To produce results, you must be Goal-Wise

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Ajit, a graduate from IIT Mumbai, had been working in a product company for last three years. He was evaluated as a top performer for last three years in his group of 20. This year, he said, he is seeking promotion. When i asked him his 'strategy' of getting promoted, he said " I am working harder than before". 

Every athlete wants to win the race, every tennis player wants to win Grand slams. So the difference between the winners and losers is just one: better strategy to achieve the goals, not better goals.

No British cyclist had won a cycling event in last 100 years, when in year 2003, British cycling team hired Dave Brailsford as its new performance director. He devised a new strategy called “the aggregation of marginal gains.” Brailsford explained the strategy in this way, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you break down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.” So Brailsford redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable, rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip, asked riders to wear electrically heated shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding, changed the racing suits, tested different types of massage gels to enable faster muscle recovery of cyclists. As hundreds of such small improvements accumulated, the results came. Five years after Brailsford took over, the British Cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where they won more than half of the gold medals available.  Four years later in 2012, in the Olympic Games at London, the British team broke nine Olympic records and seven world records. A workable and differentiating strategy ( differentiating itself from other competitors) plus sufficient time was required to achieve goal-results.

When I asked Ajit to explain his strategy to achieve his goal of promotion, his answer was “I will work hard. I plan to take no vacations this year. I will ensure that projects are finished on time.” Is this strategy good enough? 

If one is expecting promotion as a manager in a company, one requires a clear strategy to address the ‘people-reality’ of work. As many professionals are trained only to see their job consisting of ‘physical-reality’ (such as projects, work-schedules, quality), they only use projects and work schedules in their 'promotion' strategy. 

They forget that Google, in 2013, found out that their best managers have seven soft qualities such as communication, critical thinking, caring for careers of team members. Technical proficiency was listed as the 8th quality required of managers. Ajit was not even aware that he must develop new 'qualities' required to get promoted as Manager.  Therefore he also did not know how to develop these 'qualities'. Without striving to develop these seven soft qualities, what are his chances of getting promoted as a manager? 

Every professional knows the importance of setting goals, like Ajit did, because every self-help book encourages goal-setting. Professionals learn multiple tools of thinking mind in colleges, but they do not learn to use Systems thinking tool which helps them include both objective and subjective reality. 

Pausetive model of achievement helps you master Systems thinking that will help you fill the gaps in your thinking capacity. In other words, Pausetive helps you become Goal-Wise. It helps you understand that a goal requires a appropriate strategy to achieve.