It’s that time of year, where you have either recently set, or might soon be setting goals for your professional growth and impact in 2025.
If you’re in a larger organisation, with a mature Quality function, you might have leaders, managers or peers to be able to lean on to get ideas, inspiration or guidance on how to set your goals.
For those of us in smaller organisations, with little or no testing and quality leadership, being managed by engineering managers with dev backgrounds, it might not be so easy.
In either situation, it’s still up to you to set, or at least influence, what goals you set, based on how you want to grow.
I’m interested to know, how do you figure out what goals you want to set?
Do you:
Set task-focused goals based on upcoming projects and business goals
Set goals based on your current interests, what you fancy learning
Get inspirations from industry trends, it’s Ai again this year, right?
Consider what impact you want to make, to whom, at what level?
Set goals to try and help you progress in your role, or set yourself up for your next role?
I’d love to hear your goals for 2025, and even more so, as I ask myself these same questions, how do you set your goals? What advice would you give a younger you, about goal setting?
I’ve had the same thoughts lately. I’m using January to do a lot of reflecting (I have a blog post that will be available on Wednesday addressing this!) and thinking about how I can create goals for 2025 in relation to QA is what I’m working on.
Mainly, I’m starting with feelings. How do I feel about my job, my role, current processes? A couple of my favorite questions are, “What stinks?” or “What have I become used to?” Being able to really feel what’s not working is helpful for me. To that end, asking “What do I love?” or “What am I excited about?” can help determine next steps also!
I’m not the kind of guy that makes new year goals
I always wondered why people have to make goals in January and why can’t they do it in the middle of the year?
If I see something that I want to learn or achieve, I instantly make it my goal. I set myself a target and do it.
For me it’s more of a “in the moment” kind of thing. As mentioned here above, if I see something I like to achieve, I’ll make it my goal!
Do it, do it now!
If you are having trouble doing or achieving stuff or even coaching other people then you are not setting the bar low enough.
Yes, LOW ENOUGH.
Each time you set the bar high, people get demotivated as in “I can’t do that”.
But when you set the bar low, you estimate a persons skills or yourself and give them/yourself a task to do X or Y which is just a tiny bit harder then where their/your skills are right now. This process, is a repeatable process and this is how you grow or set goals. If you do this throughout the year, then you don’t need new years goals which are insane and unachievable. That’s probably why 99% fails their new years resolution.
I don’t think my chaotic way of thinking and doing would allow me to fit into such structure, but if you have the template to share, I’d consider giving it try!
I got the template from Colby’s “1% better” newsletter (free)! I signed up for their newsletter, received this free tracker, and have been using it since then.
This newsletter provides tips on how to bring out the best in yourself, and I personally like the advice it offers!
