When I received my contract it stated that I would have training sessions from 5 to 9 in the morning… and that was right up my alley, until a couple of days later when I received invites for 1-hour meetings at midnight. After clarification, the folks mentioned that I didn’t have to attend these sessions live, but they would send me recordings for me to watch at my convenience… much to my relief.
I still joined the live sessions during my first and second day, but respectfully advised them that moving forward, I’d be going through the recorded sessions instead… and I think it was good, because having the freedom to pause and resume when I wanted gave me the opportunity to let whatever they were sharing ‘marinate‘.
I’m starting this second part of my Weekly Report with my notes from the first session I watched as a recording. Italics are my takes, or quotes.
S3_Performance Metrics and Evaluation Process.mp4
What is a Goal? What comes to mind when we mention the word, ‘Goal’?
- A goal can be a target, a purpose, a vision, an aim, a ‘desire of your heart’; It sets direction for your actions and efforts. They’re objectives and dreams you want to achieve.
- “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When you learn to master the principle of setting a goal, you will then be able to make a great difference in the results you attain in this life.” – M. Russell Ballard
What is your goal?
First thing that comes to mind is to die fully, and to live forever. As those words come to mind, we divide it in two goals… and the goal of living forever entails that we prepare for eternity, but we live eternal life now, while seeing the past from the perspective of eternity.
We live out of time within time. This impacts our priorities, steers our visions. The temporal takes an immediate backstep as we give priority to ‘storing treasures in heaven’. Evangelism is seen as a passion to tell the world of the good news of Christ and eternal Life, more than it is about keeping a track record and avoiding death and hell.
The goal of dying fully is to make the most of our existence in this world. We understand that we could die at any moment, and we see that we do all we can with as much as we could gather. To do ‘all we can’ is to ensure that all we have is properly endorsed, and we have left the most impact we could to the most number of people – impact, that is, towards the prospect and hope that they would also live forever.
The Goal is Christ, really.
But, okay, for purposes of this exercise, my goal is to establish sustainable flows of income, contributing towards peak productivity, that the main goal of Christ is realized, manifested and seen even further.
And, okay, to be more specific, I see myself leaving as much positive impact as I could while earning and working well in both Medstar, SafetyFirst and the Good News Aces, establishing my personal passions and projects so we’re making more and learning more, getting better: Glory to glory, to Christ and from Christ, to His glory forever.
Sorry. Got a bit sidetracked there. Look, you don’t just ask those questions.
A well defined goal sets us off for a good journey.
Now, what is a Plan? It’s described as: strategy, tactics, road maps, course of action, procedures, steps, and/or action items. It’s an operation approach to achieving the goals, a means to an end.
‘A goal without a plan is just a wish‘; We need the plan for the goal. We should probably step out of wishing and rush into acting. There is no likelihood of realizing a goal without action, and near impossible without a plan.
What’s YOUR plan?
…and here we go, again. Off the bat I’ll say that the plan is as the goal, for me. The goal is Christ. The plan is Christ. Christ has already been achieved, and Christ has to keep being achieved.
What in the world does that mean? There’s no possibility for us to die fully or to live forever without Christ, who did all He did to save us from death and darkness, into the light and, again, eternal life.
The Plan is Christ, really.
But, okay, for purposes of this exercise, I’ll say that my goal is to continue this job and to invest off of my excess salary – Following Naval Ravikant’s ‘tweetstorm’ of how to get rich without getting lucky.
And to be more specific, that means that I’ll be investing a portion of the excess of my salary every month on specific knowledge (The Gospel of Jesus Christ in and through CyberSec, Data Science, Commodities, Forex, Stocks, Crypto) therefore bolstering my accountability, and building up leverage. Glory to glory, to Christ and from Christ, to His glory forever.
Back to Definitions:
A goal is a broad, qualitative statement that describes what is to be achieved. Companies’ goals are to increase sales, to be market leaders, etc.
A plan is a specific, detailed strategy or course of action developed to achieve the set goals. It outlines the steps, the resources and timelines toward the desired outcome.
Performance Metrics, therefore, are quantitative measures used to evaluate the progress made toward achieving a goal or executing a plan. They’re used to track various aspects of performance. Ex. Sales/Customer Revenue, Employee Productivity, etc.
These performance metrics are a way to see where we stand between plan and goal.
What are my performance metrics?
Business decisions and policies should be based on data. Plans and changes to the plan, even adjustments to the goals and plans are most preferably based on data – thus, the term ‘informed choices’.
Performance metrics lead to data-driven decisions.
Fortunately, everything is data.
Performance Metrics gauge our standing towards a goal, and have us make data-driven decisions.
“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates” – Thomas Monson
Evaluation, on the other hand, is our taking ownership of our Performance Metrics so we’re able to make the most of our efforts, getting our plans done and getting closer to our goals. They’re an intentional measure for us to see where we stand.
I eventually lost my Virtual Assistant job because I didn’t have any evaluation until I made my mistakes. There were no KPI’s. There were no performance metrics.
I fear that this would be the case with the Good News Aces, with SafetyFirst, unless we be clear on our plan, our goal, and our performance metrics, with regular evaluation.
Generic video which was familiar to the Crackers and Cheese story I already heard about
Generic quotes:
You cannot afford to live in potential for the rest of your life; at some point, you have to unleash the potential and make your move(ment) – Eric Thomas
Don’t squander your potential living a life that amounts to far less than the one you are capable of living. – Zero Dean
She says ‘The Sky’s the limit’… Again, I say, In Christ, the best has come and the best is yet to come.
(end notes)
So you can see, we went a little deeper than I expected, here. Now, I went ahead and said that my goal was to die fully, and to live forever. Wrote this last Wednesday and revisiting it now on a Sunday (again, should’ve been Saturday but oh well).
As I was writing about this, I thought it important to also see that goal as a vision, and for me to supplement our definition of our vision (and therefore, our goal) with what Pastor Joedy shared so long ago – that it ought to comprise of 3 things: hindsight (consideration of the past), insight (the present), and foresight (the future). I’d say this would work perfect for us if we were to understand what it means to die fully, towards living forever.
To be less conceptual and more practical about it, well, let’s pull up what I had: I see myself leaving as much positive impact as I could while earning and working well in both Medstar, SafetyFirst and the Good News Aces, establishing my personal passions and projects so we’re making more and learning more, getting better: Glory to glory, to Christ and from Christ, to His glory forever.
With that in mind I can re-frame this to say (hindsight) that I’m thankful for past learnings and experiences (in corporate and as I worked from home before, of gaining and losing millions, of being in and out of good timing, etc), I acknowledge present circumstances (back to zero, supporting my mom and the church), and with this inconsideration I plot out the future (as mentioned – earning and working well, establishing personal passions and projects, each day moving from glory to glory, to Christ and from Christ)
From this goal we can set the (more specific) plans:
- Document all relevant past and present learnings and experiences
- Plot out the working schedule, stay up to date with the clients / customers with the prevalent, selfless mindset of Philippians 1:21-28 (‘if it were up to me I’d be with Jesus but I’m staying for your sake‘)
- Be established or familiarized with operations, procedures, etc.
- Plot out side passions and projects, separate Active (do now) from Inactive (do later).
- Setup resource management, specifically finances/funding for tithing/benevolence, debt settlement, investing, and personal expenses.
- Document all future-specific ideas (immediate and long term).
Specific as that may be, it’s still high-level, but we can extract a couple of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), here and there:
- Current Work/Business-specific KPIs
- Progression notes from side passions/projects (utilize ‘Projects’ section of LinkedIn for sharing, maybe this blog for more details)
- My bank account balance
…and that’s what I have in mind so far.
Regarding reporting, well, we’re writing up a storm here, and I believe we’re hitting the mark in being transparent about goals, plans, and metrics.
Through it all, the goal, the plan, and the metric is really, Christ on the highest level.
Glory to glory, to Christ and from Christ, to His glory forever.
Gosh, I didn’t think we’d have a part 3, but believe it or not, there’s more to unpack and share.
We’ve talked about praising the Lord all while flowing, trusting, and thanking Him…
…and here, we’re seeing how, in our flowing, we’re being more specific by having goals, plans and metrics, yet from Him and to Him (Romans 11:39).
I see Part 3 is going to be more about mindsets to back the ‘mantra‘; mindsets, similar to what we pulled up earlier (Philippians 1:21-28, ‘if it were up to me I’d be with Jesus but I’m staying for your sake‘).
Until the next post, God bless us all!
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