Dan Sweet

I divided my 2009 goals into 3 buckets: LIFE, FRIENDS, CAREER/PRODUCTIVITY.

Here is how I did:
LIFE: 6 for 8
FRIENDS: 4 for 6
CAREER/PRODUCTIVITY: 5 for 8 (2 of the 8 shouldn’t have been goals–more like whims)

I’d call 15 of the 22 solid wins. 2 of the 22 I didn’t accomplish and weren’t important so I get a pass on those. That leaves 5 outstanding to stay on my 2010 list in some form or another. 22 goals is too many and my list will be much shorter in 2010.

Additionally, I am toying with making my goals S.M.A.R.T. as well. SMART goals are a work thing. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-Bound. Apparently there are several possible words for every letter of the word SMART as Wikipedia lays out here. I find myself somewhat resistant as it is a lot easier to let things slide and “just be flexible” when you haven’t made specific commitments. I feel like I’ve got a lot going on and don’t want to sign myself up for too much. At the same time, I know that the goals I am most reluctant to set specifics around are the same ones I didn’t achieve in 2009. A little external processing going on right there, but it sounds like I will be making my 2010 goals SMART. I encourage you to do the same.

Internet trivia of the day: Apparently that line about Harvard MBAs with written goals earning great fortunes vs. their peers without written goals is an urban legend. See here for details. Another study was done that demonstrated written goals do help people accomplish more, but huge sums of money may or may not follow.

I’m sixth months into my first full-time role at P&G.  It is the proverbial drinking from a firehose that I was promised, hence no posting.  During my transition into the company I’ve been asking various folks around the company what success looks like for a finance manager at P&G.  The most compelling response I received is reproduced in the graphic below:

Innovative models, sophisticated analyses, and leading large-scale change.  These are the top of the pyramid elements that we typically associate with high caliber finance professionals.  However, without a firm foundation, the most sophisticated pieces of analysis will go nowhere.  Finance people without integrity aren’t worth much, hence the internal controls piece.  You also can’t make meaningful assumptions if you can’t trust your organization and the people in it.  Owning sound internal controls is the key to ensuring the numbers you work with can be counted on and will be taken seriously by others.  Delivering the business results is the other key piece of the foundation.  Finance managers at P&G are true business partners.  They aren’t just accountants and they don’t just “run the numbers” on ideas that get passed down the chain.  Finance folks are typically present early on  and have significant input at all stages of the planning process.  As a result, finance managers own the business results right along with the sales force, the marketers, and general management.  Once the foundation of sound internal controls and consistent business results is in place, then feel free to trot out your latest greatest data visualization techniques or sophisticated model.  Ignore at your own peril.

I sometimes find it difficult to stay current with all of the blogs I read, email I receive, and other news I like to follow. I just started my post b-school job as a finance manager yesterday, and have been using the last week or two to try to get caught up on the Google Reader and email fronts in anticipation of that.

One of my 2009 goals was to end each day with an empty inbox. That worked for me, even with a newborn, for the first 3-4 months of 2009. The newborn thing actually helped because what else is there to do when you are up at 3am? Then we started looking for houses and getting more actively engaged in the relocation process and it all went out the window. However, I’m back under 50 messages in the inbox after dedicating a couple solid hours to deleting, archiving, and unsubscribing.

However, Google Reader has been haunting me. I didn’t look at it for ten days or so and I came back to find 900+ “new items”. Digging a little deeper it turns out the real culprit is a recent subscription to Zero Hedge that I had added that was contributing 400+ of those items. The real problem is that I constantly find fascinating stuff in ZH posts. This morning though I had to admit defeat and hit the reset button. I hit “mark all as read” on Zero Hedge and my unread items instantly fell from 600+ to only 219. It felt awesome. As I’ve typed this post I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to see a nice big zero for total unread items. Hold on, one more click (and another to confirm that yes I am that crazy) and bam, ZERO unread items!

This is a little trick I learned from David Allen Greene, the author of Getting Things Done. He advocates doing the same thing with your email. His argument is that if you haven’t written back in 2 weeks, or a month, or 6 months it must not have really been that important that you reply. This can obviously get a little tricky with email but in the Google Reader context it makes perfect sense to get familiar with the reset button. The tools we have are supposed to empower us not burden us. Get familiar with the reset buttons you have available to you and make use of them. You will free up all kinds of mental energy you are currently wasting on things that don’t really matter.

Give it a shot and leave a comment below with how this works for you.

Elliott Garlock, a colleague at P&G, tweeted a link to this talk by Matt Mason yesterday. The talk is fascinating and The Pirate’s Dilemma looks like an awesome book.  I embedded the Google Video of the talk below.  You can also see the talk in its original context here.

Matt offers a refreshing perspective on piracy and the role of pirates by asking one simple question.  Do the pirates add value?  Put more explicitly, what is it that consumers are getting from the pirates that mainstream companies aren’t providing?  The businesses that can look beyond their default reactionary “us vs. them” mental model and stay focused on consumer needs will be able to adapt and thrive.

See the whole video above for more tips from Matt on dealing with pirates.

Bob McDonald, P&G’s new CEO, speaking on Values-Based Leadership.  If you already know who he is, and that he is “kind of a big deal,” then just skip forward to five minutes in and hear what he has to say.