I ended my last post about my year end review process with an encouragement not to get frustrated or overwhelmed when you see how far you are away from the standards or goals you seek. Depending on your perspective, it is possible you understood what I meant by that, but I think that concept is critical enough to spend more time exploring it.
Have you ever set some seriously strong goals for yourself or your business, only to later find yourself so far from them that you lost hope? Have you done the math and realized you simply had too far to go in too little time? If you have ever set huge goals, it is likely you have experienced this frustration. When you did, how did you feel? What was your overall outlook at the time?
It is that time of year again…the time of year when most people begin planning out their next year! For me, I started this process in November and I expect 2016 to be my best year ever! As I went through my annual process, I thought I would share it with you.
This is the third post in a series on life planning. In this series, I am sharing with you the basics of a life plan and why you need one by going through the details of my own LIFE planning process. Neither my plan nor my process are perfect. In fact, they are evolving from year to year. My hope is that you can take what I do (or even just parts of it) and use it to create your own plan.
In my last post, I gave you a detailed description and break-down of my main LIFE Plan document. I described my Roles, Focus Areas, and Goals. I gave you a couple of samples from these areas. I also gave you access to download my [Title Page Summary] and [Godly Father Role].
As you can probably guess, combining all of these pieces into a complete document makes for a long document. The length of the document made it difficult to quickly review it on a regular basis. While I considered cutting it down, I just could not figure out which parts to eliminate.
So, as a result, I decided I needed a “dashboard” of sorts. With a one-page summary, I felt I could use this document in a weekly review process. I used a compilation of several resources I had found (and created a spreadsheet that would represent the month to month living out of my LIFE Plan. This Dashboard is made up of many sections, or “Gauges”, that help me keep my overall LIFE plan at the forefront of my mind.
For the first section, I started with the eight roles and laid out the sheet in a way that would allow me to see all eight Roles and the corresponding Focus Areas. Then, I left three blanks under each Role for monthly Goals. Each month, I update my monthly Goals, leaving the Roles and Focus Areas the same throughout the year.
Take a look at the picture below to get an idea of what I mean. (Note the Roles and Focus Areas have changed…this is part of my dashboard from December 2010)
As I have said several times, this whole process has evolved over time for me. You may want to stop right there and let your dashboard include only your Roles, Focuses, and Goals Guages. I started here, but have since added to mine. I will share the rest of my Dashboard with you and let you decide if any of it is interesting to you.
In his book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham describes how working on your strengths is the best strategy. At the end of the book, you take a test and are told your top strengths. I really found the material to be enlightening and began determining how I could apply it to my life.
In a sequel to Buckingham’s book, StrengthsFinder 2.0, author Tom Rath details out a list of 10 strategies for developing each strength described. I picked the top two or three of those actions for each of my top four strengths and put them on my dashboard.
Take a look at this picture to see how this looks.
Across the bottom of the LIFE plan Dashboard, I added four more sections based on what I felt was most important to review regularly. You may substitute your own categories here, but I included the following:
1. Prayer Focus – a listing of various ongoing areas in which I focused my prayer
2. Reading/Listening Plan – a list of the books and audio for that month
3. 360 Assessment – my top ten concern areas from a 360 degree assessment of me
4. Scripture – a list of references to the 15-20 verses I am trying to memorize
Here is a visual of these gauges.
To close out the bottom of my LIFE Plan Dashboard, I wanted something to keep me focused on the big picture. I learned in my C12 group that I should always be ready with a conversation-starting response to the question, “What do you do for a living?” I used this answer to close out my dashboard.
I work for an unusual company. It is an car dealership group that is a Christian company. We are trying to learn, and to show, how Jesus would run a company if He were the boss.
So, there it is! That is my LIFE Plan Dashboard, in all its glory! If you want to see the entire document together, just [Click Here].
Some of you are thinking I am crazy and others are thinking I am weak. That is fine! I can handle it!
Regardless of what you are thinking, I encourage you to do something similar. I will go into more detail about how I use this Dashboard in my final post in this series, but for now, I urge you to think about what you could create that would be easy to review on a weekly basis. Keeping your life plan in front of you in some shape or form will keep you closer to the path God has revealed to you.
What is your reaction to this dashboard?
Do you see how you could benefit from a weekly review of your life plan?
What do you see to be your next step in the life planning process?
Originally posted 1/26/12
This past Saturday morning, I participated in what is likely the most powerful meeting I have seen in my history with our company! I know those are strong words, but I can back them up. In fact, if you asked any of the other participants, they would confirm it for me. The purpose of this meeting was to allow everyone in our Sales Department to share their own personal goal setting results for 2012.
Before I go into detail about what made the meeting so powerful, I want to give you a brief history of what led to it. Back in October, as I have mentioned often in this blog, I attended the Catalyst Conference. I learned more during this conference than I have at any other I have attended.
Toward the end of the conference, every attendee was given a cardboard cut-out of a “call-out” like you would see in a comic strip or cartoon (see picture at left). We were told to write on this cardboard call-out any commitment(s) we were making as a result of what we had heard during the conference. Then, at the end of the last session, we were all to hold up our call-out commitments for everyone to see.
Because I thought this was a great idea, I brought a blank one back to work with me. We had duplicates made and gave one to every employee in the sales department. Everyone was told to come back a week later with their personal and professional goals written on the cards, ready to present them to the group. We gave examples of what they might write, but left it wide open.
All week, our sales managers worked with the salespeople in planning their performance goals for 2012. They also helped the salespeople think about their personal goals, asking questions to help prod them to think bigger. We encouraged them to “Get A Bigger Frying Pan!” as it related to their performance as well as how that could impact their lives outside of work.
I have to be honest, knowing that many of these people had never spent any time planning out their income, performance, or personal goals before, I was not expecting much. I was hoping for a few bright lights to make the exercise worthwhile. Even then, I was not convinced I would not be disappointed. My expectations were not reflective of the quality of the people, just their lack of experience with this kind of thinking.
As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, I was flat blown away. Folks, I simply cannot describe to you the power I saw in this exercise. This is one of those times where my vocabulary and lack of professional writing skills fails me (and you)! I just cannot do it justice.
What I witnessed was a group of 25-30 co-workers pour their hearts into sharing with the group what their real desires were for the new year. I saw souls bared and masks removed. I saw people looking to others for true acceptance and encouragement, seemingly without fear of rejection. I saw real, raw life goals come out in virtually every single presentation.
One young lady shared that she had been in a bad car accident over a year ago and only recently began driving again due to severe anxiety and fear. Her goal: to make enough money this year to buy a car for cash…not only for the purpose of having a car, but to overcome the fear and put it behind her.
Another young man has been unable to be involved at all in the life of his 5 yr old son until the past few months. His goal: to make enough money to be able to take that son on vacation for the first time ever.
One of the older salesmen has set a goal for increased income so he can better support a local family of 14. The unusual part is this: he is not related to them. He simply wants to give back out of his abundance.
I could go on and on, but I do not have the room here. Trust me that I witnessed the early signs of some lives changing in significant ways. I must encourage you in the strongest words possible to take this idea and implement it. It is simple and virtually free, but the effects can be monumental.
I cannot wait to report back on these goals next year!
Have you ever done personal goal setting like this with your employees?
What kind of results do you think you would get?
Why would you not try this idea?
It is the first of the year and I hope you are thinking about what goals you want to accomplish in 2012. I hope you are making plans to do something new, make something better, or to stop doing something – maybe all of the above!
I want you to read this brief story and then answer the questions below.
Every time the experienced fisherman caught a big fish, he put it in his ice chest to keep it fresh. Whenever the inexperienced fisherman caught a big fish, he threw it back.
The experienced fisherman watched this go on all day and finally got tired of seeing this man waste good fish. “Why do you keep throwing back all the big fish you catch?” he asked.
The inexperienced fisherman replied, “I only have a small frying pan.”
So what is the point of this story? How does this apply to the first of the year?
Well, I think there are a couple of points to be made.
First, let’s assume your mindset is the frying pan. When opportunities or goals are put in front of you, do you throw them back or dismiss them because they are too big for your current mindset?
Is someone asking or expecting more of you than you have given before? Maybe you would like to go for it, but you are afraid because you have never done it before?
Or, second, maybe your faith is like the frying pan. Maybe God is showing you a path that scares you because your faith is too small. Maybe you see what you should be doing differently, but you do not have the confidence that God will protect you and see you through it.
Whether it is a problem or possibility that you are facing in your work, personal, or spiritual life, I encourage you to get a bigger frying pan this year. Stretch your mindset and pray for stronger faith. Step out of your comfort zone and see what happens! You may just surprise yourself!
Are you comfortable with your 2012 goals or are they stretching you?
Are you ready to get a new frying pan in a specific area of your life?
What is holding you back? What are you going to do about that?