Performance Management and Goals

First we need to discuss personal performance management and how it relates to achieving your goals. Personal performance management can be defined as the process of evaluating progress toward your goals. It requires:

1) the ability to evaluate your performance against established standards
and
2) taking action to improve you performance, if you are not reaching your goals.

What are established standards? Well, that’s your current performance, also known as your baseline, which you will need to figure out. One example of an established standard is my wife and I tracking our monthly expenditures to create a baseline for expenses. After the end of March, we will be able to compare future months to March and determine if we are spending more or spending less.

Another example is riding my bike 30 miles. On future bike rides, I can determine if I did better or worse. Or it could be my goal to bike at least 30 miles every time I ride. If I bike less than 30 miles, then I did not reach 100% of my goal. Instead my performance might be 95 or 90% depending on how far I actually rode.

It is pretty easy to establish a baseline. First, you are already performing at that level. Second, it doesn’t take too much time to figure out your current level of performance if you are unsure. Take notes and pay attention to what you are doing. In a little bit, you will have it figured out.

Are you ready to start outlining your goals? The best way to start is to take a realistic look at what you can actually accomplish. Start small, keep it simple and build yourself up from there. As you create your goals, think about how you will measure or track your performance. Also, ask yourself if there are any long term goals that you want to achieve. If yes, then make sure that your other goals align themselves to achieve those long term goals. The long term goal, or goals, should be strategic in nature. My wife and I have one long term goal – become fiscally responsible. We believe choosing the right goals within each of the three performance areas, financial, personal and work, will achieve our strategic goal of being fiscally responsible.

As you consider your long term goals, remember to keep them simple. Being fiscally responsible is easy to define, to evaluate our performance and to improvement if we are underperforming.
Starting with my next post, I will show you our (my wife and I) roadmap, explain each portion of the roadmap, and talk about the performance measures or metrics we are using to evaluate our performance.

Comments and questions are always welcome.

Please remember I am not a guru or an expert in personal finance. I want to bring you newer ideas to help you achieve your life goals. And remember advice given is the opinion of the creator and owner of the blog. Using this information is at your own risk.