Halfway There – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

A key gesture we need to make right now

Photo by Fauzan Saari on Unsplash

In the blink of an eye, we’re halfway through the year. We started 2020 with plenty of expectations, soon reshaped by a pandemic that was only just beginning. Goals, plans and objectives got pushed aside while we fought an all-out war that set off every alarm. Creativity, the drive to keep going and discipline may be what got you this far, but there’s something you might be forgetting. Here’s what it is, and the main benefit of noticing it.

Every goal, objective or initiative, at work or in our personal lives, carries (or should carry) a firm sense of purpose: why we’re doing it. When what we do fits our Life Purpose, we usually raise our odds of achieving it. Short, medium or long term, there’s a great opportunity to connect everything we do or long for with what gives us deep wellbeing.

As time passes and daily life pulls us in every direction, it’s easy to let our goals slip. That’s why a steady rhythm of accountability matters, along with ways to stay on the road we chose at the start, or get back on it (following and executing the strategy). Measuring results alone won’t reveal key factors like emotions, recognition or, at best, some measure of wellbeing.

In a crisis, executing a plan gets complicated, and the original plan may be shelved or rewritten entirely. Stuck in a constant fog with no horizon or landmarks, fighting to survive, we lose track of time, and that fog may be why we reached midyear without noticing. That lack of awareness sends us spiraling away from a practice we may be neglecting: recognition.

At the halfway mark, there are many achievements worth taking the time to recognize and celebrate. Whether we keep building through the second half or lay a new foundation that lasts depends on what we decide to do today with what we’ve achieved. Even with an uncertain future, simply looking back at the effort made (whether or not the results met expectations) can give us a strategy that opens new paths and secures our future.

How much have you recognized what you’ve done, and what others have done for you? How much have you celebrated what you’ve achieved so far?

Warm regards and my best wishes for the second half of the year,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: PMI® Talent & Technology Virtual Symposium 2020. A great PMI event I attended last Wednesday, now available on demand. All the panelists are good. I recommend Leadership in Times of Uncertainty by Fabiola Maisonnier and The Next Disruption by Rob Llewellyn.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Autophagy, fasting, and promising new cancer therapies. I spent the whole week listening closely to this podcast and taking notes. What struck me most was understanding what triggers autophagy.
• What I’ve been Reading: Harvard researcher says the most emotionally intelligent people have these 12 traits. Which do you have? I admire the body of work Daniel Goleman has built around emotional intelligence. A short but powerful article worth reading.
• What I’ve been Learning: The 4 Disciplines of Execution. A book worth reading year after year. Every time I go back I find more useful strategies. There’s a reason Clayton Christensen wrote that the book "…contains the theory of causality for how to achieve successful execution".

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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