Determining your mission, objectives, goals and tactics
Picture your mission as the trunk of a tree. It’s the constant, from which everything else stands. The main branches are objectives. Your goals are the smaller limbs branching off these main lines and the tactics are leaves on the secondary branches. The leaves come and go with the seasons. Every few years, new secondary branches become established while others become lest prominent. At times, a main branch may need to be pruned. Your plan, like a tree, is alive and ever changing, never the same from one year to the next.
The rest of your plan grows around your mission, so let’s start there. Ultimately, what do you want to have accomplished at the end of your career? How do you want to project yourself into the world? Is there an overarching theme to your career?
A good mission statement defines not only who you are, but also how you will impact those around you. It doesn’t need to be long; only a sentence or two are fine. Since you’ll be reviewing your plan on a regular basis, you’re free to come back and clarify your mission.
Now you’re ready to set out your objectives, goals and tactics. In order to make your plan manageable, I recommend choosing only three objectives. These are for over the long-term, such as ten, twenty or more years.
Objectives may be as singular as having a published book; others may be bigger, such as winning a literary prize. Take a look at your visioning work. When you look at all your ideas, which ones are the most important to you? Take a look at your projects. Will any of these take many years to fully accomplish? Once these longer-term goals are worked out, it becomes easier to work out the steps you need to take in order to get there.
Next, based on your three objectives, determine three goals for each to help you get closer. The time frame for your goals is about 3-5 years. Obviously, over the course of your writing life, you will decide on and achieve many goals. Some ideas for your goals may have turned up in your visioning, but also may have turned up in your SWOT analysis, your review of your conduits, or even in your work on your product. For example, a goal may be to develop a professional website.
Once you’ve determined your three goals, it’s time to figure out three tactics to move you forward towards achieving those goals. If we follow along with the goal to develop a website, a tactic may be to have a professional photograph taken.
Tactics are short-term, something you would be able to accomplish within a year. As you complete one tactic, remove it from your plan and add a new tactic.
Positioning of objectives, goals and tactics is very flexible. One writer may have a goal of creating a website to be achieved within three to five years; another may have that same item as a tactic to be accomplished within a year, part of a larger goal to establish a personal platform.