Winners Don’t Quit: A Plan for Sustained Leadership and Innovation - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 169

In a study conducted on 149 participants from around the world, researchers
compared those who wrote down goals with those who did not and analyzed the
rate at which they obtained those goals [4] . They concluded that simply writing
it down increases your chances of fulfilling your goal. Individuals who wrote
their goals down achieved an average of just over six goals whereas those who
didn't write them down achieved an average of four of their goals within a given
period of time. While this may not seem significant, imagine how different you
life would be if for 10 years you obtained two additional goals per year over
what you would without writing them down. This leads to an additional twenty
goals attained. These twenty goals may mean completing a master's degree,
buying your dream home, building a stronger relationship with a loved one, or
establishing a scholarship in the name of your parents. Whatever it is, this mat-
ters. So write down your goal, the steps you will take to get there, the resources
you will need, and your timeline, and then check your plan every month or week
to make sure it's underway.
Now that you have moved from the dream stage and made a decision it is
time to establish concrete goals. Determine your goals and relate them to where
you want to be in the future - there is a lot of power in understanding our goals.
Goal setting should be done with consideration for all areas of your life includ-
ing career, family, financial, health, community, and all other areas relevant to
you. A number of goal-setting templates are available online; however, much of
the same can be accomplished with a legal pad or through the use of a spread-
sheet. Whatever format you use, fill out a chart or table similar to Table 8.4
to organize and clarify your goals. Then you will need to list each individual
goal on another page (spreadsheet) and determine the short-term and mid-term
goals required to attain the ultimate goal. Finally, you will need to schedule the
start (the date on which you will start working toward this goal) and completion
dates for each goal. Utilize the Career Management Chart developed in previ-
ous chapters to populate this chart and add the additional details for attaining
each series of goals or use the Goal Establishment Chart in Table 8.4 .
PLAN, PREPARE - AND EXECUTE !
If you are now thinking Big, it's time to plan and prepare in just as grand a
fashion. I want to stress the importance of the plan and preparation; however, as
women and especially women in STEM, I've witnessed us spending too much
time on the planning - never thinking we're quite ready. Again, it's critical to
plan and prepare because we may fail - for totally avoidable reasons. I experi-
enced this with the development of a technical engineering firm, largely because
I didn't properly prepare, but it also was not my true vision. I had been a consul-
tant for about 10 years on a part-time basis while growing my academic reputa-
tion. When the consulting work grew so much that it was too much for me to
handle, I assumed I could start an engineering services firm to accomplish the