period of time. Are you willing to make sacrifices in other parts of your life?
Remember that goals have to be really desirable and compelling, otherwise you are more likely to give up early.
Make sure your goals are SMART, which means specific, measurable, achievble, realistic and timed.
A plan is great, but nothing can happen unless you take the first step, and then another. What are some things you can do today, this week, this month, this year to produce the results? Every journey, however long, starts with a single step.
Having set yourself some goals, the secret is to start taking action as quickly as possible on them. Identify your first steps.
1 Ask yourself, what is the gap between your current situation and what you want to achieve? Will it take training, discipline, study? What would you have to do first to accomplish each goal?
case study Ben decided on a 10-year goal for his career. The first actions he took were to write down details of what he wanted to achieve in terms of his qualifications, job title and degree. He also made a list of the skills, attitudes and beliefs he would need to have in order to achieve what he wanted. Then he made a list of how he had sabotaged himself in the past and what he could do to solve these patterns of behaviour. Because the job he wanted was in a different work area, he also asked his boss if he could do some work shadowing in another department in order to gain some new skills. This gave him valuable experience with direct relevance to his long-term goal.
“Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement” Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich
2 Now decide on the smallest action that can immediately commit you to your plan. Is it applying for a course? Ringing a friend for information? Writing your CV?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a complete plan and some of your later steps are a little hazy when you start out to achieve your new career vision. You can fill in the later steps as you go on in your career. The important thing is to commit to heading off in the right direction. If necessary, you can always revise some of the milestones along the way.
Think of a first step you could take immediately for each goal.
Nobody can make things happen by being passive. It is no good setting wonderful goals without doing anything about them. Equally it is pointless just doing one thing. Spending a lot of time getting to know what you want will help you commit 100% to going after what you want to achieve.
To grow your career you will sometimes need to move a little or perhaps a lot outside your existing comfort zone. This is because you need to be experimental and try new things in order to create new experiences and new successes in your life.
• An attitude of total commitment. Prepare to be flexible, take risks and stick your neck above the parapet.
one minute wonder Bear in mind the saying: “There is no failure, only feedback.” If you stretch yourself you will make some mistakes but these don’t matter. When you don’t get the result you want, use what you learn to make better choices next time that will move you towards your goals.
“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them” Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World
• The will to change. Committing to goals may mean you have to be the person who is willing to go out and learn a new skill. It may make you the person who is willing to shoulder the responsibility for a task or who gets up early and works an extra hour to achieve what you really want.
Think through what you really need to do to get your goal. If you aren’t willing to do what it takes (and I mean whatever it takes), you may achieve something but probably not what you originally intended. You won’t be managing your career as such and you’ll be back at the effect side of the cause > effect equation.
Of course you are allowed to change your goals. So if you get halfway to your promotion or to setting up a new company or retraining for a new job and think, “No this isn’t right for me anymore”, then it’s ok to have a different goal. But if you do want your goal, you need to commit to it, not 99% or even 99.95. It’s going to take 100% focus and energy to see you through.
But remember if you have the right goal, the rewards at the other end will be worth the wait.
Only 100% commitment will put you in control of achieving meaningful goals.
No one is going to have exactly the same goals as you, but there may be people who have taken a similar path or who you can regard as role models. Even if you don’t know them personally, you can still take inspiration from what others have done.
What resources do you have now? What resources do you need for your projected outcome? Perhaps you have a certain amount of knowledge but you know you lack other skills.
For example, suppose you want to get a promotion. Have you ever had or done this before? What skills did you use? Networking? Negotiation? If you have done something before, you have a reference point for what works and what doesn’t. If you take similar actions you will probably get similar results.
But supposing you have never had the kind of career success that you want to achieve now. How can you identify and gain the skills you need? Well, you can either start from scratch or you can learn from what has and hasn’t worked for your role models.
one minute wonder Write down the name of someone you really admire in your career. Now think about what their beliefs are about work. What is different from the way you think about your career? Could you adopt some of these beliefs? Which of these is most likely to make you successful?
1 Do you know anyone who has successfully risen to the sort of position you want to be in? Do you know this person well enough to ask them about their experience? If they are senior within your company could you ask them to mentor you or coach you?
2 What resources do you imagine you will need to fulfil your goal? Think about your role model. What resources did they draw upon to achieve what they wanted? Is there anything similar you could go out and get that would help you?
3 If there is no obvious person in your life who could perform this role for you, then look around. Have you seen anyone on television or elsewhere, either in your own country or abroad, who you can emulate or learn from? What do you imagine they would advise you to do as a next step?
Learn from role models you know personally or from public life.
