Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.

A Simple Goal Setting Method
Goal setting works. But how do you go about deciding what your goals will be?

The late Stephen Covey, emphasizes in at least two of his bestsellers (First Things First and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) the concept of time management and therefore goal setting based on importance of well, what’s important.

The method for setting your goals (or big rocks as he terms them) is simple. Ask yourself two questions:
- What is the one thing that if I STARTED doing it, would make a tremendous positive difference in my life?
- What is the one thing that if I STOPPED doing it, would make a tremendous positive difference in my life?
Answer these two questions and you have you goals. For some, asking these two questions in the context of different segments or roles in life may be necessary, or important. For example, asking it related to your personal life and then to your professional life, leading you to end up with four focuses instead of two. But once you begin to ask yourself these questions in the context of too many things, the whole emphasis on importance gets thrown out the window making the process irrelevant.

The interesting part of this goal setting processes is twofold:
1. If you truly start and stop doing the one thing that really will make the most difference in your life, you end up with a spillover effect, inadvertently accomplishing more than you set out to do. The simple focus on just two things ends up impacting way more than two things.
For example, my one thing to start in years past was to get up early in the morning (5:00 or 5:30 am) to get a workout and devotional time in. When I do this one thing- get my feet to hit the floor before anyone else wakes up in my house on a regular basis- the day always goes better. I have more energy for the day, the morning routine of kids cleaned, dressed, fed and out the door to school happy is accomplished so much easier, and I’m more focused and productive throughout the day.
1. This method of goal setting is also action plan oriented. Often goal setting emphasizes the setting of the goal with no true mechanism built in to get you there. This method does both. It gives you long-term focus and short-term action, breeding habits that change behaviors and change lives.
This method is best for people who prefer to keep things as simple as possible and need the daily incorporation of action to create habits that lead to results. Its downfall is also its greatest strength- it may be too simple. Life is complex and focusing in so narrowly may inhibit people from accomplishing all that they can and should.

Regardless of whether or not this is the best method for you to set goals, it is always good, as we begin a New Year, to consider what do we need to start doing and, often more importantly what do we need to stop doing.

Like this post? You may also like:

Best New Year’s Resolution? A ‘Stop Doing” List.

One Goal from Pat Flynn

Set Goals Then Forget About Them

Goal Setting – A Series

Goal Setting – Diminishing Returns

Goal Setting – Feedback
January 17, 2017
How to be Employed to Work at Home

Written by: AnnaMaria Bliven, MBA, MA, of Work at Home Solutions

It was 2002 and my kids were coming to me for community sports fees, uniform fees, dance costumes, school field trips and even school registration fees (high school registration one year cost $150). With all this need for extra money, I had to do something because my household budget could not be stretched to afford these extra expenses for my children. This was the motivation factor that began an online journey that has led to thousands of dollars in income and extra income for my family.

The journey to seek and find real online jobs started out much like you would expect. I fell for many online scams and was beginning to think that working at home was just a myth when one day I did an in-depth internet research to find out that there were actual real online jobs. In fact, it turns out there are hundreds of companies that have thousands of online job openings in several different industries.

3-Simple Step Process: Seek, Find and Apply

The journey to having an online job to work at home begins with a job search done using a search engine. You simply type “work at home …” and then a job title in the place of “…” So, the search bar would look like this: “work at home virtual assistant.” Then, the screen will return a search results list of places on the web where online job openings for a virtual assistant is located. That is the “Seek” phase of the 3-Simple Step Process. The next phase in the process is “Find.”

To “Find” the job opening, you need to look over the search results and select the website that matches with the job you are seeking to work. For example, in most cases, Indeed.com is the one job board that remote open job positions are in great supply. To see them, all you need to do is click on the Indeed.com website URL in the search results and then type “remote” in the location bar. That is when you will see all the work at home open job positions. From that list choose an open online job position you are most interested in that matches with your education, experience, knowledge, skills and abilities.

The “Apply” phase of the 3-Simple Step Process is similar to that of an onsite job except that for an online job application it may also include taking a skills’ assessment. In many cases skills’ assessment is a “go,” no-go” determinant for being called for an interview. The resume and cover letter (and perhaps the skills’ assessment) has to be such that the Human Resources talent seeker is impressed and contacts you for a job interview.

How to Earn Income/Extra Income Working at Home

Since 2002, I have worked jobs in Mystery Shopping, Travel Consulting, Writing, Editing, Customer Service and Faculty Evaluator all from the comfort of my home. In every one of these positions I worked, I earned bonuses, raises and promotions. In addition, I have made thousands of dollars working mini-jobs as extra income. So, you may be asking what you need to do to do the same thing I did. Begin your journey with a legitimate job and avoid the scams. The old adage “if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.” You find the legitimate job using the 3-Simple Steps Process. To know the kinds of legitimate jobs that are online work at home jobs, you can spend hours of research or get my book: Work at Home with a Real Online Job. Visit my website https://workathome.solutions/. I will do my best to help you.

January 13, 2017
Methods to the Madness of Goal Setting

It’s that time of year. New Year’s resolutions abound still on this 10th day of the New Year. We’re sticking to them now. Will we by month end?

New Years’ resolutions are quite simply, goals. They can be set at any time of the year, and there are as many methods for setting and pursuing them as there are failed attempts at reaching them.

But goal setting is a method that works. Research shows it does if it is handled within certain contexts and parameters. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m all about goal setting as a performance management method. I wish more company’s performance management and evaluation processes were centered around setting good goals tied to company values and strategy. Then, leaders could coach people regularly towards goal attainment through wise action planning and implementation.

But the method to the madness in goal setting that works, depends on you. The method you choose to determine and also analyze your goal(s) for appropriateness is a matter of preference, not a matter of right or wrong.

However, three I like and recommend:

Stephen Covey- What’s the most important thing?

Zig Zaglar- Wheel of Life

Michael Hyatt- Pursuing the right thing in the right way

All have pros and cons and cater to different personalities, mindsets and segments of life. But all can work if you pick the right method and then, most importantly, have a solid plan for reaching them. The action toward the goal is much more important than the goal itself (or as Nick Saban says, it’s the process)

I’ll be describing each of these methods above so you can have some fuel for thought on which one might work best for you this year. Then I’ll round out January with why the action plan and implementation is actually more important than the goal.

Take the month of January to set sound goals and put a plan in place to pursue them. The time it takes to do this is will help you achieve success for the rest of the eleven months in 2017.

January 10, 2017
Top 10 Posts of 2016 and the Icing on the Cake

2016 showed us, at least in terms of the popularity of blog posts, that it was a year of innovation. More than half of our top 10 blog posts for the year focused on innovation in the workplace:

You Can Hire for Fit AND Diversity: How the Most Innovative Companies Hire

The Name of the Game is FREEDOM: How Innovative Companies Motivate, Get, and Retain the Best…

Innovate or Die? And the Best Places to Work

Rules to Preserve Freedom and Culture: How Innovative Companies Go about Rule-Making

How Neuroscience Is and Will Revolutionize HR

Others that came in on top were a splash of leadership:

Being a great leader is a lot like being a standout salesperson

And work-life integration/balance:

4 Lessons Learned from a Week of Being Unplugged

And HR/Talent Management Lessons:

What are your biggest HR Pain Points?

HR Santa Clauses focus on the Employee Experience

And because my husband says he focuses on quality and not quantity, his lone guest post of the year made the top 10 list:

Talent Management Strategy Lessons Learned from T-ball

Icing on the cake for blogging came in the way of being published several times on Huffington Post.

Is Leaving Work to Stay at Home a Parenting Issue or a Workplace Engagement Issue?

Do You Want to Go to Timeout? Leadership Lessons from Disciplining a Two Year Old

Do We Really Want to Have It All?

Millennials Don’t Feel Entitled to Your Job, They Want You to Help Them Chart Their Career

Bridging the Divide… Education for the Future

What was your favorite topic of 2016?

December 30, 2016
2016 Book of the Year

At Horizon Point, we’ve been in the habit of providing end of the year book recommendations and reviews. You can check some previous ones out here:

The Best Books of 2015

10 Books Leaders Need to Be Reading

The Best Book to Give Every Person on Your Christmas Gift List

Book Review 2013

We like books so much, we even provide book favorites off schedule like this Top 10 List of Leadership Books.

But this year one book was so good that our 2016 recommendation is simply one:

When Breath Becomes Air

For us, a reoccurring theme seemed to emerge in 2016, and that is the importance of story. Of an individual’s story, a company’s story and a community’s story. As we worked to help individuals chart a career path or coach them to greater leadership success, as we sought to help companies guide talent management practices through values and innovative practices, and as we helped communities understand and grow their workforce, we realized that it all really begins with the story.

As we wrote about in a blog post back in May of this year, “When you know the answer to ‘who’ can then better design the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.” Stories help us do this.

When Breath Becomes Air is a powerful story, a memoir, of a man who finds himself, at a point when he feels like his life and career is just beginning, diagnosed with a disease that is very uncommon in the young. As he grapples with his illness, we find an unbelievably talented (more brilliant than most of us could ever dream of being) human being struggling to reconcile how to spend his finite time here on earth, given all the gifts and talents he’s been given and also cultivated through his own hard work.

And although the book may be too philosophical, or even depressing, for some, and whether we know we have a short amount of time to live like Paul does in this story or not, we all deal with his fundamental question, “What makes life meaningful?”

You will see in Paul the answer to this question really comes down to family and faith, and quite honestly, meaningful work.

As 2017 approaches, we hope that you are first and foremost, healthy, and that unlike Paul in the story you aren’t faced with having to daily grapple with your mortality. However, we do hope that you spend some time discovering what makes life meaningful for you and then pursuing it wholeheartedly. And we hope that in 2017 you explore your story and ask others about theirs. Maybe this in and of itself is really what makes life meaningful- pursuing your story and helping others pursue theirs.

What is your story?

December 27, 2016