Every start of the year, our corporate bosses talk to us and we are given our “annual targets.” These are quantitative or qualitative goals which we are instructed to focus all our attention on.
It could be something like:
P12 million quota for someone in sales,
Reducing costs by 20% for an operations guy,
Improve the satisfaction index by 5% for an HR guy, or perhaps
Increase total calls serviced by 15% for a BPO team leader
The side effect of this process? If we are not careful, these goals become our personal goals for the year. To illustrate, when you ask the guy in sales what his career goal is for this year, he will most likely say, “P12 million.”
This is dangerous.
Soon, with our head down working, 3-4 years of this can seem to zip by in a flash. Then we are left wondering:
OK, so what have I accomplished?
The seeds of quarter-life crisis.
After we graduate, when we go out into the world and start our careers, we often forget about who we really are, don’t we? We almost unconsciously put aside our own dreams and ambitions, and enter the corporate rat race. Our goals become the corporation’s goals. This is further drilled into our heads by annual targets.
The HR guys in Career Management will forever preach (I should know):
Company goals should align with your personal goals. Tell us what your personal goals are so we can help you manage what will surely be a long and satisfying career here.
Uhm, yeah – but only if your goals can exist within the company’s narrow field of vision. Try to see what happens when you tell them this:
I want to be my own boss, have freedom with my time, and work on an idea which involves movies.
Taking our cue from the corporations themselves, shouldn’t WE think about alignment?
We should ensure that our annual goals are very much aligned to our dreams.
Is it your dream to create a startup? To pursue a freelance consulting career? To be a restauranteur? To create a satisfying career doing what you love but at the same time affording you more time to spend with your kids?
What can you do this year which can help you inch your way to your dream?
JUAN GREAT LEAP 