your career goals are not taught in formal education or in college. So you probably have to do a little more effort to gain that knowledge and experience. My recommendation is that you look for a mentor who can guide you step by step, who trains you in terms of the knowledge you lack, but also who will accompany you in the process of experiencing that knowledge.
For example: one of my clients started as a freelancer in a profession that she had “boxed in” for many years. While her knowledge of the profession surfaced right away, she had no idea how to sell her services or how to handle those conversations. For that, she hired me to teach her various techniques and helped her in her first steps. When she put her knowledge into practice and doubts arose, she would bring them to the session and together we would find a way to solve her problems. So until she became an expert in selling her services.
If you are not born knowing, you cannot demand to do everything well without help.
What is the step-by-step scheme you will follow to achieve it?
The organization is fundamental in any professional objective. Having a step-by-step scheme is like having a kitchen recipe or a formula for a medication. If you are making a cake, you will surely not mix the water, the eggs, and the decoration cherries. It is also not the same if you lay 1 egg or lay four, or do not lay any. Designing your career plan step by step implies that you discover what steps (or ingredients) you need to achieve it and when. The "quantities" and the "order" are fundamental.
For example: a friend of mine asked for my consultation and we started to design her career plan. Her professional objective was to have an area management position within 5 years. We use a technique that I learned when I became a Coach and that I still use that is very effective in not letting you be limited by your current situation or your beliefs today and that is to put together an action plan towards your long-term professional goal. We defined it step by step and discovered that in order to reach that position, she needed to have her bachelor's degree (which she already had, only the thesis was missing). And to finish that thesis I was thinking of doing research and a prototype of modern technology that is very fashionable.And so he discovered that in his current job there was an opportunity to carry out a project with a client who wanted to buy a platform with this new and modern technology.
Do you see what it means to have your sequence of steps organized and outlined? A dream may seem very utopian, but when you design how to get there it has already started to come true.
What will be your control points?
You are not going to believe that things happen as you plan, right? Most of the time it is not. That is neither good nor bad, it is simply so. The important thing is that you know how things happen and evaluate them. Sometimes they happen better than you expect, so do you want to change your goal? Do you want to overtake it? Sometimes they happen as you expect. Well, you're still the same. Sometimes they don't happen as you expect. What to do then? Find a new strategy, withdraw and try again. Learning from your mistakes is essential.
But how do you change your strategy if you don't measure your results? If you don't find out that things happened one way or another, there is nothing you can do. Therefore, you must have control points in your action plan, to verify if you are on the right track. And if not, be able to make changes.
For example: One of the project leaders I worked with years ago skipped this step. He had to complete a phase of the project delivering 200 documents. He had planned them in 4 weeks, so his team had to do 50 a week. A week before closing, he did a review and found that they had done less than 100. In the week that remained, it was practically impossible to double the quota and the goal in itself was quite ambitious. What could you have done if you had found out after the first week? He would have realized that it was not compliant in those conditions and would have generated other conditions: incorporate other temporary resources to help, add some hours of work in the day or at the weekend on a rotating basis so that the whole team did not feel it, etc. Anticipation is an advantage.
When will you take the next step?
I cannot emphasize this point further. If everything you've learned so far isn't taken into action, it really didn't do much good. Implementing, taking action, making the decision to take the next step are essential. For example: 4 and a half years ago (from the moment I am writing this article) I began to discover my talents to help others and I found that coaching was a tool to be able to channel them.
I made a consultation with a very prestigious Career Coach in my country, I made an action plan, I captured my idea. I bought many books (I love to read and more on topics that I am passionate about). It was all very interesting and challenging. But it remained on paper. I didn't take action until last year where I went back to my old notes and discovered, with surprise, that what I wanted for my future career… I had already discovered it and wanted it for years! A year later I have my own consolidated company and I help others to achieve their professional goals.
What changed? That I made the decision and took action. It is not enough to create in your mind or on paper, you have to make it concrete and materialize it by taking the first step.
I have shared with you My personal model for achieving professional goals. What changed for you having read this? When will you make the decision and take action to set yourself up for your career goals?
