Day 16 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012
In the last step (Step 15), you focused on brainstorming possible strategies for leveraging your strengths, a key element of your Vision statement. In today’s step, you move on to the “core” of your Vision statement. Remember the “core” is that part of your Vision statement that is most important to your fulfilling your Life Purpose (Step 12).
For this step, add at least five potential strategies to the list of potential strategies you started developing back in Step 14.
The question you should ask to develop these five potential strategies is “how can I accelerate my success at making the core element in my Vision statement become a current reality?” “How” at the 40,000 ft level represents a strategy. I am noticing that some of you, in your eagerness to set 2012 goals, are missing the strategy focus and speeding right on to throwing up goals that you have carried, sometimes for years, as a strategy.
Hopefully, thie following illustration will clarify the difference between a strategy and a goal. “Being a best-selling author to accelerate the growth of my coaching practice” would be a strategy. “Completing my book on ‘Mastering Change’ in 2012” is a goal. The former has longevity beyond one event; the latter might be the 2012 goal that would fit under the strategy of “Being a best-selling author to accelerate the growth of my coaching practice.”
I urge that you not truncate the process. You deserve better than to go into 2012 with a rehash of goals that, in many cases, haven’t been all that effective for you in the past. We are working at the strategy level now; please be patient, we will soon move to goals. Keep in mind that having goals that aren’t built on sound strategies is a recipe for disaster. Or, at minimum, a recipe for mediocrity. You really deserve better!
So, look at the core element of your Vision and start writing down ways you might accelerate success in achieving your Vision. For now, don’t constrain your thinking by limitations that you might feel you have with regard to time, money, or the like. Consultants, coaches, mentors, etc. this is a time for you to give yourself the benefit of your very best thinking. Step out from thinking about yourself and imagine you were counseling someone with your wonderful strengths.
One way to brainstorm how you might accelerate success with respect to your core is to consider your role model(s) that you identified back in Step 11. How did your role model(s) reach a level of success, with respect to your core element, such that you have chosen to use them as your role model?
Add at least five possible strategies to the list that you started back in Step 14. When you have completed this step, your list should include a wonderful mix of at least 15 strategies. By the time you have completed Step 19, you should have a list of 25 strategies from which you will choose five or six to be your key strategies for 2012. Again, for now, just focus on adding to your list. We make our best choices in life when we have great options. For Step 19, Selection of Your 2012 Success Strategies, I want you to have a deluxe list of options from which to choose.
Hopefully, you are starting to get a good sense of how we are using a planning process that moves you sequentially through designing your Desired Legacy, your Life Purpose, your Compelling Vision, your 2012 Success Strategies, and – ultimately – your 2012 Success Goals. Hopefully, the logic of this planning process is starting to become empowering to you.
We are now halfway through the thirty-one step/day process. Take some time to savor your having made it to the halfway point in a process that is the major leagues of personal planning.
I salute YOU for making the planning of your future such a priority.
I am honored that you we are walking down this planning road together. Congratulations.
We will be picking up speed in the second half as the steps will become increasingly easy for you. We are past the hump, and now past the halfway point as measured by the number of steps. Home stretch is before us. Stay the course. Imagine how impressed your Board of Advisors will be with your submission, ten days from now, of a personal plan that likely surpasses what they themselves have (unless they too are particpating in this program) and surpasses what many businesses have.
When you have completed Step 16, you can access Step 17 here. If you want an anouncement every time a new step is posted, you can sign-up – to the right – to receive new steps by either RSS feed or email.
Please note: If you have arrived at this step first, it is not too late for you to join other high performers who are collaborating to follow the bite size steps that are unveiled here every day. Get started here.
This blog post was written by Dave Carpenter. Dave is a prolific author, inspiring speaker, and well-known consultant to professional service firms. Besides writing regularly for this blog, Dave’s writing can be seen in leading business and personal development publications. Dave is also the leader of the Accelerate Success mentoring program where he mentors high performers in a unique program designed to do great things for the favorite charity of each participant. If you are (1) a high performer who believes you still have untapped potential, and (2) passionate about a favorite charity, you may want to learn more about this powerful program. You can also follow Dave on Twitter, on Facebook, and/or on Google+.
