Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to realize this vision of the future, converting it to reality. Think about where you want to go in life. These are your lifetime goals. Once you know want to achieve, you can plan where to focus your efforts. You will quickly spot the distractions that will sidetrack you. Properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you will find your self-confidence building as well. It is important to remember that you goals will change over time. Feed lessons learnt back into your goal-setting programme. Adjust the goals regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience. When some goals no longer hold your interest, consider letting them go. If you do not already set goals, consider doing so now. Once you make this technique a part of your life skills, you will wonder how you lived without it!

Why is it that some people consistently seem to get more done than others? The answer is that they know how to set specific, achievable goals for themselves...and then follow through on them. This revised and updated edition of Goal Setting features worksheets, quizzes, and other practical tools, giving readers powerful techniques they can use to set a goal, make a plan, and acquire the resources and power necessary to achieve their objective. The book shows readers how to:act upon their objectives in a precise, targeted way • recognize obstacles and overcome them • become more assertive • change counterproductive behavior • establish priorities • make the most of their timeAchieving goals takes hard work and discipline. This expanded edition of Goal Setting gives readers the tools and techniques to accomplish anything.

Everything you need to implement Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) effectively Objectives and Key Results is the first full-fledged reference guide on Objectives and Key Results, a critical thinking framework designed to help organizations create value through focus, alignment, and better communication. Written by two leading OKRs consultants and researchers, this book provides a one-stop resource for organizations looking to quantify qualitative goals and ensure each team focuses their efforts to make measureable progress on their most important goals. You’ll learn how OKRs came to be and how leading companies use them every day to help teams and employees stretch their thinking about what’s possible, build their goal-setting muscles and achieve results that reflect their full potential. From the basic framework to a detailed dissection of best practices, this informative guide walks you through real-world implementations to help you get the most out of OKRs. OKRs help employees work together, focus effort, and drive the organization forward. Key results are used to define what it means to achieve broad, qualitative goals, and imperatives like “do it better” are transformed into clear, measureable markers. From the framework’s inception in the 1980s to its popularity in today’s hyper-competitive environment, OKRs make work more engaging and feature frequent feedback cycles that enable workers to see the progress they make at work each and every day. This book shows you everything you need to know to implement OKRs effectively. Understand the basics of OKRs and their day-to-day use Learn how to gain the executive support critical to a successful implementation Maintain an effective program with key assessment tips Tailor the OKRs framework to your organization’s needs Objectives and Key Results is your key resource for designing, planning, implementing, and maintaining your OKRs program for sustainable company-wide success.

Winner of 2020 PMI David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award This book is a complete project management toolkit for project leaders in business, research and industry. Projects are approved and financed to generate benefits. Project Management: A Benefit Realisation Approach proposes a complete framework that supports this objective – from project selection and definition, through execution, and beyond implementation of deliverables until benefits are secured. The book is the first to explain the creation of organisational value by suggesting a complete, internally-consistent and theoretically rigorous benefit-focused project management methodology, supported with an analytical technique: benefit engineering. Benefit engineering offers a practical approach to the design and maintenance of an organisation’s project portfolio. Building upon the authors’ earlier successful book, Project Management for the Creation of Organisational Value, this comprehensively revised and expanded new book contains the addition of new chapters on project realisation. The book offers a rigorous explanation of how benefits emerge from a project. This approach is developed and strengthened — resulting in a completely client-oriented view of a project. Senior executives, practitioners, students and academics will find in this book a comprehensive guide to the conduct of projects, which includes robust models, a set of consistent principles, an integrated glossary, enabling tools, illustrative examples and case studies.

Which camp do you fall into - those that love performance objective setting time or those that loathe it? If you selected the "Love it" camp, I'm delighted for you and your team and the only thing I can add is that, if you decide to read this book, you'll pick up some useful tips to help you finesse your objective setting approach. If you selected the "loathe it" camp, then you need this book. Why? SMART Objective Setting for Managers sets out the 4 main challenges managers struggle with: 1.Defining the desired outcomes of performance 2.Diagnosing team members' individual starting points 3.Defining tangible objectives for "soft" behavioural performance issues 4.Understanding what can go wrong in the communication process, when agreeing objectives.The book unpacks each of these challenges, using SMART, while prompting you to reflect on how effective your usual approach is. The book provides practical tools and techniques for you to test, so that you maximise the likelihood of increased performance - the individual's, the team's and yours. What makes me so sure? From 10-years-experience of directly managing teams and 20+ years of developing managers, I've observed the barriers that unintentionally arise in the Objective Setting Process. Through delivering SMART Objective Setting workshops, designing and implementing Performance Management Processes, and coaching leaders through the process of developing High Performance teams, I have tested my theories and solutions and clients have seen increased engagement and performance. This is particularly so in the area of behavioural objectives. You know, those behavioural issues, such as poor communication or lack of judgement, that negatively impact performance but are hard to articulate. How do you set a tangible objective around "influencing skills"? This book explains how to do just that and gives you the tools to diagnose what might be going on behind the behavioural performance. Editorial Reviews of SMART Objective Setting for Managers"I'm not typically a fan of management type books and the only other one I remember liking was Heart of Change by Kotter so this book is in good company. I found that it gained momentum for me the further into it I got. I reckon that's because of my own blasé assumption that I know this stuff already. Chapter 8 really spoke to me and I could see how the strings of the earlier chapters were pulled together here. I think this book might have even convinced me to alter my approach to goal setting."Paul Clements, Head of Change, Release, Transition and Configuration Management "Why was this book not written years ago! As leaders, we make too many assumptions and this results in frustration. This book explains the dynamics of what goes on between two people and what can go wrong! It highlights the learning points through stories. It made me stand back and think about my approach and what can be done differently. Well done."Brendan O'Donovan, Managing Partner, DFMG Solicitors

Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to realize this vision of the future, converting it to reality. Think about where you want to go in life. These are your lifetime goals. Once you know want to achieve, you can plan where to focus your efforts. You will quickly spot the distractions that will sidetrack you. Properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you will find your self-confidence building as well. It is important to remember that you goals will change over time. Feed lessons learnt back into your goal-setting programme. Adjust the goals regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience. When some goals no longer hold your interest, consider letting them go. If you do not already set goals, consider doing so now. Once you make this technique a part of your life skills, you will wonder how you lived without it!

One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life. Using the psychological insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, Irvine offers a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic dissatisfaction that plague so many of us. Irvine looks at various Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put these techniques to work in our own life. As he does so, he describes his own experiences practicing Stoicism and offers valuable first-hand advice for anyone wishing to live better by following in the footsteps of these ancient philosophers. Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune. We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how to be more content with what we have. Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own lives. If we watch ourselves as we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we can better identify the sources of distress and eventually avoid that pain in our life. By doing this, the Stoics thought, we can hope to attain a truly joyful life.