The start of a new year is a natural time for defining two distinct types of goals. First, most professionals and teams are formalizing annual business plans or objectives that specify what outcomes they are hoping to achieve that year. Second, these same professionals (along with millions of others) are identifying aspirations for their personal and professional development, whether in the form of new year’s resolutions, new habits, or “nudge words”.
Curiously, very few of us take the next step of linking these two reflection processes together in an explicit way. A simple and quick approach of “crossing the streams” between business and development goals can unlock new levels of creativity and work-life integration by helping us grow in ways that directly advance our business objectives.
Crossing the Streams: How to Link Business And Development Goals
Making the link between business goals and development goals is a simple three-step process that for most professionals can yield outsized impact with a relatively small amount of effort. This process can be done both at the level of the individual and the team; for teams, it can be a powerful exercise to identify more concrete ways to improve team dynamics and common areas of development such as “being more transparent with each other” in the context of the work, rather than separate from it.
Step 1: Crystalize a simplified version of your business and development goals
The first step is to simply write down clear, succinct statements of your top 3-5 business goals along with a maximum of 3-5 areas of development.
Business goals are the tangible results you aspire to deliver; examples of simplified business goals would be “deliver organic growth of 15%,” “launch new product by June,” “achieve 10% net decrease in carbon emissions,” or “get six team members promoted.” Many companies will have more robust and formal goal statements or OKRs, but for this exercise a simplified, shorthand version of the goals will suffice.
Development goals are areas of personal or professional growth for the coming year. For many people, these live at the amorphous level of statements like “strengthen my professional network,” “show more vulnerability,” “stand up for myself,” or “better manage my work-life balance.” For the purpose of this exercise, it is fine for these goals to be less than fully tangible; in Steps 2 and 3 you will develop more concrete ways to work on them in the context of your day-to-day business priorities.
Complete this step by making a grid by listing your business goals across the top of a sheet of paper and your development goals down the left-hand side. You now have a two-by-two matrix where each cell is the intersection of a business goal and a development goal.
