Creating Goals for the Blueprint for Professional & Personal Growth
Marketing Management
Creating Goals for the Blueprint for Professional & Personal Growth Part I
Well-thought-out plans are critical for success, both for yourself and your
organization. As psychologist and author Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson said, “Without goals,
and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination”
(Dodson, n.d.). You have spent some time this week examining resources that discuss
values, principles, ethics, and goals. You have also completed a shared practice in
which you assessed your values, identified guiding principles that derive from some
of those values, and created a single goal from one of those principles. As you
probably realized, each of your guiding principles could be realized in the world
through any number of goals, and each of your goals will likely lead to others.
Take a moment to imagine how your blueprint can shape your vision for professional
and personal development.
This week, you begin to prepare the BPPG for the Individual Reflection that will be
due on Day 7 of Week 7. This week, develop at least two more goals to add to the
one you developed in the Shared Practice. You will draw from a number of sources to
develop these additional goals, including personal experience, Learning Resources
from throughout the course, and possibly your own research. As you draft these
additional goals for your BPPG, be sure to consider all you have reviewed in this
course and your growing understanding of who you are as a leader.
The goals you have developed this week will become the starting point for the
summation of this course, your Blueprint for Personal & Professional Growth (BPPG).
You will submit your BPPG for the Individual Reflection in Week 7. Since you will
be completing activities based on these three goals for the remainder of this
course, be sure to think carefully about this Individual Reflection this week.
Note: There is nothing to submit this week. You will submit this Assignment in Week
7.
Forward Thinking: Career Goals
If one of your professional goals for your BPPG includes career changing, career
advancement, or even just changing jobs, the Career Boost Forum is available for
you in every classroom of your Walden MBA. This resource is here for you to develop
your career goals, should you choose to use it. In the Career Boost Forum you can
access content developed by the Walden Career Center exclusively for Walden MBA
students. You can also use the discussion forum to post ideas for your colleagues,
network with peers, or even post a request for advice. This space is not graded, so
feel free to interact informally and collegially with your peers!
Through CareerBoostTM, you will have the opportunity to engage more closely with
Walden’s Career Services Center, which offers:
Resources for job opportunities and career information.
Résumé and curriculum vitae tips.
Discussion: Shared Practice: Clarifying Your Goals With a Plan of Action
You examined your ethics, values, and principles to develop at least three goals
that you will strive toward throughout your MBA program and in your professional
life. With these endpoints determined, you will now develop an action plan to
ensure progress toward one of your goals.
While you might take many paths to reach a goal, the Shared Practice this week will
help you to determine the most efficient and reasonable milestones for you to
measure your progress toward one of your goals. Examine the goal you posted in the
Week 6 Shared Practice. What types of tasks and activities will you need to do to
accomplish this goal? Will you need to find a mentor or take a course in a
particular subject in order to have the knowledge to achieve your goals? Will you
need to attend networking events and establish contact with certain people to
accomplish your goals? The process below will help you develop an action plan for
accomplishing your goal. This action plan will become part of your BPPG.
Select the goal you posted in your Week 6 Shared Practice using the Personal Values
Survey. You will use this goal to develop an action plan for achieving your goal.
The interactive media presentation from this week’s Learning Resources, “Action
Plan,” will provide you with more clarification regarding how to develop
objectives, milestones, and time lines to achieve your goal.
To prepare for this Shared Practice, use the “Action Plan Worksheet” provided at
the end of the interactive media piece Action Plan from your
Learning Resources. Your post for the Shared Practice should be in the range of 3-5
coherent paragraphs and should cohesively present your action plan to achieve your
goal.
Use the “Action Plan Worksheet” from the interactive media piece to:
Draft your goal and state a reasonable time line to meet your goal;
Specify at least two objectives which will help you reach the goal;
Identify at least two measurable milestones you will need to complete to meet your
objective; and
Determine a time line to ensure that progress on individual milestones can be
measured. (Hint: As you determine the time line to meet the individual milestones,
it may be necessary to reconsider the time line you established for the greater
goal.)
When you have completed the “Action Plan Worksheet,” you are ready to draft your
goal in paragraph form for your Shared Practice. Your post for the Shared Practice
will likely be in the range of 3-5 paragraphs.
Post by Day 3 your action plan to the Week 7 Shared Practice discussion thread.
Your post should include the following:
Your specific goal for professional and personal development with an explanation as
to why you selected this goal. Your explanation should address how the questions
your colleagues posed in the Week 6 Shared Reflection helped you refine and clarify
your goal.
A reasonable time line for achieving your stated goal.
At least two objectives you have identified that will help you reach your goal with
a rationale that explains how your objectives support the goal.
At least two measurable milestones for ensuring progress for each objective you
identified as well as the time lines you have established for each milestone.
To complete your Discussion, click on Discussions on the course navigation menu,
and select “Week 7 Forum” to begin.
Paper
Assignment: Individual Reflection: Creating Goals for the Blueprint for
Professional & Personal Growth Part II
As you recall from the Course Outcomes listed in your syllabus, this course
requires you to develop strategies for becoming a more effective leader, creating
preliminary plans for professional and personal growth, and integrating your
personal values, ethics, experience, and goals into leadership decisions. The
Blueprint for Professional & Personal Growth (BPPG) is designed to assist you in
meeting those outcomes and has two components you need to complete: an executive
summary of the course and action plans to achieve the professional and personal
goals you have set for yourself.
The first component of the BPPG is an executive summary of the course to date. The
ability to write an executive summary is a valuable business skill. To get the in
right frame of mind for writing an executive summary, imagine that an executive
from a company for which you have always wanted to work has called you and told you
the following:
Hello, I hear you are getting your MBA. Well, we would like to hire you and
reimburse to you the costs of your course. But before I bring you on board and pay
for the course, I need to know two things. First, how have the content and
assignments in this course helped you understand the roles of leadership and
followership within business organization? Second, how do you intend to apply the
content, theories, and topics addressed in this course to your career? Oh, and if I
like what you are learning in this course and how you intend to apply what you have
learned here at our organization, I will contact you and ask you when you would be
able to start and what you would like your salary to be.
Ok. No pressure, right? While it is unlikely the above scenario will happen to you
soon, the above scenario is a useful framework for writing your executive summary.
It lets people who are important to an organization, such as executives and
investors; know the central ideas of the topic you are discussing and convince them
why they should pay attention to them. Your executive summary of this course will
help you organize the resources and learning experiences from this course that you
have found most meaningful for your professional and personal growth. As you
progress through the program, the executive summary you write this week will help
you recall important concepts and help you reflect on the goals you have created
for yourself. For additional guidance on preparing your executive summary, please
review the document How to Write an Executive Summary, which can be located by
clicking on the Learning Support Docs link in the course navigation menu in the
online classroom.
For the second component of your BPPG, you will submit action plans for at least
three goals. Recall the three goals you created in Week 6:
In the Week 6 Shared Practice, you created one goal to share with your colleagues
that derived from your experience using the Personal
Values Survey. You used this goal to develop an action plan for the Week 7 Shared
Practice.
You created at least two other goals for the Week 6 Individual Reflection from the
Personal Values Survey or sources related to the course content.
Now that you have gone through the process of developing an action plan for one
goal, you will develop action plans for the two other goals for the BPPG. As you
prepare the action plans, you might consider revising your action plan for your
first goal, based upon the feedback you received from your colleagues in the Shared
Practice. Then select at least two more goals you created in the Week 6 Individual
Reflection and develop an action plan for those goals. For each goal, be sure to
provide concrete and specific examples of why the goal is important, the personal
or professional value you expect from achieving the goal, and how the goal relates
to the resources you reviewed in the course up to now. (Hint: If your action
includes career goals, consider visiting the Career Boost Discussion Forum and
using the tools and resources the Walden Career Services Center developed
exclusively for Walden MBA students. In this discussion forum you can also share
ideas with your colleagues, network with your peers, and trade advice.)
What can you do now to integrate the experiences and insights you had in this
course with your personal and professional development goals?
What are the most important things you are taking from this course that will shape
your future and enable you to make a positive difference?
Both components of the assignment should be turned in as one document:
The Executive Summary:
Write an Executive Summary of the course to date (2-3 paragraphs) that addresses
the following questions:
Which content and assignments in this course most helped you better understand the
roles of leadership and followership within your organization (or one with which
you are familiar), and what impact have they had, or do you anticipate they will
have, on the value you will bring to your role within an organization?
How have the content and assignments changed the way you think about leadership and
followership and the way you will practice these skills?
How have the content and assignments shaped your goals?
How has the content help you appreciate the role leaders and followers have in
achieving positive social change within an organization, a community, or on a
larger scale?
Your action plans:
Write a detailed action plan for at least three goals. One of the goals should be
the one you submitted for the Week 7 Shared Practice. These action plans should
include the following:
Your three specific goals for professional and personal development with an
explanation as to why you selected each goal. For each goal, be sure to provide
concrete and specific examples of why the goal is important,; the extent to which
each goal enables you to be an agent for positive social change; the personal or
professional value you expect from achieving each goal, and how the goal relates to
the resources you reviewed in the course until now.
At least two objectives for each goal you have identified. Provide a rationale that
explains how your objectives support the goal.
At least two measurable milestones for each objective you identified as well as the
time lines for ensuring progress for each milestone.
A reasonable time line for ensuring progress toward your stated goals, with an
explanation as to why your time line is reasonable. (Hint: Revisit the interactive
media piece Action Plan and use the “Action Plan Worksheet” to help you develop the
action plan for each goal. You may also want to review the CareerBoost Forum and
Resources for this course as you think about your goals, objectives, and
milestones. If you have not visited the MBA Resources link within the Career
Center. You can find this by clicking on the Career Boost tool link found in the
Forum.)
Be sure to include appropriate citations in your executive summary and action
plans. Both components should be submitted as one document.
Refer to the Weeks 6 and 7 Individual Reflection rubric found under the Course
Information tab for specific criteria for this assignment. Your instructor will use
this rubric to assess your work.