Energy & Goal Clarity – Let’s get to work!!
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
Working on international development from a cushy Washington, DC office has its challenges. People always say that you must love your job purely because your mission is important to you, and that you feel like work is rewarding outside of yourself. They are correct, but it’s not so simple.
The issues and their solutions are the drivers for my work – and I think I can speak for my staff and say they share the same attitude – but we sometimes lose sight of that. As the leader of the organization, it is important that I help the team stay focused on the mission. The low pay or lack of direct access to fieldwork opportunities all the time can be discouraging, especially when the times get tough.
So I put together a graph that explained this. Energy and Goal Clarity (See Graph) seem to be directly related over time. I have no problem working 14 hours a day on SMRC projects – even if it means just drafting memos or setting up meetings – if it also means that I am pursuing a clear and understandable goal. Goals like building a school for 300 children, providing young leaders access to a community that will inspire a lifetime of work, and so on. There will be inevitable drop offs; sometimes you just don’t feel the inspiration. But if you can keep yourself in the top half of the graph – always have a good to very good sense of what you are working towards (you may want to post a big sign on your desk that reminds you!) then you will always have the energy to kick it into gear.
That’s how we are looking at the challenge of being so removed from making a direct impact for so many months out of the year. It has been helping us out so far… in a future post I will fully describe our goals, which gives us that much needed clarity!
