Throughout the years I’ve worked as an executive, I’ve had my opportunity to learn how to set up for success by building on the strategy maps I adapted for businesses and people. I would look at whatever business or division or product area I was running, I would put the ultimate goal at the top. And then I would start cascading from there, in order to be able to get to the point where I could have all the functions.
This value-based chart allowed different members of the team to see exactly where they fall and what they need to do in order to collectively achieve the top goal. Eventually, I realized that this model can be applied to any aspect of life, not just in the workspace.
For me personally, it was my goal to run the most profitable business in my firm while keeping myself from sacrificing my life at home. I came up with clear and concrete smaller goals, as well as metrics to measure my progress.
With that being said, you don’t want to try to have goals across all of the different aspects of the life wheel; you really want to hone in on one, two, maximum three areas you’re trying to develop.
One thing you should always remember, though, is that you don’t need a set list of criteria to achieve these goals. When I was working at the senior executive level of a firm and was faced with a leadership assessment to determine potential new roles. I was confronted with a rather surprising result; I was told that I met every single checkbox in this supposedly very-detailed assessment of my capabilities as a leader.
Although I felt a short burst of joy, I was soon filled with rather disappointment at the fact that I wasn’t the most senior executive nor the highest paid member of the firm. If I met all these great qualifications that make me a superior leader, why wasn’t I properly compensated? What could these people have that I don’t have?
For the first time in my career, after going through hundreds of assessments of this kind trying to check every single box, I realized that after doing all this work, I really didn’t need to worry about checking boxes anymore. If I really wanted something, I could just go get it.