My little daughter is four, and I’m sure her eyes would widen in horror if I started issuing instructions in management-speak. But for a thoroughly corporate trained mother, what is back-to-school if not a chance for a mid-year appraisal and a time to prioritise objectives for the year ahead.
This reminded me of my popular blog post on New Year’s Resolutions, here it is below, to help you reflect on and reprioritise your goals.
How do you approach making New Year’s Resolutions? Do you recycle the same ones each year? (Smoking or dieting anyone?) Or do you strategically think what you need to do to achieve your life goals?
Last year was the first time I really tied my New Year’s Resolutions to my career objectives. Things had gone better than I had expected in 2013, so I felt buoyed up and realistic about stretching myself that little bit further in 2014.
I started the year well and made steady steps towards achieving my goals. So much so that by summer I was almost there. I gave myself a congratulatory ‘mid-year review’ and almost blogged about the fact that half way through the year, not only had I not forgotten my New Year’s Resolutions, but I’d almost completed them already. (Reminder to self: smug is a drug).
I’m actually glad I gave myself that virtual pat on the back, because in September my career and my business took an unexpected turn, and I re-evaluated what I really needed to do to get where I wanted to go.
Now looking back on 2014 I can say that no, I didn’t achieve any of my New Year’s Resolutions, but I feel more in control than ever with where myself and my business are going.
It reminds me of a time in the mid noughties when I was working in a magazine publishing company battling an unprecedented pace of change. We were rapidly changing from a print to an online business and figuring out how to build new revenue streams. As my end of year appraisal loomed I logged onto our HR system and reminded myself with a jolt what my objectives had been. I frantically did some work in those last few weeks, reviving old projects and starting new ones to prove to my bosses that I had at least tried to meet my objectives.
Fast forward to me sitting in that stuffy meeting room with my manager as she rattled through my appraisal. She dismissed each objective in turn saying “no longer a business objective”. And it was true, while I had been feeling bad for not having met most of the objectives set for me a year ago, I hadn’t stopped to properly analyse why they hadn’t been met. I hadn’t been working on them because the business needs had changed. What had been deemed important 12 months ago, bore no relation to the new reality we were now working in. Likewise, there is no way that my managers could have foreseen that at the time. What they were really saying with my objectives was ‘this is what we want to see now’.
So that brings me to considering SMART objectives for this new year. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. In a way, the objectives I had been given were no longer realistic. And if you, like me, are reviewing your personal or professional performance last year, don’t beat yourself up for not achieving the objectives that you set. Rather use that mental energy to understand exactly why you didn’t achieve them. Was it, like me, the fact that they were simply no longer important to the direction you want to go in? Or were they too ambitious, and therefore not Achievable or Realistic?
So by all means use the start of the New Year to set out to yourself exactly what you want to achieve or improve. But remember, if you don’t achieve them, maybe it’s because you’re working on what’s really important to you in the here and now.
What SMART targets are you setting for yourself this year? Let me know in the comments below.
This reminded me of my popular blog post on New Year’s Resolutions, here it is below, to help you reflect on and reprioritise your goals.
How do you approach making New Year’s Resolutions? Do you recycle the same ones each year? (Smoking or dieting anyone?) Or do you strategically think what you need to do to achieve your life goals?
Last year was the first time I really tied my New Year’s Resolutions to my career objectives. Things had gone better than I had expected in 2013, so I felt buoyed up and realistic about stretching myself that little bit further in 2014.
I started the year well and made steady steps towards achieving my goals. So much so that by summer I was almost there. I gave myself a congratulatory ‘mid-year review’ and almost blogged about the fact that half way through the year, not only had I not forgotten my New Year’s Resolutions, but I’d almost completed them already. (Reminder to self: smug is a drug).
I’m actually glad I gave myself that virtual pat on the back, because in September my career and my business took an unexpected turn, and I re-evaluated what I really needed to do to get where I wanted to go.
Now looking back on 2014 I can say that no, I didn’t achieve any of my New Year’s Resolutions, but I feel more in control than ever with where myself and my business are going.
It reminds me of a time in the mid noughties when I was working in a magazine publishing company battling an unprecedented pace of change. We were rapidly changing from a print to an online business and figuring out how to build new revenue streams. As my end of year appraisal loomed I logged onto our HR system and reminded myself with a jolt what my objectives had been. I frantically did some work in those last few weeks, reviving old projects and starting new ones to prove to my bosses that I had at least tried to meet my objectives.
Fast forward to me sitting in that stuffy meeting room with my manager as she rattled through my appraisal. She dismissed each objective in turn saying “no longer a business objective”. And it was true, while I had been feeling bad for not having met most of the objectives set for me a year ago, I hadn’t stopped to properly analyse why they hadn’t been met. I hadn’t been working on them because the business needs had changed. What had been deemed important 12 months ago, bore no relation to the new reality we were now working in. Likewise, there is no way that my managers could have foreseen that at the time. What they were really saying with my objectives was ‘this is what we want to see now’.
So that brings me to considering SMART objectives for this new year. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. In a way, the objectives I had been given were no longer realistic. And if you, like me, are reviewing your personal or professional performance last year, don’t beat yourself up for not achieving the objectives that you set. Rather use that mental energy to understand exactly why you didn’t achieve them. Was it, like me, the fact that they were simply no longer important to the direction you want to go in? Or were they too ambitious, and therefore not Achievable or Realistic?
So by all means use the start of the New Year to set out to yourself exactly what you want to achieve or improve. But remember, if you don’t achieve them, maybe it’s because you’re working on what’s really important to you in the here and now.
What SMART targets are you setting for yourself this year? Let me know in the comments below.
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