Choices and strategic planning
Interestingly enough Chris' post also fits the whole strategic planning thing I wrote about two days ago. Strategic planning is also about setting goals, determining the ways to those goals and CHOOSING to stick with one´s plan. It is about choosing to take action and to set small steps towards your goal. The essence is that you make conscious choices. Too often (especially in smaller organizations without too many formal business processes) choices are made subconsciously. No explicit moment at which a choice to stick with or deviate from the plan almost certainly drives you further away from your path. Slowly, almost without you noticing it. All of a sudden you realize that you're out in the boonies and that the path you thought you were on is many many miles away from where you're standing and your original goal is probably even out of sight. You find yourself wondering: "How did that happen? Where did I go wrong?" Let me tell you: It went wrong the moment you subconsciously CHOSE not to make conscious choices anymore. "Just Do It" means more than just diving in head first. It means that you have to set your goals consciously and act on them by make the right choices.
So, how does that apply to your job? Does your company have a Master Plan? If so, do all your co-workers know what the plan is? Are high level goals translated into concrete paths and objectives? Are they SMART (Specific-Measurable-Acceptable-Realistic-Time-bound)? If not, who CHOSE not to do that? If they are, who is keeping track if everyone is walking the same path?
Do you feel powerless, because your company's management has decided they don't need a plan? CHOOSE to do something about it. Life's so much easier when you've set goals for yourself. What is your contribution to The Master Plan? CHOOSE to contribute. Otherwise: Get the heck out!
Life's what you make it
Not just your company's Master Plan is important for your happiness. Even more so is your Personal Master Plan. Do you have one? If so, do you make the right choices to get closer to your goal every day? What choices do you find the hardest to make?
I personally have set a few goals. One of them is to become a better writer (in English) and to be (more) in touch with the world that I live in every day. I must say that Google+ and especially people like +Chris Brogan and +Robert Scoble have inspired me to do so; to actually start writing about things other than my five year old making some witty remark or a funny face. I love being able to write more than 140 characters per update again :-) I could have been watching some mind numbing TV right now, but I CHOSE to get one step closer to my goal of becoming a better and especially more interesting writer. Hopefully +Margie Clayman's post "Let's Talk About Getting That First Reply On Twitter" will help me to improve on the latter even further and will me make being noticed.
Almost an entire year ago I also set another goal for myself: Being able to run 5 km. I did that after racing in a family run in my home town Breda with my wife +Brigitte van Pelt and eight year old daughter. It's been a tough journey with quite some injuries and motivational problems, but from what it looks like now I will be running my first 5 km race at the Singelloop Breda on October 2nd. Who would have thought? Every night I force myself to choose whether to stick with my schema or not. Every night I decided not to stick with the plan, I realized I made it harder to reach my goal in time. Every time I stuck with my plan, I knew I was one step closer to my ultimate goal. Running and training for a race is a great metafore for a lot of things and I have used it multiple times. Even in strategic planning sessions with our management team at Skool Automatisering.
So, what is (one of) your goal(s)? How do you make conscious choices every day to get closer to reaching it?
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