Having studied high achievers for many years, I’ve found their approach to career development to be a perfect example for creating a vision and turning it into a tangible achievement.  While their approach is simple and involves only a few steps, it has been well thought out in its development.  High achievers take great care in developing the strategies and tasks for defining and implementing their career goals.  Why?  They are driven by success, especially the kind that brings with it upward mobility, money and prestige.  All of these factors provide sufficient motivation to get it right the first time, something most organizations fail to establish.

As we move through this article, we will review the process for career development that high achievers use (a team based approach) and compare it to how organizations attempt to turn vision into success.  The five steps are below. 

Clearly define and communicate goals to the team.  High achievers as much time as necessary to establish their career goals.  They understand that broad goals that can’t be broken down into actionable steps are difficult to accomplish.  Their career success is a direct reflection of their ability to achieve these tasks.  So, the tasks are defined for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.  How? They look at their end goal and brainstorm about what must be done to reach that goal.  The goal is established once it’s determined that there is a high probability of achieving it.  High achievers won’t waste a lot of time on something they can’t achieve.  I know we always say to set stretch goals and push ourselves hard to achieve them.  Well, if high achievers can’t pull it off in a reasonable time frame they move on and set another goal that can be achieved.  They don’t waste time and effort.

Organizations struggle because executives vaguely define the goal without consideration of how it can be achieved.  They partially address goals by only defining the concept at a high level.  Then, they pass the goal down to other managers to provide more detail to it and break it into actionable items.  The managers then assign the tasks to those at the lowest levels to accomplish.  As you know, the further an ill-defined idea is passed along a group of people, the less defined it becomes, to the point it no longer resembles its original form.

Draw a map to the destination.  High achievers write their goals down and create a map that shows where they want to go, what path they think they will take, and what resources (e.g. skills, knowledge and abilities) they need to obtain.  The map defines the route from Point A (where they are) to Point B (where they want to be).  It’s visual.  It clearly articulates the path to be traversed.  There is no confusion in its interpretation and little need for speculation.

Granted organizational leaders have a more difficult time creating such a map, IBM’s Global CEO surveys indicate that CEOs are having greater difficulty identifying future change and how to address it.  A recent survey by Seton Hall University indicated that managers are feeling ineffective due to all of the change they are engaged in.  They are feeling pressure to improve things but will little direction from the corner office they are struggling to find their way.  

Assign and motivate.  Once high achievers have their goals defined and the map drawn to their destination, they are careful to assign them to people who have the abilities to accomplish them.  They don’t take a lot of risk by obtaining support from someone who can’t perform.  Since high achievers often work in teams or groups, they are motivated by reciprocity, understanding that their efforts will be rewarded later on.  They also share in the team’s success, so that as one member becomes successful, he/she will find a way to reward the other members of the team.  Team success from team effort deserves team reward.

Unfortunately, companies operate in a much different manner.  While the organization creates goals and assignments, it does little to stir commitment from those who have to make them, according to Steven Hutchinson and Mary Garstka (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1996).  This is largely due to employee’s inability to feel any sense of reward for their effort and to see how their efforts fit into the grand scheme (or vision of the company).  It’s just a work assignment that the employee must do because it’s their job, where their motivation is job satisfaction.  Once job satisfaction declines, then the level of success declines.  With little reward to boost morale, organizations are stuck with mediocrity, at best.      

Monitor and measure outcomes.  High performers believe in accountability.  They assume responsibility for their actions.  After all, when they accomplish the task, they want the credit for the achievement and the reward that comes with it.  To ensure the team is held accountable, each member helps define the metrics for monitoring and measuring their progress with each task they are assigned. This is how they progress their career.  They don’t make giant leaps, they make steady progress.  The only way to do this is to keep your eye on your goals, your finger on the tasks at hand and your mind in the game.  Each task the team performs has an expected outcome and a time limit, which are reviewed at every meeting.  Once the progress for a task starts drifting off course, the other team members come to the rescue.  Why?  The team must succeed.  If they fail, the will never achieve their career goals.

Companies, on the other hand, often lose their employees in the vision stage of planning.  Have you ever seen companies restructure every 6 months to one year?  Doesn’t it make you wonder how they know what really works when a company changes this much? In most cases, they don’t know if it works.  They are just dealing with the perception that change is being implemented, as if change by itself is all that is required.  Most organizational change is tracked in terms of money, leading to a binary result; that is, success or failure.  But wouldn’t you want to know what else changed in process of restructuring.  Of course, what happened to morale, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and so on.  Without a way to measure and monitor such factors, a company can never really know the true impact of such a change.  If you can’t measure your performance, how can you become the best?  High achievers can and do!