Don't Waste Your Life... Test Your Career Goals

Don't Waste Your Life... Test Your Career Goals

(Article written by Bruce Kasanoff originally for Linkedin.com - can be found here)

If I told you that the first person to discover a pink manatee would become an instant millionaire, you probably wouldn't drop everything and start searching. You are smart enough not to believe in pink manatees, and you realize there are much more sensible ways for you to succeed.

In other words, you did a quick reality check and avoided running off on a ridiculous quest for success.
Are you being as logical with your own career? There's one way to find out.

Test your goals.

The way to separate possible goals from impossible ones is to test them, in a modest way, and see what happens.

If you want to be a standup comedian, write a routine and test it in front of your friends. If that works, perform at an open mic night. If you want to write songs, write songs... then see if you can get people to stay in the room when you sing them.

If you want to go to grad school, take a graduate level course and see how well you like it.
You may be an extraordinarily gifted designer, but if you have no business sense whatsoever you will likely fail without a business partner. If this description fits you, your first test should be to see if you can convince a smart business person to collaborate with you.

If you think you can handle a much bigger job, privately test your ability to handle the job's biggest challenges. For example, write a strategic plan - masking any confidential details - and show it to a few people (outside the company) whose opinion you trust.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, build a prototype and see if anyone wants to buy it. Even better, get feedback from potential customers, then use that feedback to refine your product. When customers actually buy your product, then - and only then - will you know you are on the right track.

Slow down!

It can be easy to move too fast. You may hate your current job, or be incredibly excited by the potential of your dream. You could be tempted to quit your job before designing a product or selling it to anyone. You might want to raise money before talking to potential customers. Maybe you want to act first, and think later.
In other words, you'd like to skip the boring stuff like thinking, planning, and testing.

If you pursue your dreams without testing them, you risk wasting years of your life. Don't chase pink manatees; always test the waters before jumping in.

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More from Bruce Kasanoff: Bruce has three free ebooks available for download at Kasanoff.com. He is the author with Michael Hinshaw of Smart Customers, Stupid Companies; you can read the Introduction and first chapter for free.

 

To see more of Bruce's articles on LinkedIn, click the "follow" button below, or follow@NowPossible on Twitter.

Image credit: Manatee sketch by Tamara Fuchinsky.



To-do #1: Kill your to-do list!

To-do #1: Kill your to-do list

(By Joel Peterson for Linkedin.com)

Most executives sit atop a mountain of to-do’s that never seems to get any smaller, no matter how furiously they work to cross things off. One young entrepreneur I work with was struggling with a list that contained 25 “pressing issues.” She wanted to improve her web site, craft a workable budget, reorganize the sales force, update pricing, replace the head of IT, prepare board documents, start employee reviews and a dozen other vital tasks.

That many giant projects stacked on top of one another can be a fearsome thing to behold. So I suggested she put the list aside for a minute, take a deep breath, and pull out a clean sheet of paper. Next I told her to try this exercise:

• Fit every item on the Big List into one of three columns -- tasks that benefit Employees, Shareholders, or Customers.
• If any of the tasks doesn't fit in one of the columns -- cross it off. Be ruthless.
• Rank the remaining tasks by order of importance, and assign all but the top one in each column to your team members.
• The three remaining tasks -- one in each group – are your new priorities.

As hard as this can be to do, the idea is a simple one: To-do’s aren’t goals – they’re tasks. If you’re a CEO (or a team leader), your job is to figure out what winning looks like. In the above example, balancing the needs, wants and expectations of all three core constituencies became the guiding principle for this young leader as she found her bearings. Not ticking off to-do's.

Your most important job as a leader is to keep your team focused on a clear, compelling and limited set of big goals – no more than three. Yesterday I shared a few ways to make your goals exciting, unselfish, and memorable. You’re the guardian and evangelist of your organization’s priorities – it’s up to you to keep them high up and in neon letters so all employees can see, from C-level to the street level.

At Microsoft, that meant putting “a computer on every desk and in every home.” At Amazon.com, their Kindle seeks to offer "every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.” Pepsi famously wanted to “Beat Coke.” At jetBlue, we strive to be “America's favorite airline by bringing humanity back to air travel.”

If you’re splaying 25 to-do’s across 10 columns like my young friend did, no one will know your priorities – because you won’t have any! You’ll end each week exhausted, wondering if you made any progress. And your team will lose steam.

It's clarity and boldness you want: when employees can actually believe in what they’re spending so much of their lives doing, they’ll feel energized and excited, because they know what they’re doing matters. If you can give them a “line of sight” from their jobs to the big goal, you’ll find invigorated employees accomplishing remarkable things.

Clear, inspiring goals to empower your people and connect them to your business -- that should be #1 on a your (very short) list.

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Joel's recent posts:
"The 10 most common firing mistakes"
"Be the Michelangelo of Goal-Setting"
Follow Joel at @JoelCPeterson
(Photo: romanlily / Flickr)