Many companies do business-specific goal planning with employees to determine how to get the most out of them, and ensure they are working hard towards the company’s goals. And we do that too. But our personal goal planning is equally, if not more, important. Personal goal planning is separate from the business itself, and instead focuses on the employees and their lives holistically. And while it may seem like a “nice to have” and not a “must have,” for us it is all about championing our staff, and their goals, to ensure our company and its staff are aligned. We have committed to personal goal planning with our employees because we think it is a worthwhile experiment. After all, we do spend most of our waking life as adults, at work.

A few months back, when we were a smaller team, we did a group workshop in personal goal planning. After the workshop, we created a book with a page devoted to each employee’s personal goals. Not only does this help us keep each other accountable, we also like to share it with prospective employees and important office guests.

It was a great experience during the early growth phase of the company. We all learned a little about one another, and about how to be personally mindful of our aspirations. But we knew it would be difficult to continue workshops like that one as our team grew beyond 5 or 6 people. As we continue to grow we want all of our new team members to be able to participate in the experiment.

One of my personal goals, which came out of our goal planning workshop, is to someday be an authority on company cultural development and management. I could not think of a better project for myself personally or professionally than to lead the goal planning workshops for the newest members of our team.

Over the course of the next few months as our newest employees go through the goal planning process with me, I will be blogging about what it’s like to lead this workshop. Since I am totally new to the world of goal workshop facilitation, it will be as much a learning experience for me as it will be for “The Daves” (our newest gang members). Hopefully this will give other small businesses or start-ups some ideas about what worked well for us and what we learned along the way.