A Model and Metaphor for Change and Growth

My family and I attended a fantastic concert recently, and had some humorous goofs with our Navigation app. On the way there, the app brought us physically next to the parking garage, but not to an actual entrance! I often marvel at the precision of GPS and then I get these stark reminders. In the context of an open field, the distance from the entrance was trivial compared to how far we traveled. Still, in another context (major city during end of workday traffic) the small distance had major impacts! A kindly security guard gave us a helpful and succinct re-direct, and we got where we needed. We switched to walking directions but until we got outside of the parking facility, the GPS was downright baffled.

The comedy continued after the show. We didn’t use the app to get back to the car, but did turn it on to find our way out of the city.

Pro-tip: make sure to change the settings back to driving directions from walking directions….we didn’t pick up on my technical goof until the app insisted we should drive into the water.

We knew damn well the interstate was in the opposite direction! My wife realized, “this thing is trying to get us to take the ferry!” She turned her phone to its map app, entered our home address, and was in wonderment when the device cheerfully announced “your destination is on the right”. I swear we were 30 miles from our destination.

My daughter quipped,” technically if you go far enough around the planet, everything is on your right”. Accurate, but unhelpful.

Once I stopped laughing, and had my daughter switch our settings, we were on our way. Now that the self deprecating anecdote portion of the post is taken care of, I suspect you are bewildered. What on earth this does all this nonsense have to do with growth and change?

Great Question, glad you asked.

One model for personal growth and change is the G.R.O.W. model.

When I’ve explained this to coaching clients or mentees, I have used a metaphor of a “journey of change”. On potentially perilous journeys it is helpful to use GPS, although clearly there are plenty of ways that your GPS can malfunction. I like to think of these missteps metaphorically in their relation to G.R.O.W as well, as they are humorous but helpful reminders of how to implement these steps on your journey. Since I was coming home from a concert, I’ll also throw in some guitar player examples. Let’s dive right in.

GOAL

First step in any journey is to decide where you desire to go. Yes, I realize this sounds obvious. I agree there is a bit more to this step than “set a goal”. In keeping with my GPS metaphor, you open up your GPS app, and then select a destination. Have you ever had the GPS express dissatisfaction with your input? Whenever I input an airport as a destination, my GPS asks for clarification: arrivals? departures? parking? rental car return?

There’s a message here. Your goal needs specificity and granularity for the GPS to be as helpful as it could be. Setting a Goal in the flow of the G.R.O.W. model is similar. Nonspecific goals lead to nonspecific directions. This is intuitive if you stop to think about it. I currently live in Washington state; anytime I tell people that, they immediately ask “Seattle?”. Without more specificity of location than “a state”, people are left to assume. Applying this to goal setting, anytime your goal is imprecise, you make it more difficult to attain.

My guitar teacher asked me what my goal is in studying with him. How helpful to the overall process would a vague statement like ” I want to be better at guitar.” How bout “I want to be an advanced guitar player”? My teacher and I may have wildly different expectations as to the meaning of advanced vs intermediate guitar. Further, a guitar player has a great many aspects to their craft. It’s possible to be advanced in one area and a beginner in another. Notice there is no time frame yet. if I study with my teacher for 20 years and get slightly better, did I achieve my goal? You may have leapt to the next piece of goal setting within G.R.O.W. which is to consider a framework to make the goal precise, meaningful and in the context of a timeline. S.M.A.R.T. is a commonly used acronym for goal setting that has some utility at this step.

S.M.A.R.T. framework… must be kept in context. It should serve attaining your strategic goals by giving you tactical and operational level goals. It should not promote the tactical goals as a replacement to your strategic vision.

Specific.

Is the goal vague or specific? Consider this: I want to go somewhere nice for vacation vs I want to go to Disneyworld. There is a much greater chance of achieving the more specific goal. The planning process, identification of resources and challenges to overcome become easier.

Measurable

The goal should be stated in terms of a number, metric, or criteria for success/failure. My GPS example is a good one to illustrate how lack of specificity can interact with this step. My “arrival vs non-arrival” metric wasn’t a usable one, because my goal was the address of the parking garage and not the entrance. In other goals, this is less of a problem in the “specific step” and more of a metric issue. My goal is to be a faster guitar player. So, I can set the metric as “play along with a metronome at 120 BPM.” I can measure my playing and compare it to that standard to judge my progress in attaining the goal.

Attainable

Is the goal actually possible? To be comically absurd, if I put “The Planet Mars” into my GPS, that’s specific and measurable, but as I am not an astronaut in the MARS program this just isn’t gonna happen. For my guitar example, if my goal was “play a world stadium tour”, it’s going to be judged unattainable vs my goal of playing faster. If your goal isn’t attainable, this step isn’t a hard stop: sometimes your goal can be broken into steps. My son and I completed a cross country drive. When I put “Rochester NY” into the GPS and it spit back “67 hours”, I judged the goal as unattainable – we then broke it into 4 days and set up smaller trips to destinations in-between home as a start and college as a final destination.

Inherent in this is the notion of larger goals, and smaller goals. If I set the goal of playing a really difficult guitar piece like “Canon Rock”, I may be best served breaking it into smaller goals of 1) playing faster scales to get to the set tempo of the song around 120 BPM 2) playing sweep arpeggios faster 3) playing finger tapping faster. These goals are individually attainable in a way that “Play Canon Rock at full speed” just isn’t as a big chunk. Again, this is an illustration that making goals specific and measurable is necessary but not sufficient. Assessing whether they are attainable is an additional criteria to review. Read on to the next step for another criteria to consider when splitting goals.

Relevant

This is one of my absolutely favorites. Some websites and articles will use “realistic” as the “R”. True, this is a synonym of attainable, but doesn’t add anything to the acronym. I definitely endorse the use of Relevant over realistic, beyond realistic being redundant. Relevant in this acronym reminds you to put your SMART goals in the context of larger strategic goals. Relevant is vital to successful goal setting; some goals sound great, but don’t nest under larger goals. These disconnected micro goals don’t advance you toward your overall strategic/life goals.

This step in SMART requires you to ask “why?”.

Let’s say I set the goal to be faster at guitar. I might choose an attainable metric of 120 BPM. So far so good, right? But if my overall desire is to play guitar while I lead a campfire sing-along…does playing fast shreddy style scales and solo licks serve that goal? I haven’t noticed a lot of face-melting solos during choruses of “Where have all the flowers gone”.

This step forces you to ask “Does this goal make sense for you?” Relevant complements Attainable. Often the goal is too big and needs to be split into steps, as discussed in the “attainable” section above. Splitting larger goals into steps/micro goals leads very well to checking their relevance. Micro goals should nest under larger goals, and help lead to a next step or an overall strategic goal. These two criteria go well when put together as a check on the micro goals.

Back to our GPS example. I could have taken smaller trips to get across the country, but it was far more fruitful to start with the overall goal of getting to Rochester. I had a much greater chance of picking stops that are on the way to my overall goal, rather than a series of aimless shorter trips. These may have gotten me across the country eventually, but weren’t clearly nested en route to the larger destination.

Time Bound

Give yourself a deadline. Research has generated support that deadlines improve goal attainment, as they offer a mechanism for accountability. Let’s face it, one of the reasons we are reticent to set a deadline is that we might not achieve it. We provide ourselves a concrete measurable opportunity for failure when we establish a deadline. Think about it: If my goal is to get to Rochester to drop my son off at college (ever), then it can be 6 years from now, and I haven’t missed my goal. Of course, my son’s move in date was 7 days after we left for the road trip, so when planning the trip we had a meaningful deadline. When selecting a time frame for your goal, you will have to be cognizant of the “Attainable” step again. I run into this internal check during fitness goals. If I intend to lose 25 pounds of fat and put on 10 pounds of muscle, and I give myself a deadline of 1 month, I’m setting myself up for something quite unhealthy. If I time bound it as a one year process, I’ve set up something far more attainable.

One big warning about SMART goals: They are just a tool, not the end-all be-all of goal setting. In fact, there is some research to suggest that overuse of SMART goals is counterproductive. Step back and look at S.M.A.R.T. with the context and explanation provided above. There are many steps which help make goals attainable including longer time frame, more specificity, and lower measures of success. These can be hacked to make it more likely you will “check the box” on your “goal achievement to-do list”. But, does that place the goals in service to a larger vision? Larger strategic goals like “fulfilling a calling in line with my values” often don’t lend themselves to the S.M.A.R.T. framework. This framework must be kept in context. It should serve attaining your strategic goals by giving you tactical and operational level goals. It should not promote the tactical goals as a replacement to your strategic vision.

They are usually surprised that they learn something about themselves, but the essence of coaching is helping create awareness, and helping bridge that awareness to action. It bears repeating: you can’t get anywhere without first knowing where you are.

REALITY

This is a tough step. Many people will breeze thru the Goal Setting step of the G.R.O.W. framework, and they will intuitively already have the habit of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals that are appropriately sized and scaled. This step requires a ruthless and honest self assessment to determine where you currently stand. Check out this graphic:

Recognize it? It’s the map from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. A map with no names. This was a map that showed the exact route to find the holy grail, but nobody knew where to start. This happened in my comic escapade trying to get home from the concert. If I leave off my location services, or I have lousy cell signal, I get ridiculous input from my GPS that simply won’t get me home. To get where you are going, you must know where you are. My daughter’s humorous geography anecdote aside, all of your goals are not just far enough to the right from any position on a spherical planet.

Accurate knowledge of your starting point will also help you reassess your S.M.A.R.T. goal, and vice-versa. You may set a goal, and then once you assess your current reality/position, you may have a serving of humble pie and change the metric or time-line for your goal. This isn’t weakness. This isn’t failure. This is true humility, a word which comes from a Greek word meaning “grounded”. Said another way, humility is the act of acknowledging reality. Attainable goals must take into account your current state.

This step will often require outside assistance from a coach, mentor, expert, or even an objective assessment tool. My clients will often express a desire to be better at work, be more authentic, prevent burnout etc. It helps to know where they are and who they are to achieve this, and I will use the VIA strengths survey, and the abbreviated Maslach Burnout Inventory. They are usually surprised that they learn something about themselves, but the essence of coaching is helping create awareness, and helping bridge that awareness to action. It bears repeating: you can’t get anywhere without first knowing where you are.

OPTIONS/OPPORTUNITIES

Let’s recap and beat the GPS metaphor a little more: You have set a goal (picked a destination) and assessed your current reality (turned on location services). Next step is to review your options for the routes to get from here to there. My GPS will give me routes to choose from, and take into account external factors (speed limits, mileage, traffic, road closures etc) and even internal preferences (avoid highways, tolls, maximize scenery etc) and provide choices and recommendations. In pursuing your goals, realizing there are many ways to achieve them is vital. Just like different routes driving, different approaches to goal achievement have their pros and cons.

In my guitar playing example, I could hire a private teacher, enroll in a music academy (online or in person), or use books, YouTube videos and magazine articles. Whereas having a teacher costs way more than YouTube, the quality is likely far higher. None of these different routes are necessarily the one single end-all-be-all correct way to go; they are options. You may not even realize what all the options are, and that’s why I include “Opportunities” as the explanation for the “O” in G.R.O.W. This is another place where research outside your knowledge and experience or the assistance of a coach/mentor/expert can be helpful. Many times you don’t know what you don’t know. Folks who have pursued the goal before can provide you with insights about the journey that can inform your development of an options/opportunities list.

WILL/WAY

Now that you know where you are going, where you are starting and have a list of different ways to get there (each with their inherent pros and cons), pick one and get on the road.

Seriously, that’s the entirety of this part of the G.R.O.W. acronym.

Pick an option and get started, and create a mechanism to hold yourself accountable. Some tips for this: when selecting your options/opportunities, be cognizant of who you are, and what makes you tick. There is solid research showing that goal attainment is more likely when the goal and manner in which it is pursued is consistent with your values and underlying motivations. Let’s face it: if someone gave you an opportunity to act authentically and live out traits and character strengths that are effortless, essential and energizing you would leap at the chance. When pursuing a difficult goal, it will be intuitively much easier if the only challenge is the goal itself, and not that you selected a manner of pursuing it that makes you question your authenticity. If driving on highways depresses you when compared to the scenic route, do you really care if it takes a little longer? If you are actually happy with the journey itself, as well as the destination, rather than just one or the other you will be more likely to start and finish the journey.

TAKEAWAYS

• To start a journey you must decide where you want to go.
  • Craft goals to be S.M.A.R.T.
    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Attainable
    • Relevant
    • Time-Bound
  • Nest these S.M.A.R.T. goals in larger strategic visions; avoid micro goals that are easy to achieve but don’t really get you anywhere
• You have to know where you are right now to know how to get where you are going.
  • Be humble, Reality is currently undefeated
• There are many options to travel from where you are to where you want to be.
  • There is no perfect route, but many that are capable of getting you there.
  • Pick a route that is a consistent reflection of your values. You are far more likely to stick with that route.
• A plan without execution is just a dream.

As always I would love your thoughts and reactions! What metaphors for personal/professional growth & change resonate with you? When have you used G.R.O.W. or S.M.A.R.T. to work towards a goal? What are some pitfalls you wish you avoided in goal setting?