I want to share with you my strategic planning failure, what I learned from it and how it is helping me better plan my 2019 goals. Back in 2015 I decided to develop a strategic plan for my life for 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. I did this because at the time I was receiving support from a Life Coach and she suggested I needed to develop these plans. I set goals for the following areas of my life:
- Friends and Family
- Career/Skills
- Finances
- Health and Well being
- Significant Other/Romance
- Personal Development
- Fun and Recreation
- Physical environment
This morning I was writing in my journal – something I have been doing every morning since 2010 ( I use a software called The Journal by DavidRM). What I like to do is travel back in time to see what I was doing and thinking on this day last year, two years ago etc. When I went back to December 23rd 2015 I discovered my strategic plans. Wow – what an eye opener!
What did I learn about Strategic Planning?
Well my one year plan made some sense. When you think about it we can think ahead to what we will be doing in the coming year. We can make some fairly good guesses about what we will be doing and what we can likely achieve. When I looked at my 3 year and 5 year plans they were frankly a pile of garbage! They had little relationship to my current life. They were just a wish list of things it would have been great to achieve at that time (but don’t inspire me at all today!). Another thing that I learned is that there were just too many goals. When you have so many goals across different areas of your life you end up dissipating your energy and have no focus.
Problems with 3-5 Year Planning
What I can see is that the plans were unable to take into account changes. The world is changing around us in unpredictable ways. There are also unpredictable events in our own lives. We are also changing and growing as people. When I look at some of the career goals I set myself 3 years ago they look totally uninteresting to me now. I have changed and I have developed new skills and interests which were unknowable to me three years ago. A key skill to develop for the 4th Industrial Revolution is Life Long Learning. If you engage in Life Long Learning you will be a different person in a year or two. These new skills and interests that you develop will open up new opportunities to you that you cannot foresee. Your 3-5 year goals will not reflect the person you have changed into.
Lessons I have learned from my strategic planning
There are a number of lessons that I have learned from my strategic planning exercise.
- Planning too far out (3-5 year+ horizon) is not much use. The world is changing around us and we are changing in unpredictable ways.
- If fact you should be changing as you learn new skills and develop new interests – Life Long Learning is a key skill to develop in a fast changing world. If you don’t change you will become outdated very fast.
- A one year horizon is valuable but beyond that it starts to become foggy and vague.
- Setting too many goals is confusing. Set a small number of achievable goals with a one year horizon. I like to set three goals for the year. Break these three goals into quarterly goals. Again I like to set no more than three quarterly goals.
- Goals become outdated as the world changes and as we change. We need to to constantly review and tweek them, change them, discard them and add new goals.
- Keep a diary – you can learn a lot by reflecting back on past planning exercises and reviewing past goals.
Set your 2019 goals
Select three key transformative goals that you want to achieve for yourself in 2019. Three goals that will change your life for the better. Don’t think beyond 2019 – keep your time horizon where you can make realistic goals. Based on your three 2019 goals set three sub-goals for the first quarter of 2019. That is from January 1st 2019 up to March 31st 2019. Write those three quarterly goals down and place them where you can see them. Each week set weekly goals based on your quarterly goals. Every day make sure you set actions to achieve those weekly goals. At the end of the 1st quarter review progress and set three goals for the second quarter 2019. Don’t be surprised if goals from the first quarter roll into the second quarter. That is because we are often overoptimistic in what we can achieve. This is know as the planning fallacy. If new opportunities come up during the year then don’t be afraid to change your goals or incorporate new goals. This is a fast changing world and we need the flexibility to change as well. Goals are not a straight jacket!
I hope my reflections help you make better and more realistic plans for 2019.
Best wishes,
Tom
P.S. To get lots more ideas and information on goal setting, visioning and planning check out my course 30 Experiments in personal change. Get the course at the special price of $9.99 for readers of this blog.