What do you want to achieve?  Can you say it in a simple declarative sentence? If you can, then you have a good chance of achieving that goal.  If you can’t,  it is very likely  you won’t achieve that goal. How could you?  You don’t know what the goal is!  This may sound obvious but people are always trying to achieve goals without having really figured out what the goal is.  Ask the next person you see “what’s your big goal over the next couple months?” (This is actually a great way to start a conversation at a party too!)  Chances are you will hear a lot of hemming and hawing, a list of goals under consideration, a theme or two but I would be surprised if the person you asked responded immediately and confidently with a a clear, simple, observable, valuable goal.

Commitment, Confidence and Scope are three big inhibitors to setting good goals.  Saying what you want to achieve means at some level you are committing to do it and that is a big deal.  If commitment is your blocker, you probably hear yourself saying “but  I don’t have time” or “but it’s too hard.”   If confidence is your blocker, you may hear yourself saying  ”but I would have to go back to school” or “but I could never make enough money” or “but I don’t know how to do it.”  If scope is your blocker, your goal keeps changing and getting bigger and getting pushed further and further into the future.  ”I want to write a novel and have it published and be on Oprah and win a Booker award.”  This is a far cry from a sensible goal like  ”I want to write a complete short story and read it out loud to my best friend.”  Scope may seem to be the opposite of confidence and commitment because scope is about wanting to do everything or wanting to do it all at once.  But scope, like commitment and confidence is just another sneaky way we use to get out of having to really achieve something.  Human beings are resourceful.  They can do just about anything they want to do (or at least approximate it) if they want to do it badly enough. Yes, a 50 year old person who wants to become a doctor could achieve a reasonable approximation of this outcome if he or she really wanted it badly enough.

The trick is separate from what from how.  As soon as you let your doubts about how you are going to achieve the goal interfere with what the goal is, you are sunk.  So in my next blog, we will talk about how to set a good goal.  Later we will talk about how to achieve it.

Aspire – to long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly desirous, especially for something great or of high value (usually followed by to, after, or an infinitive): to aspire after literary immortality; to aspire to be a doctor. to long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly desirous, especially for something great or of high value (usually followed by to, after, or an infinitive): to aspire after literary immortality; to aspire to be a doctor.  (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aspire)

• What do you aspire to?
• What’s your strategy for achieving your aspiration?
• What have you done in the last year, month, week, today to make progress toward your aspiration?
• How would you rate your progress?
• How has your aspiration evolved since you were 12, 24, 36,48, 60, 72?

As a coach, friend, consultant, colleague, I talk to people all of the time and in one way or another I ask these questions.  I find that few people can confidently answer them.  Often these questions put people off.  They get embarrassed or defensive or they just freeze like deer in the headlights.

What is important about aspirations is not what the aspiration is, it is having thought about what you want, having an approach to achieving what you want and staying focused on achieving it.  I worry about the people who can’t answer the questions.  I worry because I suspect they have  an aspiration but because they aren’t clear about what it is and because they aren’t actively pursuing it, it is only a matter of time before they start saying “oh its too late for me” and just give up.

Each of us has so much we could give to ourselves, to each other, and to the world.  When we think about what we want and how to achieve it, we can make good on this potential. When we make working on our aspirations a lower priority than dealing with daily challenges and distractions, we stand a good chance of only enjoying a small part of what life offers us and only giving back a small part of what we have to offer.

The keys to achieving our aspirations are Clarity, Strategy, and Focus.  Simple?   If only. But  how?  More to come!

Alexandra Levit had a great post today about  How To Be More Visible At Work (http://alexandralevit.typepad.com/). I hope her readers take her advice to heart and turn it into action – especially the task-oriented ones, like me!  Those of us who tend to be more oriented toward information and doing the work than relationships, incorrectly assume that our knowledge or productivity will speak for itself letting us off the hook for speaking for ourselves.  Rather than seeing talking about ourselves as shameless self-promotion, we need to start seeing it as our responsibility.  We have a responsibility to let team members and decision makers know what we have to offer, how we can contribute and how we are making things better.  We are always happy when we find out about a product or service that is “just what we need.”  How are we going to find out about these things if someone, somewhere isn’t deliberately working on letting us know about them?  Similarly how can we expect our bosses to find out about what we have to offer if we aren’t letting them know?  So in the spirit of the holiday season, let’s all go out and give the gift of US!!!

I read an article recently by Steve Tobak titled “The Problem with Know It All Managers” at http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=3361&tag=nl.rSINGLE.  The issue that Tobak presents is that often when people become managers, they start acting like they have all the answers.  These managers stop asking questions and start telling everyone what the answers are.  Tobak’s conclusion is that this is bad for employees and bad for the organization and bad for business.  I agree but I have to ask myself what motivates people to become “know it all” managers? It could be arrogance or it could be an organizational culture that implies that value is linked to one’s ability to always have the answer. It is not uncommon for compensation and promotion decisions to be based if not explicity then implicitly on one’s reputation for always having the answers. Conversely and unfortunately, managers are often devalued by senior management and stakeholders when they are seen to ask a lot of questions, openly consider many alternatives, and rely on their subordinates for up to date subject matter expertise. As we transition from do-ers to leaders, our value to the organization needs to come from our ability to elicit knowledge, ideas, issues, and possible solutions from the workforce and then to use that information to develop and execute strategies that achieve differentiating business goals. Answers based on the experience of many are more valuable than answers based on the experience of one person. One of our challenges is to help our senior management and stakeholders recognize and appreciate the value to the business of this sort of higher order, leadership behavior.