The Philosopher’s Stone
As part of my day to day, I partner with Global Leaders and teams to clarify their direction and organize their initiatives. The easier part of this exercise is often coming up with the activities that each team performs. The harder part is to group these activities into higher level priorities and goals. The same thing happens to all of us as individuals. It’s easy to come up with small objectives for ourselves. When it comes to constructing something that speaks to a higher purpose, it gets trickier.
You might have read the story of Warren Buffet’s dialogue with his personal airplane pilot, Mike Flint. Whilst talking about career goals Buffet advised a 3 step exercise: writing 25 career goals, circling the top 5, and avoiding at all costs the 20 that didn’t make to the top. This approach to ruthless prioritization might work for some people. Prioritization is a worthwhile exercise to optimize our time. I prefer the approach of grouping small goals into higher level ones as a way to build a hierarchy. If they have the potential to contribute to a higher cause we care about, it’s most likely worth investing time in pursuing them. Having some room for exploration during goal setting can also enrich our perspectives. The book Power in Projects, Programs and Portfolios by Attrup and Olsson, provides a thorough explanation of how to create a Goal Breakdown Structure. A more condensed application is provided by Simon Sinek in Start with Why and the representation of why, how and what in a circular diagram; referred to as “the golden circle”. Taking it to the team and organizational level, If you are a leader and looking for organizational design models, the five stars by Jay Galbraith is an adaptable model to start with.
Finding an underpinning philosophy helps grouping goals and making prioritization decisions. The other day, a friend of mine asked me why I didn’t have a single picture of myself in my Instagram account. My answer was that my contribution to the platform is providing with an outside-in view of the world by showing what inspires me through my drawings, blog posts and photography. I want to encourage talent expression and disciplined organization as a way to spark creativity and get things done. And with that discussion I stumbled upon my own Philosopher's stone. These words provide me with guidance in my goals, choices and decisions.
Are we done once we have our hierarchy of goals? We just got started. Without a plan, a goal is just an aspiration. Once we have a plan in place, it will evolve as we execute and gather new information. The concept of “Becoming” is something to apply to our plans, at the individual, team and organizational level. Less often, we’ll adjust our goals as we learn from experimentation. We will also end up re-visiting our higher level goals and philosophy as we mature and our interests and motivations change. Frequency and how much we shift all of the above matters. Developing expertise requires time and dedication. If we want to reach a destination we can’t be constantly changing the path. We need a set direction.
Japanese “Ikigai” refers to finding meaning and purpose, the overarching motivator. In Japan, there’s also a strong sense of collectivism that encourages sharing successes and failures with others in your community. There’s a Japanese word for that, too: kizuna. It means a chord or a bond that connects everyone. We can accelerate our successes by effectively interacting with others. Adam Grant, in Give and Take, explores what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation and leadership have in common and how they can transform individual, group and organizational success. Think of it as a constellation of goals where we can seek to find meaningful connections.
Have you found your “philosopher’s stone”? How does your goal hierarchy look like? Are you connecting your personal goals to other people in your network?