- One of the most critical parts
of adaptive performance management is
establishing a set of agreements
with yourself, with your coworkers, and with your manager.
The most important of those agreements is the one
you have with yourself and that means establishing
a continually updated set of goals.
There are many techniques for establishing those goals.
I find the most valuable is to start with visualization.
So let's focus first on the kinds of goals
that aren't necessarily anchored to the work
that you're doing today.
Instead let's look at the goals that are most
meaningful to you personally whether they're
rooted in your work or not.
So, pull out a sheet of paper,
answer these questions for yourself.
What do you want to know?
What are the bodies of information
that would be fascinating for you to have in your head?
What do you want to be able to do?
What kinds of activities would be most enjoyable for you?
And which ones do you want to be great at?
Last, how do you want to be able to do those things?
What kinds of self-management skills do you want
to improve at or be great at?
It's critical to set goals that are
both short and long term.
Changes you want to make in the next few months
and changes that are likely to take years.
Now put the paper aside and close your eyes.
Now I mean really, close you eyes.
Take one of those goals and visualize having achieved it.
We wave a magic wand and now you're able to know
what you most wanted to learn or to perform a task
that has been alluding you or to suddenly
be on time for appointments or to avoid procrastination.
Picture what it feels like to achieve that goal.
Okay, you can open your eyes.
These are the kinds of goals that
you're intrinsically driven to achieve.
Next you need to determine your goals
that are extrinsically driven within
the context of your work.
If you have a full-time job, you're goals will
obviously be tied to the organization that employs you.
If you're a contractor or you have your own company,
you'll be thinking about the needs
of your client or your customer.
And if the word goal sounds too much like a sports analogy,
then try using objective instead.
Now ask yourself four questions.
What's the overall mission of the organization?
What's it trying to accomplish at the highest level?
What are the specific goals of the organization
both short and long term?
Some organizations call these KRAs or key results areas.
The critical goals of the organization
that determines success or failure.
What are the goals of the division
or team that you're in?
And finally, what should your goals be
given all those other needs?
Now if you don't know the missions
and goals of the organization, you have to ask.
If nobody can articulate them in a way
that's useful to you, then make them up.
I mean that literally.
If your organization had some clearly articulated goals,
what do you think they would be?
Same thing for your team.
If you know them, great.
If you don't, either ask or posit what you think they are.
Now, think about your personal work
in the context of those team and organizational goals.
What are the kinds of things you can accomplish
that feed into those goals?
In another video I talked about performance
as operating at four levels.
The results you generate, the problems you solve,
the tasks you perform, and the skills you use.
So are your goals about performing tasks better?
Are they about solving specific problems?
Or about generating a particular result?
Some organizations call this process of defining
your goals and metrics OKRs, objectives and key results.
It's important not to have too many of them,
a half a dozen at most.
A few should be short term and probably have
some hard edge metrics, results you can almost touch
that have numbers.
And a few should be longer term,
more of the kind of stretch goals
that give you latitude on how to achieve them.
And finally, it's critical to prioritize them.
Which are the most important to you based on
the combination of your goals, the goals of your team,
and the goals of the organization?
I'll guarantee you have plenty of information
from discussions you've already had with your manager
or your clients or your customer.
Use those as a starting point.
Then add in more detail based on the results,
problems, tasks, and skills directly involved in your work.