I have thought about this time and again meeting and working with executives who have taken on new roles in their organization or taken on a new role in another organization. They plan. They spend hours and days planning. They plan with others and they plan on their own. They plan the business from top to bottom. Then they unleash the behemoth on the company. We wont go into the success or otherwise of this exercise today.

The one thing they dont consider is planning for themselves. Planning their lives. Now I am not a life coach or therapist but youd think that some where along the way they would have figured out they needed a plan for their own actions. I say actions because a plan is pretty useless unless its acted on. People often have goals. Woopee. Setting goals has become the thing to do in business today. People will sell you courses on setting goals. People will coach you in setting goals. HR folks chase you down until youve filled in their form, decided on a set of goals and had them signed off.

Wonderful. The problem with setting goals for a person is there is often no basis on what to set goals for. OK lose weight, increase my salary, win an promotion etc. Well what do you base these goals on? I have seen business coaches, trainers and HR folk giving people a form and saying give me your goals for this year. Guess what? Whatever is written down is hooey and will never do a thing for anybody. All it did was place a check mark in a box. Listed goals. Good boy, Sit.

Having said all that, its actually vital that you do in fact have goals but its the process of getting you there thats going to make the difference between a basic exercise and you actually achieving them.

So what does that mean?

Well in business strategy we may follow the time honored a SWOT analysis or Porter Analysis and budgets. We may even be more creative, who knows. The fact of the matter is there are tools and programs designed to help this. We take the top team off to a great resort spend a few days whip a plan into shape, often with the help of some expensive suited consultant. Send off to the financial guys to model, make spreadsheets that cant be interpreted but look as if some real thought went into the whole process. Jazz it up and get the Board to support it.

As professionals what do we do? What is our role in this whole caboodle? Yeah we sat through the weekend, played a few rounds of golf and swore blind this was the year we wouldd exceed all expectations. Sound familiar? Yeah no wonder HBR has articles stating corporations typically achieve between 30 and 60 percent of their planned financial results! Executives typically cannott wait to get back to their comfy corner offices and fight the fires they have become accustomed to. It is ingrained in them. That is what they think get paid for.

Nope. You are wrong. You get paid to execute the strategy. How much time do you spend on that? How do you tie that to your own goals and strategies for your life in all of this? Do you have a life in all of this?

This is actually where the rubber hits the road for executives. Most fail to recognize this. You need to look at what you are expected to do and figure out how you do it and have a life.

It is not that difficult. Just not done too often. Here is my approach.

Sit down with a pen and paper not your PC. You need to think and doodle a bit.

Ask yourself what were you really proud of achieving last year?

On the work front and non work front what was great and downright awesome?

What did you really foul up last year?

Things that youd gladly never hear about again. Gotta be a few things

So if you look at those two lists, what can you learn from them?

From the good and the bad. Yes we often learn more from our failures than successes.

List those learnings.

Be proactive, stand up for myself, voice my opinions, keep quiet until I know all the facts, etc.

Write three of them as life lessons for the way you would like to be this coming year.

Be powerful, positive, in the present and very personal.

List three values you associate yourself with having

Decide what roles you have to participate in this year.

As in be a Board member, CEO, boss, friend, mom, dad, etc

Then which is your role of prime importance for the coming year

Write three goals for each role you selected. Or more

You should have about 25 of them.

Select your top ten

Write them as SMART as you can. Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic and Time Specific (next year). This can be a topic of a whole article. Goals are usually very poorly written. Write yours up and e-mail me for some critique!

Put it all on a single page use abbreviations if necessary

Write up action plans for each. Set intermediate validation points and a time table. Check it weekly and monthly.

Go out and achieve personal; and corporate success

Sound intimidating? It should not be.

As Nike says "do it"