Personal & Professional Goal Setting – Climbing out of the box

This is the tale of what happens when you do not have a Plan B. I have been extremely fortunate person my entire working life. I have been blessed with a career that I have loved and had the opportunity to travel the world. I have had an organic career going from one interesting opportunity to the next. I am a project manager, business analyst, crusader for better customer service, trainer, team builder and a self confessed workaholic. I have a plan, I know exactly where I want to be in 10 years and what I need to achieve to get there. So far so good and I put into play a series of events that lead me back to Beautiful BC to start a business. Yes you can see the sob story coming, clearly I had not thought out the possibility of the market downturn and did not have a Plan B strategy in place. So much for project planning as I overlooked Risk Analysis 101. What If……………

Now I have found myself in this box of preconceived notions and limiting beliefs. My goal for this great series of workshops is to break out of this box and find new opportunities that will get me to my ultimate end goal.
Workshop One: Setting Personal and Professional Goals
A lot to think about after the first workshop.
I had identified a long time ago what I wanted to be doing when I reach 55. But in life sometimes unexpected things occur and I find myself needing to reassess what will work for me both professionally and personally to get me there. During the workshop Heather had us do a lot of reflecting on goals and quantifying those goals. It is not enough just to have an idea one must set bench marks, identify key deliverables and put time frames on our objectives. Well this works with my project management mind set. These are things I can do.
Step One: Not giving up on Plan A – just making it my Plan B. It is something I can continue to work on and develop; it is just not going to my primary focus at this stage.
Step Two: Defining a new focus – this is the hard part. I started by identifying my key skills and attributes that I would bring to another role. This is great exercise for the ego but how come if I am such a talented and wonderful person am I looking for my next opportunity, you would think everyone would be knocking on my door. I am pretty sure in the Secret they said that if I put it out there, it would happen. Clearly I am going to have to responsible for the creation of this new opportunity.
Step Three: What companies are out there? I have limited myself to hospitality in the past (there is that box again), now is the time to look elsewhere and find other opportunities in other sectors of the business world. I log on to the internet and Google is staring at me waiting to unfold the universe if I can correctly identify the key phrase…….. many hours of unsatisfying results later and I discovered I had lost my focus somewhere. Now I just have all sorts of ideas, no game plan or any idea if these companies will be a good fit for me. Time to go to the experts in information and research for help, the Vancouver Public Library. I attended a course called InfoAction. Takes about 6 hours and they show you all the reference materials for businesses, associations, periodicals and most importantly, the on line databases for companies, all at your finger tips with just a library card and yes you can access a lot of this information from home. Now I have at my fingertips companies, by business sector and location with basic information on everything from the number of employees, annual earnings and a contact name.
Still not sure at this point of what my new possibilities will be, that is still fuzzy, the box is open but I have not quite climbed out yet, however,

• I am confident that I am qualified to work outside of my comfort zone and my skills are transferable to other industries.
• I know where I want to be in 10 years and what I need to career wise / money in order to achieve this goal.
• I understand my personal goals and lifestyle requirements in order to achieve the elusive work/life balance.
• I have resources to research potential companies and explore different business models.

The Next Step, Workshop Two Networking
The journey continues… Lisa

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