Review Time 8!
Time to stop, review, and check our progress. Always a good thing to do!
Introduction
Because we’ve been at this for a while and we’ve covered a lot of material in the past several sessions, let’s take a few minutes to make sure we are on track. Throughout your career, you should have periodic review and planning sessions. Let me give you a couple of examples of mine, both personal and from business.
I’ve mentioned that I review my goals and track my performance twice a year, on the mornings of July 4 and January 1. It was at these times that I might add short-term (1-year) goals. For the most part, the long-term goals were set and never really changed, except that my professional goal changed once. My original goal was to become a CEO. After discussing with my VP, I decided that the path to get there was not what I really wanted, so I downgraded it a couple of notches and then kept it there until I achieved it. When I first started with life goal planning, I reviewed my plan four times a year to ensure I was on track and, if not, to make any changes early. Here is what I’ve learned: Because I was disciplined enough to plan out all my goals, not only did I meet them, I exceeded them in every category: financial, professional, and personal. Yes, I had to make some adjustments along the way, but by the time I was in my mid-30s, things were progressing well. I had a couple of major life events that caused me to conduct some off-schedule reviews, but I was able to recover from those effectively. My guess is you will do the same. You will find that people who take the effort to document their life plans are typically disciplined enough to meet them. Or exceed them.
When I became a manager, and later, after being promoted to Senior Manager and then Managing Director, I conducted goal-planning sessions twice a year. Typically, these were in early January and then in July. Each person in the department would set their own goals that aligned with mine. Of course, mine aligned with my leader, who aligned with his leader, so that everyone was toeing the line to support the corporation. Performance reviews were then based upon meeting goals and other criteria.
Later, after retiring from my primary career, we would use a technique called Hoshin Kanri. Hoshin Kanri is a Japanese strategic planning system that aligns an organization's long-term vision with daily operations. If you’ve never used it I might suggest considering it.
All of these processes worked very well and are proven techniques to be successful. So, whether personal or business, I hope you will find a system that works and ensure you use it.
Session 8 Summary
If you were to take the Afterburner Success Partners course either virtually or in person, we would divide it up into four three-hour sessions spread out over four weeks. The reason I do it this was is because the course naturally falls into four distinct parts and also to allow time between sessions to allow the material to soak in, for any needed homework, and for you to ponder the actions you need to take. If you were to take the online version, the course is broken into 10 or so sessions of about 20 minutes each, which is enough to listen to on a drive to work or other short periods of time. Instead of four review sessions like the live courses, I break the online version into logical periods and then perform a review. It’s essentially the same, just adjusting for the different format. I’ve essentially done the same with the blog posts and that’s why we are not at review session 8. Let’s dig in, shall we?
Here is what we’ve covered in this latest session:
You should now have a completed financial goals template. You may still make some changes to it before you finish the course (or all of these blog posts), but it should be solid and reflect your financial goals through your projected retirement date and into the post-retirement period.
We again reviewed important highlights of the goal-setting process. If you need a review, revisit these key points. All of my previous blogs are available on the website under the Blog tab.
We talked about how to decide what the right career is for you. I’ve included a link to a good video in Note 1. While the video is a little dated, I can tell you from my volunteer work with those in job transition (people out of work), the techniques in this video are rock solid, even in, and probably in spite of, AI.
We discussed tactics to help you be successful in your professional career.
We discussed the importance of networking as part of your professional development.
We learned about disruptive innovation and how being a contrarian can boost your career.
We brainstormed our professional goals, used the priority matrix to place them in order, and completed our professional goals matrix.
We learned that our financial and professional goals are co-dependent.
If you need any help with any of these, you should take a break before proceeding to get them all nailed down. We are well over halfway through the course and the rest of the course will move quickly, so let’s ensure you are not behind before we enter the final stretch.
That’s all for this week!
Time to stop, review, and check our progress
Afterburner Success Partners
http://absuccesspartners.com/
What’s in it for me?
If you want to get ahead in life, if you want to achieve your dreams and live your best life, you must take meaningful, deliberate action that follows a proven path. Getting ahead in business and your career is about learning what to do and then doing it over time.
Call to Action
Just. Do. Something. Make a decision on what you want or need to do, define the path, and get after it. Do it today.
Recommended Resources
See notes below for either of my books.
Up Next
Lifetime personal goal considerations.
Notes
Please note that as an Amazon Affiliate, I may earn a small commission on the sale of any of these recommended resources.
Achieve Your Dreams: A Complete Guide to Live Your Best Life, by David Giustozzi: https://amzn.to/3IxEFgy
Everyday Cooking for Everyday People Like Us, by David Giustozzi: https://amzn.to/437OhVQ