Achievement of goals part 1 - work smarter not harder

Achieving goals consists of a number of factors; defining the goal, allocating the time, working hard consistently, having a vision and purpose etc. But the one thing I see that consistently prevents individuals and organizations from achieving goals is the fact that the actions undertaken are not aligned to the achievement of the goal itself. No matter how hard you work or how much you plan or how much you visualize the goal, you will not get to your objective if your actions are not appropriate.

This is where business psychology needs to catch up with sports psychology and sports science around performance and goals if it's going to truly assist entrepreneurs and organizations and individuals achieve business and career goals. The science behind sport is quite clear depending on the sport you are undertaking and what you want to achieve and when. Training schedules are arranged, diets and nutrition laid out in detail, rest periods/tapering etc. The psychology around sports is also quite clear. However in business and career management there are many organizations and individuals who I see with great goals, lots of dedication but really do not know how to decide what actions to take or validate their decision.

So how do I suggest goals to be achieved more effectively? Well for one focus on working smarter not harder. Working harder and making more effort does not achieve anything if you're headed in the wrong direction. Based on this you need to continually assess whether your actions are actually the right ones - therefore have mini goals that can provide you with some feedback at regular stages as to whether you're on the right path. If you're not achieving the mini goals then there is no basis for thinking you'll achieve the main objective. It's also important that the reward for achieving the goals is there and tangible..otherwise motivation will fade.

Individuals and organizations have a lot to learn about goal setting - in an organization the difficulty is that the positions responsible to help achieve organizational goals are often held by those who do not know the science or art of achieving goals to begin with. In part 2 I'll look at individual goal setting and part 3 organizational goal setting

What do you know or have that others will buy from you?

If the answer makes you think for too long, you have no answer or you come up with some reasoning including the words 'consulting, strategy, development...etc' then keep reading. What we need to understand is that the level of education and savy is such in the market today amongst the masses that the fancy titles and concepts that were difficult to understand and taught at only the top business schools in the past are no longer impressive. Every fourth rate school teaches the same concepts and with such a high percentage of the western world going to college the coverage of these concepts is extremely wide.

Am I recommending not going to school and to become an inventor, internet entrepreneur, celebrity cook, athlete etc instead? Perhaps so, but actually it doesn't matter what path you take as long as you do two things. One is to work hard and the second is to be very clear on what you are offering and why. The work hard is the easy bit, even the bit on being clear on what you are offering...the hard bit is to confirm the 'why'. 'Why' are you producing a product, delivering a service, studying something at school etc.

Liking what you do it extremely important (and I will get to the fact that there are different levels of 'liking or loving' your job) but more important you have to recognize a demand for your skill or knowledge. If no one is in the market for what you have to offer then what you have will go to waste. I'm not talking about the challenge of being able to 'brand' or 'market' your offering so people are interested...I am talking about no interest no matter what you do because it doesn't hit the right demographic, is out of sync with social trends etc.

So what you need to do, to ensure a meaningful career either as an employee or business person is to clarify what you have to offer, how you're going to offer it and why it will be bought. If you cannot do this now take the actions you need to in order to do so. Last word regarding liking your job...it's not always about pure enjoyment, but can be satisfaction gained from making a difference, achieving what only few can...don't confuse liking or loving the job along the same lines as loving your family or liking a gift. Make the meaning of the word whatever you need it to be to suit you.

Is the foundation of your career skill and knowledge or process driven

Every career is not created equal when it comes to looking at future progression, opportunities and rewards. At the most basic level the career is influenced by the same forces as pretty much everything else in society, that being demand versus supply. Ensuring demand or supply for knowledge or a skill is not something we can truly control as individuals because the forces surrounding that are larger than all of us. However we can help ourselves by identifying the careers that are and predicted to be in demand today and in the future and then suppliment our current skills and knowledge to be able to supply that demand to the market.

We can say there are skilled and non-skilled jobs, jobs that require specialist knowledge transfer and those that require none. In general that is how society views the careers available to the market today. In actual fact all careers require some level of skill and some level of knowledge that must be transferred when performing a task. However when I allude to 'process' in the title of this blog I am making a distinction between careers where there is some kind of barrier to entry and those where there is very minimal. For example, working hard labour as a seasonal fruit picker (though still physically challenging) is easy to commence as opposed as working as a top laywer or doctor where many years of study are required. It is these kinds of jobs, that though not guaranteed, can morph into another career using the same underlying skills and where the skills and knowledge are still in demand by society. Fruit pickers on the other hand, once replaced my machines or cheaper labour, cannot take their skills to another industry.

I am not saying that jobs will not come and go, career becoming something different from initial intentions. The point to be made is that survival in this society is not from assuming you can perform the same job forever. Here I will make a distinction between job and career; job is an actual undertaking of a task in the present, a career is utilising a core set of skills and knowledge for different but inter-related objectives over the course of your life. Transferrable skills and knowledge, and ensuring that these are up to date with demand, is key to survival. Undertaking a process driven job and assuming the company will take care of you is something we all know very well is not going to happen.

I want to conclude that process driven jobs are not just those in manual environments - many desk jobs are also process driven with little skill or knowledge required, rather just some training and practice. The secret is to recognize what kind of job you have in respect to the foundation underlying its demand, and make a conscious decision to take on additional skills or knowledge to protect yourself and to give yourself more options in the future.