Looking Back to Go Forward #4 - 7 Steps for Success in 2018..and more!

Flying back from the UK yesterday I spent most of the flight working on my personal and professional game plans for 2018. It’s all part of my review of 2017 this month: looking back at the journey; fast forwarding to my ideal state of play in the future; jumping back to today’s reality – the truth, along with attributes I have employed and lessons I have learned to get to December 31st and that I can take into 2018. So, finally comes the game plan – what is it I want to achieve next year and what do I need to do to get there?

As a side and equally important part to this formal planning process, I think the single most important thing any of us can do in looking back on our year is to identify the highlights and thank people who have been involved. I posted a few highlights on Instagram yesterday and over the next few days will be reaching out to various people involved in my personal and professional life to thank them. As I’ve mentioned before, gratitude as a lens through which we look at life is an incredibly powerful tool and something I have to be intentional about, as it doesn't come naturally to me. I wrote about that earlier in the year, here.

This game plan isn’t intended to be a comprehensive action plan for 2018 covering everything you will need to get done. Rather, kind of like in a rugby match it’s a basic framework setting out how we want to play the game with view to our top three performance parameters. We can’t control everything that happens after the whistle blows, and need to ‘play what we see’ but if we focus on getting these top 3 things right, we’ll have more influence over a successful outcome. I have completed one template for personal and one for professional as one cannot thrive without the other. The one constant between the two was my purpose.

You can view & download the template I created in case it’s useful to you (any issues ping me a message / comment and I'll email it to you). If you download it should fully editable so you can adjust it to what works best for you – add content, change colors, whatever. Incidentally, if there’s anything you feel is a material addition / omission that is helpful to you, please add in the comments below so that I and others can consider for ourselves.

In the meantime, below is a brief description of the game plan sub-headings along with some links to relevant articles I have written about any of them. Note, I have not listed these in the order in which they appear on the template, rather in the order in which I would recommend you complete them, unless you feel you already have answers top of mind for each.

1.    Dream: My definition is: "to imagine an ideal future state, outcome or aspiration, that is inspirational and perhaps not measurable."  I chose to document these on my personal template, while my professional one was more outcome focused. My two most relevant articles on dreaming are #1 here, #2 here.

2.    Ideal 5 Year Destination: There are tons of different terms for this. Jim Collins refers to BHAG – “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”, Kevin Roberts refers to “Greatest Imaginable Challenge”. Whatever you want to call it – pick something that would be a huge achievement, something that if you achieved it you would look back and say, “wow, I (we) did it – amazing, I’m pretty bloody proud of that!” (but in your own words)!

3.    Purpose: The big why! As you have likely seen from Simon Sinek’s super simple Golden Circle – start with why. But why didn’t I? Only because, if you haven’t done the work in defining your purpose starting with dreams and longer term challenges is a way of getting to understand what your why is. Why do you what to be in that future state or achieve that objective. What is it about those things that motivates and excites you? I have referred a lot to purpose in several articles this year but perhaps the most helpful is here.

4.    Single Biggest Objective (2018 / Next 12 months): if there was only one thing you must achieve for 2018, what would it be? What’s the most important thing (again, one personal, one professional). This should be something tangible (as measured by the 3 goals section further down the template).

5.    Philosophy: This is a guiding principle for how you live your personal / professional life. It’s for you – how you would sum up what makes you, your ideal you. "Go-Forward" is mine representing never giving up on things I believe in, learning from mistakes, progressing and persevering as my best self throughout the journey.

6.    2018 Focus: If you had to sum up one thing that you needed to focus on to achieve your SBO, what would it be? For example, mine for 2018 personally was “Be Me”, professionally “More from Less”. If #'s 1 – 5 above are clear, the focus should surface. I guess the most relevant thing here is to keep it positive. My posts focusing on positivity were summarized here.

7.    I know I will have achieved this objective if I am: For these, just go with your gut reaction. They are simply angles of viewing the same thing to trigger different thought processes in your brain. My personal examples are below but it’s really important to come up with your own, whatever’s front of mind. There’s no right or wrong here.

·     Feeling: "Happy, excited, healthy"

·     Being: "My best self"

·     Having: "Space, freedom, flexibility"

·     Doing: "Things I love"

Now we've answered the 7 steps on where we want to be and why, we then look at how we're going to get there:

• Top 3 Goals evidencing success: I’m sure we all know to make these SMART (specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, timely)!
• Top 3 strategies to achieve goals: Strategies are the overall plans that need to come to fruition.
• 3 Actions to get on the front foot: these would be the equivalent of tactics - specific actions or initiatives to achieve a strategy. Here we’re just focused on the first three things you need to get onto the front foot and notch up some early points on the scoreboard!
• Monthly Milestones (for Q1): Again, just to get things focused and off to a good start, come up with some monthly milestones to frame out potential progress. You could transfer these into a more comprehensive action planning document for professional projects and just update or document in a journal / calendar for personal.

Then, finally, what principles and focus themes we should apply along the way:

• My Core Principles: This is another area that requires some pre-work. In his book “Principles” Ray Dalio - one of the most successful investors of our time - defines principles as:

"fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life"

• I had done my pre-work on this and chose to keep my principles consistent for personal and professional as, for me, they translate clearly to both. That should be the case for many of us with one caveat – for your principles to translate into long-term success professionally, they need to be aligned to those of the organization you are engaged with. If they don’t, well that’s a good red-flag to identify and work around over time. I referred to “attributes and behaviors” from 2017 that I want to take forward into 2018 in my last article here. Previously, I had referred to 7 delivery tactics here in “Deliver or Die”.
• My Focus Themes: I referred to these in my last article too. They’re not so much principles as guiding themes to that you should be able to activate easily in your mind. I guess they kind of sit in the back but easily come to the front with little effort. Mine are grouped in threes and I came up with these doing some personal reflection time. As I’m a visual person, I ended up drafting up symbols that represent each, and so they’re always just there. You need to do what works best for you.

So that wraps up my 2017, other than some celebrations with friends tonight. Once we've gone through our 2017 highlights, taking time out to reflect, adapt and act is an integral part of us going-forward into a successful 2018. This last post summarizes 7 steps for success in 2018 identifying what you want to achieve and why. Then, looks at how to get there and what principles and focus themes you should apply. I hope you find the template useful and can adapt it for your own purpose.

In the meantime, with a special shoutout to the hundreds of staff and stakeholders supporting Play Rugby USA and Vita Sports Partners, I wish you a fabulous, fun & fulfilling 2018! Just as we inspire and empower the thousands of kids in our programs, I believe like them, you and I too can realize our true potential with a go-forward mindset and we create a better world as we do so. Let's enjoy the moments, be energized by what we do and excited for the journey ahead!

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