Tag: syndicated

This is the goal setting post for 2023. The previous ones were:

• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018

As with previous years, I’ll break these into three categories: career, personal, and community. There’s some blend with all of these, but these are goals that I want to use to engage and grow my life in interesting ways. To aim for mastery, autonomy, and purpose, as Daniel Pink wrote in Drive.

The idea here is to set goals for Q1 2023 and review in March. I’ll also do monthly reviews of these. The rest of this post should be repeated in all future posts.

Reading

I’m separating this out, as I’ll put a few things in here that span other areas.

For Q1, I’m aiming for 2 books outside of the fiction I enjoy. These are going to be in these areas:

• marketing – title TBD. Something to help me better understand how to approach this part of my job. There have been recommendations in our Slack channels, so I’ll pick one.
• Coaching – Again, a few recommendations in groups I frequent.This is important as I influence young people.

Both of these are items I’ll target for these reasons:

• S – This is targeted, reading a book
• M – I’ll finish or not
• A- both
• B – 1 done, 1 partial
• C – 1 done
• D – partial
• F – not started
• A – I read around 100 books a year, so 2 in a quarter isn’t too much.
• R – Marketing is a part of my job and career at this point, so this is good. Coaching is something I do personally with kids and with customers for DevOps.
• T – I have 3 months, until 31 Mar.

Career

My career has taken a strange turn in that I continue to do some technical work and consulting with clients and customers, but more of my effort is spent understanding marketing and sales. I pivoted slightly last year by reading The Trusted Sales Advisor,

I also need to do more work with other platforms, at least to become more comfortable with them. I thought I might do more in 2022, but ended up getting buried with community stuff.

For Q1, I’m doing to aim to do a couple things:

• Set up a tracking system based on the book for my efforts with customers
• Track and calculate my scores to help me better approach how I work with customers.
• Review this with my boss and with someone in sales

This is not a lot, but it’s a good start. I can review this goal as:

• S – This will include a way to track things, likely Excel, and then some formulas or reporting to help me see how I’m doing. I also need to fill this out after each call with a customer. I’ll send it to a couple people in sales for review in March from two people. setting a reminder now.
• M – I will have a sheet to look at, and a record of calls. I also have a review reminder set.
• A – All calls tracked, review complete, data used to change my work.
• B – most calls tracked, review complete,
• C – half calls tracked, only 1/2 reviews,
• D – less than half calls tracked, no review,
• F – no sheet set up
• A – Building a simple tracking sheet ought to be easy. The formulas are given. We used to track calls, now I’m adding in 5 minutes to think about how things went. Getting people to meet with me should be achievable if I make the time.
• R – Important for my job
• T – I have a 31 Mar deadline.

Community

A portion of my job is community. It’s also a passion. I spend time here outside of work, I volunteer and go to UGs/events when I don’t have to, and I certainly do work with SQL Saturday outside of my job. In fact, I was fixing PRs and updating the site while on vacation in Portugal, mildly anoying my wife.

In terms of a goal here, I’m going to focus most on SQL Saturday and less on speaking for now. I likely will go to a few events, but I want to limit my efforts in Q1.

The goals here will be the following:

• 2 speaking engagements for community (SQL Sat Austin and SQL Bits are on my schedule)
• Reach out to 10 SQL Sat groups that did not run an event in 2022 and motivate them for 2023. This should be at least 2 emails to each person/group.
• Reach out to all 2022 organizers and ask about plans for 2023
• Start coding a tool for converting schedules to HTML.
• Hold office hours once in Q1
• Send 3 monthly SQL Saturday updates to the community

In terms of the review, I see them this way.

• S – These are fairly specific. I can track emails. I can’t quite track motivation, but that’s something I need to do to help grow SQL Saturday back to where it was. I also can start putting code in a repo, which is a big step.
• M – For the review, I’ll say this:
• A – 2 presentations complete, 10 emails to new organizers, 36 to older ones, at least 3 commits and a MVP of a tool, office hours, 3 updates
• B – 2 presentations complete, 8 emails to new organizers, 30 to old, 2 commits, office hours, 2 updates
• C – 2 presentations complete, 5-8 emails to new, 20 to old, 1 commit, office hours, 2 updates
• D – 1 presentation,  3 emails to new, 10 to old, no commits, no office hours, 1 update
• F – lower than D
• A – This can be tough. Finding time for SQL Saturday comes a1nd goes, as does motivation. I should easily do the talks, and I can easily reach the emails by making time. Office Hours can be tough, and the monthly newsletter is something I’ve struggled with.
• R – These are community efforts that should help others. They don’t directly help me, other than building some skills as a leader, but they will help others if I can get more events moving.
• T – All bound by the 31 Mar deadline.

Personal

My personal goals are going to be a little shortchanged here. When I look at what’s above, that’s more than I probably should tackle, though some of them should be quick to get through with a short bit of time every week.

Coaching also ramps up, so I’m going to limit this to a couple things for Q1.

• Use my Power BI report for stats
• Update the Power BI report based on feedback from athletes
• Build 6 wooden coasters – I haven’t made enough time for my hobby here, so I’m going to start small. We need more coasters (as noticed over the holidays), so I want to build 6. Same style, different.

These can be rated as follows:

• S – Use means I gather stats. Updates are from feedback. Coasters are specific.
• M – Have I entered stats on the sheet, did I respond to feedback, coasters.
• A – All stats entered in sheet/report. Take all feedback and do something, 6 coasters
• B – all stats entered, some feedback, 4 coasters
• C – All stats entered, feedback not influencing report, 2 coasters
• D – some stats entered, no feedback used, no coasters
• F – failing at stats
• A – These should be achievable. The coasters should be 2 short periods
• R – The first two are relevant to my efforts coaching. The last is just for satisfaction and to remind me of hobbies.
• T – 31 Mar.

Last year I set a bunch of goals, and I thought I did pretty good working on them. Not amazing, but pretty good. This year, I want to attack goals a little differently, so I’m going to think about how to measure things first, then set up the goals.

One system of looking at goals is SMART. This stands for:

• specific
• measurable
• achievable
• relevant
• time-bound

In terms of my goals, I want to tackle some in this format in 2023, and see how this goes. With that in mind, I’m looking at things in this way. I have a few sample goals, but I need to think through these a little more.

Specific

In looking at 2022 goals, they were fairly specific, but not always. I didn’t define the personal ones well. The work and community ones were good.

In 2023, I’ll look to ensure I specify each of these in more detail and have something to measure against. I need to use the 6ws (who, what when, where, which, why) where possible.

Measurable

This is the big one. Do I have metrics by which I can measure things. Certainly percentage read for books, but what about my demos? Can I really get these to a percentage of done? Or just work/not working? What about the number of events? That’s easy, but does it include other metrics. I ought to ensure I try to put some sort of way to definitively note whether I’ve achieved something or not.

Examples could be:

• Send 12 SQL Saturday newsletters
• Reliable working process that moves data from source to target with more success than failure
• Volunteer 4 days

Achievable

This is interesting. I thought all my goals were achievable, but not easily. If nothing new came up or life didn’t get in the way, I could achieve those. I think I’m doing well here, despite not finishing everything.

Relevant

My career is in a weird place. I’m closer to the end, and my growth in Redgate is more focused on marketing and sales, so less on technology. The tech matters, as I consult with customers and train them, but I do a lot more things that are very different.

At the same time, all of the items I chose last year do help my career. Whether this is for content, for knowledge I’ll take to customers, for the recharging from volunteer days or reading. I don’t usually have a problem here.

Time-Bound

This is harder. No matter how I’ve planned, usually things get away from my and a portion of my schedule isn’t my own. I get asked to do things or assigned them, and that messes up plans.

Life outside of work can also get in the way at times, and leave me less time to work on my goals.

I’m going to tackle goals a little differently this year. I’m making them quarterly, thinking that’s a more manageable time-frame where I can predict some level of commitment.

We’ll see.

Aims for 2022

For this year’s goals, I’ll try to work within the SMART system for goals. The T here, will be aiming for quarterly re-alignment of goals with life.

I’ll still rate myself monthly and then roll those up for a quarterly review. I’ll adjust the goals quarterly as my schedule reveals itself. In terms of ratings, I want to use a school-type rating of A-F, but with these views:

• A – exceeding expectations for goal achievement, making almost all goals
• B – above average for goal achievement, making much more than missing
• C – average goal achievement, making some, missing some
• D – below average, missing more than making
• F – completely missing most

While I was mostly an A student in high school, with a good set of goals, I ought to be a B-C student. Life will get in the way, things will change, and I shouldn’t expect that I can devote as much time across the next few months as I plan for during this slow time of year.