Chapter 16: Creating High-Performance Work Systems

High-Performance Careers

Each chapter in this textbook contained an exercise designed to help you formulate a career plan. Use the following checklist to determine whether you have completed all the Career Counsel exercises.

Goal Setting

Now that you have a profile of your career plans, you can set some goals. As a first step, identify people you admire who have been successful and who are recognized as leaders in their respective fields. Define why you think they are successful. To do this, determine the performance measure of success. For example, Bill Gates at 40 was the world's richest man. Nancy Green was 23 when she won the Olympic Gold Medal for skiing, and 34 when she started a hotel business in Whistler, British Columbia.

Identify measures of success that have meaning for you, such as:

• Earn an MBA by 30
  
• Start a business by 35
  
• Accumulate $1 million by 40

Finally, revisit the Life Planning exercise Chapter 1. Redo the exercise, but this time focus on career plans only.