Be The CEO Of Your Own Life
What does 2017 mean to you?
This year you’re going to get fit.
This year you’re going back to school.
This year you’re getting that promotion.
This year is going to be different!
Last week we wrote about hope not being a strategy and that the future is yours to create. The New Year most definitely brings a sense of hope and new beginnings. Many people make resolutions they believe will set them up for success, improve their lives, improve the lives of others, or make a positive difference in the world. Instead of just declaring your goals, I challenge you to approach your resolutions differently this year. Why not treat yourself like a business?
No matter what your goals are, it’s always important to reflect on the previous year to set yourself up for success in the coming year. Whether you made major strides toward your goals or experienced hardship and difficult times, you must know where you’ve been in order to get to where you want to go.
As I’ve discussed in earlier blogs, creating a career manifesto has allowed me to consistently reflect on my life long goals. Knowing my “north-star” has allowed me to set short-term goals, whether they be weekly, monthly, or yearly in order to move closer to where I want to be. I am also able to continuously evaluate my goals. I can ask myself, is this still what I want? Has my life or focus changed? Therefore, do I need to make changes to my manifesto?
Looking at this on a larger scale, companies develop strategies and yearly goals to make progress from one year to the next, just as individuals do when it comes to their resolutions. Whether they are a small business with a few employees or a fortune 500 organization with 1,000s of employees, developing a strategy and creating yearly objectives is extremely important to their growth and success. Working for a small business, I am lucky to have the opportunity to be a part of this process. We have collectively created a business strategy we are working towards. Reflecting on this throughout the year and especially from one year to the next is necessary to see what we’ve accomplished and to check to ensure we are on track to reach our business goals.
Through this process and working with Catapult’s strategic planning clients, I’ve seen a parallel between strategic planning and creating a career manifesto. It can be just as beneficial if you personally treated yourself like a business. As a business benefits from reviewing their strategy, you can benefit from reflecting throughout the year, holding yourself accountable or finding a “colleague” or “business partner” who can help you stay on track.
If you’ve had difficulty sticking to your resolutions, try looking at your goals as if your life is a business and you are the CEO. At Catapult, we have a 4 step process that we use when helping our clients develop their strategy:
- Foundation
- Inspiration
- Recommendation
- Execution
Foundation: What is?
– Where are you now? What does your current situation look like. Make sure to look at all aspects of your life that are important to you– your health, your career, your family etc.
Inspiration: What could be?
– What are your goals? Where do you want to be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? Dream big! Be sure to keep all aspects of your life in perspective.
Recommendation: What will be?
– Now that you’ve set out to accomplish some exciting goals in the next few years, what do you actually need to do to get there? Do you have the resources, tools, support you need to get to where you want to go? If not, what can you do to acquire these things to set yourself up to accomplish them?
Execution: Alignment for results.
– Get to it! Be realistic about your goal accomplishment timeline. Don’t expect to accomplish everything in the first year. Be sure you’ve written down your goals and break them into feasible steps to set yourself on track to achieve them.
Throughout the entire process, stay positive and be grateful for what you’ve accomplished and what you have.
Trust the process.
Keep going when things get tough.
Push through those difficult times because that’s when progress is going to happen.
Rely on YOU because “hope is not a strategy”.
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