Saturday, March 08, 2014

Are your goals align with your values?

Rajesh was our performing sales manager.  He was always ahead with setting ambitious targets and putting the number in place.  He had a target for volume of sales and acquired new business.  He was travelling a lot in a year and away from his family on week end and holidays.  

Although he was successfully implementing his plan and having positive results towards meeting his goals, he was not overjoyed. Why? It had nothing to do with his job, but had all to do with his family life. He missed time spent with his wife and sharing memorable experiences with his son. He was away from home too much.

One day, he was discussing with me his pains and reaction of his wife and son.

“It is hard time for me, on professional front I am successful, but on personal front, I am totally disturbed.” He told.  He was missing a lot his wife and son and even they also were missing him.

“What are your values?” I asked him.

“Putting more hours in the job is not the problem with me. I have chosen this profession, but I also would like to spend quality time with my family.” He replied.

“Then, why don’t you schedule your travel so that you are with them during week end, holidays and sometimes in between weeks.  For that you may have to put extra efforts in planning.” I suggested.

“Let me try this.” He said…

He changed is travelling schedule so that he could be with his family every weekend, on holidays and occasionally during the week. It meant working longer hours when travelling, but to him that was okay. His adjustment put his goals in line with his values, and both his business and his family life flourished.

When he met me after few months, he was very happy.

Are your goals in line with your values? It is necessary first to identify what your values are, both personally and professionally. How important is your family and other relationships, your health, your integrity and honesty, respect for others, meaningful career. These are only a few values to consider.

Somebody has put it nicely, "Happiness, wealth and success are by-products of goal setting, they cannot be the goal themselves."


If you do not have written goals for your career and your life, it is time to start. Review each goal with respect to your values. If they don't line up, make some adjustments. Next it is important to plan your time to meet your goals.

5 comments:

Juan Manuel Velasquez Henao said...

Let's say that in general, we don’t invest enough time in life planning and we end up with an imbalance between the desire to achieve goals and what we really value.

For Rajesh, an effort in life planning compensated his need for more time with his family.

Another question arises that we should ask ourselves, Are my values aligned with my company values?

There are also professionals that their decisions may be more complex, since the values of the company they work for are unethical, in this case, an aggressive plan should be put in place.

We are living a world where there are few leaders who care about their people, and less about having conversations about values.

Vinod Great article!

Dr Zachariah said...

A great book I would recommend on the topic of Goals, Roles & Governing Values is "What Matters Most" by Hyrum W Smith, which has a foreword by Ken Blanchard. Wonderful book!

RAJENDRA DESHPANDE said...

Nice Topic.For Deriving values in life or in the business it is necessary to have a holistic approach .Achieving Goals and vision is a holistic and integrated process .Not just turnover or operations .

Cap Vinod Nair said...

Hi Vinod,
I would say Values & goals are interconnected.
Values are integral to all of us, they help us determine who you are ,what you believe , what the kind of work we do . How we manage self, family, team,their talent & expectation.And going forward what you want to be or what you want to achieve.

In short if your values & goals are aligned it will give you more job satisfaction & so on.

In fact the values of the leaders are powerful shapers of the Organisation culture.

Strategy consulting services in Pune said...

I think all things are related with each other..

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