A guest blog post by Katja Staring
This week, I attended my local business women network meeting. It was the last event of the year and the organization had asked me to come up with a concept that would make the members think about the past year and their goals for the upcoming year. Maybe it could help you too.
This is what we did:
All members came in and got a nice cardboard tag with a string attached. They also got an ugly common paper. During the welcoming drink, we toasted on the last year and the year to come.
Then we asked everybody to write down on the ugly paper: What they did in 2014 but want to get rid of definitely.
On the beautiful tag, they were supposed to write: What they had achieved in 2014 and are really proud of.
It was silent for quite some minutes…
Every woman in the room was thinking and writing. Then I asked if someone wanted to share her writings. To my surprise, everybody did!
Each one of us read the ‘get rid of’ note and someone crumpled the ugly paper with a great gesture and threw it away. They really had fun doing that! We all agreed with them, of course. The nice tag they could be taken home and hang it in their Christmas tree as a reminder.
After that we had dinner and during the 3-course meal, the women were asked to write down a “how” question for 2015. It should be a well-defined question.
Not: How do I make more money?
But: “How do I make more money with selling my training to HR-officers in the non-profit sector in my own region?”
Or
“How do I get more interesting marketing assignments in the healthcare sector to show exactly what I am really good at?”
An attendant introduced the “wouldn’t it be great” question. That’s a good way to be able to formulate the “how” question. So: “Wouldn’t it be great if I … ?”
Followed by the question: “And how would I realize that?”
Wrapping Up
Everybody was networking and thinking and talking about this question. So in the end, each woman had formulated a really good question.
I provided them with some brainstorm tips, brain writing tips and mind mapping advice to get answers (I wrote a small book on brainstorming alone. It actually is my business card) to that question for the next 2 weeks. So they would really have time to think properly and have some night’s sleep over it. Because that’s important. Take some time to set a suitable and sharp goal for 2015. But do not wait till March.
Have you come up with your goals for 2015? How do you plan to achieve them? Share your thought with us.
Author Bio
Based in The Netherlands, Katja Staring is a publishing concept developer, content marketer, and editorial consultant. KatCom – Inspiration in Communication. Connect with her via email: info@katcom.nl or Twitter: @KatjaStaring
