"Money! Fame! Respect! Sure… those are nice goals but they’re not very specific."
How much money? What kind of fame? Whose respect do you want? Setting specific objectives will help guide your path towards your dreams and goals. I was reminded of this today when I had lunch with a young entepentuer who has made the decision to run his own business. While I applaud him for starting his company I also challenged him to be specific about defining his in order to achieve his desired success.
How my friend defines his business model will make it far easier or harder for him to achieve his goals both now and in the long-run. Similarly, how you define your career goals will have a great impact on how successful you’ll be in achieving them. Maybe your currier is full of long hours now in order to work fewer hours later or perhaps you need to be exposed to different cultures and environments in order for you to land the ultimate dream job in a few years. Either you can define what you want and model your career and business to get it, or accept the default results that come with what you’re doing now.
As a consultant at Arthur Andersen I defined a clear objective for my career: to prepare myself to start a company. Every day I asked myself the question: “What am I learning today that is going to help me start and run my business tomorrow?”. That simple question helped frame my approach to my jobs and helped me look past each day’s challenges towards my goal. The result is that many of the experiences and lessons I learned have become core pieces of my current business culture and architecture. I was also able to enjoy what I did (and do now) every day because I knew my goals.
Do you know what you want? Define what you want from your career or business clearly and you’ll find it easier to focus on how to achieve that goal with each decision you make from this point forward.
