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I've been doing my planning for the new year (photo below) and thinking about how I can best raise the bar on myself and serve my clients with excellence.
Here's a suggestion.
I think most of us benefit when we have some combination or permutation of the following things:
- A Vivid Vision of Victory - a long-term goal or vision (tool: Vision Map or VTO 10-year and 3-year pictures). Example: "Publish a book within three years."
- Rocks - for this year and especially the upcoming quarter: up to 3 "rocks" that represent progress or milestones towards the big goal (tool: VTO Rocks section or a project tracker). Example: "Write a chapter each month this quarter."
- Personal Growth - what self-development are you working on this year? It could be something connected to your ability to execute on a Rock, or to achieve your overall goal. These can be Transformational, or a Skill, or both. Example: "Learn meditation."
- Scorecard - some way to track daily or weekly that you're making measurable progress on the rocks, goal, and personal growth (tool: spreadsheet, etc.). Example: word count in the current chapter; progress on meditating daily.
These four elements serve you by accelerating you towards your most worthy life goals, keeping you focused each quarter, and keeping you productive each week -- all while helping you transform into the person you want and need to become.
As for me, here's my current thinking about my own goals for the new year and beyond.
- Big Goal: I want to become an even more exceptional coach over the coming 3 years by unifying my work on leadership training, 1:1 coaching, Lean and Kaizen, and my definition of a manager, and delivering a series of trainings, articles, and perhaps books that help hundreds or thousands of people become extraordinary leaders. (That's the subject of my writings in the photo below.)
- Quarterly Rocks: I want to invite each client to get laser-focused on their Goal, and on the Critical Few things that will advance their Big Goal, and help them tune out or delegate the Trivial Many things that will distract them. Metric: Percent of clients who have written Goals, quarterly Rocks, a Scorecard, and a Growth theme.
- Scorecard: I have Eight Sacred Rituals that I have decided to perform daily, the last of which is my daily scoring (see my self-scoring graph below the photo).
- Self Growth: I'm continuing to study and practice Positive Intelligence meditation (transformation), and I'm learning Standard Work (a Lean skill)
Above: me drafting the 3-year plan for unifying my material.
Below is a graph showing how many of my Daily Disciplines I hit each weekday. (When I perform my Eight Sacred Rituals, I tend to end up with a high score.)
I have two accountability partners for this scoring: my assistant and my daughter.
Your success is very important to me, and I hope to be of ever-greater service to you in the coming year and beyond.
