Developing a Personal Development Strategy Map
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been evaluating use of the Balanced Scorecard process for developing your Personal Development Strategy. I’ve modified the standard perspectives (these are the things that need to be ‘balanced’) to be Financial (how you fund activities in life), Relationships (interaction with your family, friends, and the community), Learning & Growth (continually learning and experiencing new things), and Implementation (what you must do to achieve your goals).
So far, I’ve been through the first four steps of the Balanced Scorecard process mentioned in the previous post. This results in a Strategy Map for personal development. Here is what I have learned so far:
Step 1 - Define Mission / Vision / Values. I’ve summarized my lessons learned in a previous post on developing your personal vision and values. Check it out for details.
Step 2 - Develop Strategic Themes. This step was challenging. It was difficult to determine where to focus your strategic themes. What I recommend is to develop a theme for each category of your life (e.g. financial, family, career, etc) that you want to focus on. This theme should identify what you want to improve on over the next few years. For example, some of mine include ‘Improve Health and Wellness’, ‘Expand Relationships with Friends and Family’, and ‘Increase Career Path Options’. You should also review your personal vision to identify additional ideas for themes and to ensure alignment. I recommend developing 5-7 themes.
Step 3 - Develop Strategic Objectives for each Strategic Theme. For each theme, develop 1-3 objectives. The objectives should be your goals for meeting the theme. This is where you should really focus on incorporating parts of your life list. Figure out what items on your list are things you want to accomplish over the next few years, and tie them to strategic themes. Within my ‘Improve Health and Wellness’ theme, I selected ‘Implement fitness plan’, ‘Follow a healthy diet’, and ‘Ensure time for self-reflection’. The first two came from my life list, and the third was developed from my personal vision.
Step 4 - Align Strategic Objectives. This step is where the relationships between your strategic objectives is identified. Within the Balanced Scorecard method, this is done through a ‘Strategy Map’. Normally this is done with super duper software that costs more than any of us make in a year. The good news is that you can get a free copy of Strategy Map software for personal use at this link. The bad news is that the software is a little difficult to figure out if you haven’t dealt with the Balanced Scorecard method. For now, just focus on developing the Strategy Map. At first, it will seem like none of the objectives are related to each other, but after you think further, you’ll find how some of them are directly related. For example, one of my objectives is to expand my career network. I realized that by achieving some of my other objectives, such as expanding my circle of friends and getting more involved in my community, I will expand my career network.
After you have your strategy map completed, the next step is to develop measurements and activities for each objective, so you have a way to track your progress. The software I linked to above does this as well. I’ll discuss my ongoing evaluation of the software for that in a follow-on post.