Unbelievable. Third quarter ends Sunday, which means the year is almost over.

After that there’s really only seven more weeks of fully productive work.

Then comes Thanksgiving and the run-up to all the holidays.

Usually, about a week before thanksgiving is when people start freaking out over all the stuff they haven’t done, especially the goals set last January.

Yeah, the goals that you were going to work on — tomorrow.

Oops.

Suddenly there are very few tomorrows in which to accomplish them.

Missing or just being short isn’t the real problem.

The real problem is that people start putting extraordinary pressure on themselves to achieve them

Not just some of them, but all of them — which is totally crazy.

Worse, on top of that pressure comes all the expectations, pressures and stress of the holidays.

And they wonder why people get so cranky.

I read the following somewhere and it’s stayed with me.

Unrealistic goals lead people to think less of themselves.

The good news is that, as always, it’s your choice.

Join me Monday for more on doing goals right. It may not help this year, but it will keep you from going through it next year.

Image credit: Michel Curi

I mentioned last week that I was in Vegas for a sales kickoff. The event was strong and left me feeling both pumped and ready to move towards my goals for the year.

It also left me wanting. There are certain categories within the sales ecosystem and each category has an award winner for the year. In my category I was not the winner this year and it left me wanting to step up to the challenge.

Something I truly believe is “competition breeds success.” It could be sports or academics or work. When you have someone to compete with it can take you out of your comfort zone and pushes you to be your best.

In my current role I work pretty much alone. I am on a team but we are all remote and I don’t receive a ton of feedback from my management. As a result I sometimes feel lost or drifting.

However, last week changed that. I realized there is an end goal in mind and I do have a way to achieve it.

Today I took some steps towards that. I have a whiteboard in my office and I wrote my goal for the year along with what steps I can take to get there. It’s the first and last thing I see everyday. In addition, anyone else that comes by can see it too. It creates accountability and responsibility.

I am also making sure the items I work on are getting me to my goal. Am I using my time wisely? Am I working on high value tasks? These will all add up over time.

Finally I am making it a point to document my wins and losses so I can improve.

How do you work at it when you’re going towards a goal?

Image credit: Dana Lookadoo

Today you get a lesson from Nature on never giving up.

Keep trying and you will flourish

No matter how hard…

You can push through

And the result will be beautiful

That said, don’t be so impressed with your power to overcome obstacles that you prove Immanuel Kant’s observation that possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason to be true.

Internet images from Anonymous

My readers, my clients and my friends are all pretty driven.

They are goal oriented high achievers; the kind who always see past their current project to the next and the next and the next…

They are fully wired, very social (on and off line) and heavily involved in numerous projects.

They rarely disconnect or step away and are deaf to the sound of silence.

But Sid Caesar, who made the world laugh half a century ago, has some great advice for them—and you.

“Everybody wants to have a goal: I gotta get to that goal, I gotta get to that goal, I gotta get to that goal. Then you get to that goal, and then you gotta get to another goal. But in-between goals is a thing called life that has to be lived and enjoyed — and if you don’t, you’re a fool.”

So don’t be a fool; go after your life with the same tenacity you go after your goals.

Flickr image credit: Jochen Frey

Last week I promised to provide you with a simple, amazing tool that would help identify goals for each of your people and a whole lot more.

It’s the GSA (Great Skills Assessment) that uses a spreadsheet to monitors both hard and soft skills. If you already do something similar this post may open your eyes to additional uses.

The best reviews help people grow, not by beating them over the head but by laying out an achievable plan for improving areas in which they are weak.

An accurate GSA that’s frequently updated makes it easy to identify what will enhance a person’s value to the company in meeting its corporate goals as well as progressing on a desired career path.

Its value increases by merging individual assessments into one for the whole organization that you can use when planning projects.

And it’s invaluable when it’s time to fill an opening; a complete GSA is the best guarantee that you won’t end up with all your group’s skills in one area and gaping holes in others.

There are many ways to approach assessment creation and usage depending on your MAP and attitude towards inclusiveness and openness, but here is how my clients do it.

1. Looking at the template you’ll notice that the first three sections are public while the fourth is marked private. Start by sending the public part of the assessment template to each of your people and ask them to list their skills and rate them on a scale of one to five. Ask them to include not just the skills that they use at work, but all their skills, such as those they use at home or in volunteer work. You may be pleasantly surprised at the unknown depth and variety of abilities you find in your organization.

2. Post the results on your department intranet and ask everybody to add to each other’s profile—this includes you. Many times people have skills and abilities they ignore because previous bosses didn’t value them, but peers are apt to notice and comment and you may value stuff of which they aren’t aware.

3. Once everyone is finished (for the moment, you should encourage people to keep their profiles updated) you want to discuss specific results separately with each person, especially those that diverge from your own knowledge or opinions. Be patient; by the end of the conversation the two of you should be in agreement on both skills and ratings.

4. The private section of the soft skills is completed by you and should remain private. Use it as a guide when you’re coaching, assigning roles, helping the person prepare for their next career move, etc.—and to evaluate your own managerial success. If the public skills improve and goals are met, but you don’t see improvement in the private areas then look in the mirror since those skills are typically a direct reflection of management.

Combining the goal-setting procedure described last week with the GSA makes it easy to identify, define and agree on each person’s goals, both short and long-term.

Success today means constantly reinventing yourself and your organization—I call it continual course correction and the GSA makes it much easier.

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