Ask Coach: When Strategically Planning For Your IT Company Don't Forget Planning For Your Personal Life

By Rich Anderson, executive coach with HTG Peer Groups

Q: Notre Dame Football, the Chinese spiral, and your Personal Life Dashboard. What do these have in common?

A: Before I answer that question, I want you to repeat these words: “Organize and execute around priorities.” Say it again, “Organize and execute around priorities.” Try this one: “If I don’t set my priorities, someone else will.”

The Dashboard

Some of you have worked hard to create a dashboard for certain metrics in your company. Why?  The truth about your company performance is reflected up-to-the-minute in the dashboard. You hope the dashboard will provide accountability and motivation for your team as they execute around certain priorities. 

Have you ever thought about a dashboard for your personal life? Imagine a dashboard that would give you a visual representation of the truth about the execution of your life plan and risks you need to monitor.

The truth about your life plan, vision, and strategy, as shown in your life dashboard, is one of the significant pieces that comes out of the Paterson Life Plan — a unique, facilitated, one-on-one life planning process with forty years of proven process behind it. Wait a minute ... what about Notre Dame football and the Chinese spiral?

The Chinese Spiral

The Chinese spiral is a new football passing technique created by …No, No, No. It is an ancient way of looking at a problem. Here in the United States and the rest of the Western world when we see a problem we draw a straight line from problem to solution. 

We want a fast, efficient resolution. The Chinese, however take the time to acquire perspective before they move to resolution. They do this by circling the problem, getting a 360-degree perspective, creating a spiral as they move in toward resolution.

However, this spiral is not a flat, two-dimensional spiral.  It ascends, like climbing up and around the perimeter of a mountain. 

When summiting the peak of a mountain, you have perspective on the valley below and breakthroughs of vision and understanding. 

Like the Chinese spiral, the Paterson Life Plan process focuses on perspective. You look at where you are now. What is right? What is wrong? What is confused? What is missing? After a review of turning points in your life, you pause to get perspective.

The sweet center of the Paterson Life Plan process involves your talent-heart assessment. You take a deep look at your natural God-given talents. How can you invest in and cultivate those talents?  Think of an athlete with less talent but a stronger work ethic and how they often trump a greater skilled athlete.

Are you wasting your talent? Are you doing things that you’re not good at? Are you not doing things that you are good at? As if looking at the cross hairs in a rifle scope, we hone in on the point where your talent and passion intersect. The intent is to move you past the mere doing of tasks to optimizing your talents in the context of your passions. What is in that crosshair for you?  What is it — that if you fail to do before you die — you will feel like you have missed out?

So Where Is Notre Dame Football In All This?

You may remember Lou Holtz, Notre Dame’s great coach and his famous W.I.N principle — What’s Important Now?  Lou broke everything down to a few steps that were important to focus on at that moment. After gaining perspective, the Paterson Life Plan walks you through a process that brings you to clarity on what is important now for your life — the next step, the start date, today’s status, the target completion date.

The final step in the Paterson Life Plan process is shining a bright light of reality on how you spend your time. You may be surprised when you compare your current time usage and your ideal, as you look at the time spent across the domains of your life. Clarity and hope shine forth as you begin to organize and execute around your priorities. Please let me know if you are interested in moving forward with your own facilitated life plan. Helping you is in the crosshairs of my life. 

Rich Anderson is an executive coach with HTG Peer Groups where he is most energized by helping people around their priorities. He also presents leadership workshops and seminars including team personality and judgment assessments and training. Prior to his affiliation with HTG, Rich was a private practice attorney where his practice included advising small business owners from startup through succession, estate planning, and conflict resolution.  Rich also served four terms in the Iowa Legislature. You can reach him at randerson@htgpeerpgroups.com.