3a. Direction
Before: Goals. --- After: Will to Win
Where to go now? A ship has never left port on purpose with a destination. An aircraft doesn't take off without a flight plan. Your destination often is more than one day away, but the trip is made up of each day's travel. Where are you headed?
A good tool for defining your destination is Drucker's 5 Questions:
- What do you want to be remembered for?
- I don't like mission statements. They seem to be written for posters that no one reads. I'm asking your personally. Peter Drucker intended these questions for a manager to ask about the company, and I believe they are wonderful questions to ask personally also. Do you want to be remembered for the car you drove, house you owned? No judgement here. Most people want to say no to being remembered for the car you drove, but if that's a true statement for you, then own it. If not, then what is the honest answer? Kind? Tough? Honorable? Lovable?
- Notice the list typically contains traits or virtues more than possessions or achievements.
- You can have more than one answer, and you can have different answers for different parts of your life. Better if the different answers align, but most important it to be honest. This is for you and by you.
- Who do you want to be remembered by?
- This one can be tricky too. I suggest again more than one answer. At work, maybe you want to be remembered by your team, your boss, or your clients. At home, maybe your partner or your kids. In the community, maybe the neighbors, the poor, the golf club members?
- What do they find important? Not you.
- The people in the answer to question 2 are the ones that get to decide what's important. If it's your client, they decide what's wanted, not you. If it's your family, they get say what's important. Is it time in the same room while you are working, reading, or looking at your phone or the TV? Is it conversation? Road trips? Eating together? Find out.
- How are you going to measure their value?
- What's the metric that measures the value? Number of ballgames you watch with the kids? Number of meals? Days when your kids laugh or your partner smiles? If clients, repeat business or referrals?
- Be careful what metric you pick. Many metrics are just vanity numbers, like how much you can bench press. What gets measured gets managed. Measure garbage and you'll get garbage.
- What's your plan?
- Now that you know the answers to the first 4 questions, you can create plan to increase the metric that measures the value to ensure you are remembered by who and how you believe is important.
Life moves quick, but you need to give yourself a little time to test your answers. Peter Drucker suggests asking the questions every six months. Set a reminder. Six months goes by faster than you think.
Before: Goals. --- After: Will to Win