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Goals, schmoals

It is easy to say this, but for many peo­ple I meet, it is hard to set goals. Above all, it is dif­fi­cult for many to know what the goals should be about. For those who sell or pro­duce some­thing that is easy to mea­sure in their work, it is rarely a prob­lem, but what should all of us do — those of us whose work is not tra­di­tion­al­ly of a ​“mea­sure­ment and com­pe­ti­tion” nature?

Three threads to lead by

If you find it dif­fi­cult to know what goals to set for your­self that are actu­al­ly use­ful and not just for show, you can use the three guide threads The Tree, The Poo­dle, and The Paint Buck­et. All three can give you ideas about what is the right goal just for you.

Do this

When you want to chis­el out what your goals should be, use these clues for example:

• Tree: Imag­ine a tree’s root sys­tem. If all your col­leagues’ efforts are to cul­mi­nate into an over­ar­ch­ing goal for the busi­ness, like all the roots even­tu­al­ly form­ing a stur­dy trunk, what is your con­tri­bu­tion to this col­lec­tive goal? Take the col­lec­tive goal and break it down to your role’s lev­el in the orga­ni­za­tion. If togeth­er you need to reach 100, is your con­tri­bu­tion 14? Or, are you not direct­ly respon­si­ble for a part of the col­lec­tive goal val­ue, but instead do some­thing else that is a pre­req­ui­site for your col­leagues to reach these 100? How much or how well of it do you need to do for you to suc­ceed togeth­er? That can be your goal.
• Poo­dle: Imag­ine you are walk­ing home from work after a real­ly suc­cess­ful work­day and you are think­ing ​“today I real­ly did the essence of my job”, what is it that you have done dur­ing the day? What is the poodle’s core of your job that is the most impor­tant for you to suc­ceed in to con­tribute to the busi­ness you work in? How do you know that you have suc­ceed­ed well with it? What have you achieved? That can be your goal.
• Paint Buck­et: Think about your whole area of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Is there a part of it that does­n’t work per­fect­ly, but where improve­ments are need­ed — where you could come with the paint buck­et and neat­en it up? Where would it fit nice­ly with a bit of paint to raise the busi­ness a notch? What needs to be ful­filled for you to see that it has improved? That can be your goal.

More use­ful goals

By using one or more clues — these three for exam­ple — it becomes eas­i­er for you to find the goals you should have in the near­est time. Instead of either set­ting goals out of oblig­a­tion that you don’t real­ly care about or set­ting goals that don’t real­ly mat­ter to you, you cre­ate goals through these clues that you can ben­e­fit from every work­ing day — when you need to pri­or­i­tize and when you want to see ​“how you’re doing”. Isn’t that worth the trou­ble, right?

What is your trick?

Do you have any oth­er clues to find­ing your goals? Please write to me and share.

(It’s not that hard to fig­ure out how urgent a task is when you’re pri­or­i­tiz­ing. But decid­ing how impor­tant it is can be trick­i­er — and some tasks risk slip­ping through the cracks. Read more about how to pri­or­i­tize what sim­ply ​“must” be done!)