The Goal

The Goal

Saturday, 24 October 2015

Goal Setting Part 5 - Alternatives for Artists, The Talented and Jump Starters

Group work was a key part of studying for my MBA at Judge Business School in Cambridge. Teams were selected to provide groups with highly varied backgrounds, and tasks were often tailored so that there was either too little time or too many people in order to provoke a particular set of experiences while completing the work.  In one of the early projects I worked within a team which consisted of three other team members who also had a professional services* background, and a fourth who had much more of a liberal arts background. Our colleague found our highly structured approach inflexible, unreactive and almost impossible to work with not because she wasn't smart (she is) or hardworking (she was) but because she simply thought in a completely different way to the rest of us.

In a similar vein, my very highly-structured approach is simply not going to work for all of you, so what are the alternatives?

Artists
Rather like my friend above, some people just don't think and plan in the highly-structured way that people like me ("Analysts") do. You don't automatically break things down into classical hierarchies, causes and effects; rather your thinking proceeds along entirely different lines. I'd describe the way that your thinking proceeds if I could, but unfortunately I don't, because I can't think the way you do!

In your case, maybe consider the things you're less good at and write yourself a promise on a piece of paper where you'll see it every day. It will act as a visual cue to do some training and direct you to the part of your shooting that needs it most; however recognise that failing to analyse your performance adequately may result in you training on the wrong things. Our perceptions of our weaknesses can be quite wrong.

The Talented
Some people just seem to get shooting and don't apparently need to train to get the results. Do whatever you feel like, but be aware that you might get even better results if you did follow a structured training plan.

Jump Starters
Some of you will be entirely motivated to train and work hard on your shooting without any of this detailed planning malarkey. It's obvious to you what your strengths and weaknesses are, and you know what to do about it. Actually you've probably lost patience with me several times during this sequence of posts on goal-based planning and may not have made it to the end of the other posts.

You probably already train enough but may hide the amount of effort you put in to appear as one of "The Talented". You probably struggle with admitting that you're not good at anything (but know it to be the case in your heart) so remember to think about where it is that you really need to train and focus your efforts there.

Good luck to all rifle shooters in their training. Up in the Northern Hemisphere it's time to clean everything and pack your kit away and take maybe a month off before starting training again in preparation for the 2016 season. Down here you should have already been training over the winter months in preparation for the opening shoots of the season. Good shooting to you all!

* Accounting, IT and Management Consulting roughly speaking.

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