A man with a plan (and aspirations)

I recently started a new job and I set two goals:

The first was to “Become comfortable in my new job/make it my own.”

I mention in this post how I went about achieving that.

The second goal was “Develop my skills/knowledge so that I can achieve for promotion.”

In my reflection this was always going to be more complex than the first, therefore I had to develop some sort of plan to meet my aspirations?

What am I actually aspiring to?

I read a Dale Carnegie book and it highlighted the importance of what you want to achieve. I realised I have never thought through where I am going – I just wanted to show everyone how good I am.

I have underselled my ability as I stumbled from one job to the next – this means I have not met the full potential of my aspirations.

I sat down and thought Why I want to achieve promotion:

I want to have more responsibility
I want to work with a wider range of people
I want to be paid more

That made me think Where I wanted to be next year

I want to be promoted to the next level
I want to be earning 20% more than I am on currently

And this led to me thinking What do I need?

I need to gain experience in a number of areas. This is detailed on the job description.
I need to understand more about SharePoint, Project Reporting and Project Executive functions

That’s a lot of planning

My first step was to get a copy of the Senior post to myself. I split the job requirements into two categories:

What I know
What I don’t know

What I knew was straight forward – I could just prepare some good examples of how I met that criteria.

What I didn’t know was a bit harder and a lot more extensive than I thought it would be.

For each criteria I thought Who could help me and How I would get there. Because I have a lot of other duties in my post I also had to decide When I was going to do it.

I am young and enthusiastic.

I have lots of energy so I don’t mind being pushed to my limits. I will read books on project management, complete training courses and go above and beyond my duties at work.

My goal setting habits is fare paying off because I am used to keeping myself busy, so I don’t feel exhausted when I have been tested at work.

So that is how I will move this goal forward. Suddenly everything became much more complicated, but I am excited to have developed a plan so I know where I am going.

GOALSETTING Manifesto of Perfection – Goal Setting Month