The Finance Leader Podcast

101: Be BOLD in 2023 With Your Goal Setting

January 10, 2023 Stephen McLain Season 13 Episode 1
The Finance Leader Podcast
101: Be BOLD in 2023 With Your Goal Setting
Show Notes Transcript

This is 2023 and I believe this is the year we become bold in our career execution, our skills development, and our leadership growth. The last few years people have become hesitant due to the challenges we were facing so they did not take risk in their advancement or even in their own lives. We don’t know what will happen this year, but there is great opportunity out there to those willing to develop a plan and mindset to go get it. Be BOLD: Believe, Overcome, Leadership, and Decisive. Be bold in your planning and in the execution of your goals.

Episode outline

  1. Take action in your career,
  2. Have a written plan,
  3. Be BOLD in 2023, and
  4. Become a Finance Leader.


Please connect with me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii

iPhone productivity tip video: Schedule Notifications

Wall Street Journal article:  Why So Many Accountants Are Quitting

Email me about your thoughts on the article: comment@stephenmclain.com

For more resources, please visit stephenmclain.com. On the website, you can download the Leadership Growth Blueprint for Finance and Accounting Managers. You can use this guide to develop your leadership by focusing on communication, and growing and empowering your team.

You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from financeleaderacademy.com. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.

Stephen McLain:

Happy New Year. This is 2023. And I believe this is the year, we become bold in our career execution, our skills development and our leadership growth. The last few years people have become hesitant to do the challenges we were facing, so they did not take risk in their advancement or even in their own lives. We don't know what will happen this year. But there is great opportunity out there to those willing to develop a plan and mindset to go get it. So be bold, believe overcome, leadership and decisive, be bold in your planning and in the execution of your goals. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. Thank you. This is episode number 101. And I'll be talking about making 2023. A year that we will be bold, I will highlight the following topics. Number one, take action in your career. Number two have a written plan. Number three be bold in 2023. And four become a finance leader. poet Robert Frost said freedom lies in being bold. Again, happy new year it is 2023 and this is the time for new beginnings, it is the time to start over and to start fresh. That is why I love the new year. This is always a fun episode for me. Talking about goal setting and planning for the next year, we get to have a fresh beginning to our goals and a fresh perspective on what we want to do and what we want to accomplish and who we want to become. We get to review and change our habits, our routines, our goal accomplishment plan, how we approach life, how we approach our relationships, and many other areas. If you've been listening to me for a while you know that I don't support new year's resolutions. I support writing a goal plan and then committing to that plan. Now more on this later. And right now I want to share with you a list of five episodes from 2022. That made a huge impact and were my most popular. They continue to be significant to our finance and accounting community. So if you missed them, please go back and listen or if you need a refresher, please listen again. The first one is episode 94 on problem solving. The next is Episode 95, which was leading the annual budget development process. The third one is Episode 91, which is about the financial planning and analysis team. The fourth is episode 72. Leaders keep a journal and finally episode 98 Why did you choose a career in finance and accounting now this episode helped to challenge your thinking, your purpose and your long term goal. So please enjoy these episodes. Again, please share them with your colleagues if you know someone who could benefit, I really enjoy helping our community to grow their leadership to strengthen their growth mindset and to help others achieve their goals. Now I believe in having a written plan for our goals, I will never support new year's resolutions, because they will fail you every time. They are built on emotion instead of logic and solid planning. Our goals need to be broken down into smaller objectives. So they can be more easily achievable. Now I want you to use the SMART Goal Setting technique which is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time oriented. What do you want to accomplish? What will you measure determine goal success? And can you achieve the goal? Does your goal align with your broader goals and what is the timeframe? So it's Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time oriented? That is the SMART goal planning model. We will cover this more in depth in another episode. There is a strong theory that achieving marginal gains or improvements over the long term instead of huge one time gains will provide more improvement. This comes from a sports performance director who worked with athletes a 1% gain in several areas provides cumulative benefits over time. Small gains over time builds on your performance and goal achievement. It support steady improvement instead of massive changes. Now this is the difference between resolutions and goal setting. When you set a fleeting emotional resolution and you don't achieve your lofty milestone within a week or two you quit. That's not what we want make small achievable improvements on overload long term and you will achieve your goal. guarding our mindset is more important than ever. Do you have a fixed or growth mindset. Protect your mindset from being distracted or not believing in yourself that we do tough work every day we grind the numbers in the spreadsheets day in and day out, trying to analyze complex transactions and projections, plus dealing with monthly close every month. So I understand it, I understand your challenges. Taking action is key to our success. Taking risk is key to your growth and advancement. So be looking for opportunities. Always, it might be a new role, it might be working on a high visibility project, it might be an opportunity to work with a brief a senior leader, it could be a variety of chances to grow your skills, a training opportunity, a mentoring experience, or something else that takes you out of your comfort zone. We also need to review our habits and our routines do our habits support success? Do you have morning and evening routines that sets you up for the best productivity and the most efficient use of your time? Are you getting adequate rest, proper nutrition and enough water? Or are you only relying on caffeine to get you through the day, which is probably me also guilty, I need to review my routines and habits. Also, I want you to be bold this year, I will be using the acronym bold as a guide this year. So that's B belief, oh overcome l leadership, and D decisive. I will believe in myself so I take more calculated risks. I will overcome obstacles in my way. I will grow my leadership, and I will be decisive about growth and opportunities. Now more on this later. For goals to be effective, you must have a written plan. goals without a written plan is nothing but a dream. I want you to put your goals and your plans to paper or on the screen. Write it down so you can track it and update your progress. Last week, I challenge you to become a finance leader. And I shared this explanation for what a finance leader is. A finance leader is an expert of finance and accounting principles, who fuses technical expertise with leadership to make others around them better, and to positively transform the organization. By using accurate, relevant and real time data. To help other leaders make better decisions to execute the strategy. I will continue to refine that definition. Now let's embrace becoming finance leaders. As we move forward. Each week I plan to share productivity tips. So this week, a colleague of mine gave me a great tip for those who use iPhones. Do you become distracted with emails and other notifications on your phone? Did you know that you can schedule when notifications arrive? It's a game changer so you minimize distractions and be more productive. I'll put a link to a YouTube video in the show notes. So you can set up this amazing productivity tip. I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about why accountants are quitting. Did you read it? It was very interesting. I'll put a link in the show notes to this episode. The article said that more than 300,000 accountants in the US have quit in the last two years. Now why is this happening? It may be due to workplace shifts. Also accounting tasks can be repetitive, which I understand and that is why I advocate for us to grasp onto leadership. So we don't just fall into the daily rut of tasks, which can be boring and adds limited value. So please read the article when you get a chance and let me know what you think. I'll put my email address in the show notes so you can send me an email. Now let's talk about what we can get done in 2023. Number one, take action in your career. To move forward to get better to improve we must take action, we must get out of our comfort zones. We must agitate ourselves to move forward. This is how growth occurs. get uncomfortable. Don't be complacent make a decision and a commitment to improve and to accomplish your goals. Your career is up to you and what you do or decide not to do has long term effects. Take calculated action so you continue to improve and advance so you achieve your long term goal. Number two have a written plan. To succeed you must have a written plan that you update and where you record your progress regularly. A written plan keeps you focused in helps you make the commitment to yourself to grow and develop goals not written down don't get accomplished. A written plan should include your long term goal and shorter term goals and objectives broken down and support that long term goal. Also identify skills you should develop including key soft skills, and then list out what training you have scheduled. Continue to record your progress and any changes you make during the Year, keep updating your individual development plan throughout the year. Number three, I want you to be bold in 2023. This year, I want you to use the acronym bold this year to make better decisions, to become a better leader and to get out of your comfort zone, so you don't miss a great opportunity. So we're going to begin with be Believe in yourself so you are ready to grow and step out when opportunities become available. Next is oh for overcome obstacles. Don't let an obstacle stop you. Keep working on your mindset. So when obstacles come and they will come that you are ready to overcome them. Next is L develop your leadership skills. I want you to be a leader in your organization. I will talk about becoming a finance leader in a few minutes. And finally, d be decisive when opportunities become available. And go achieve your long term goal, make decisions and then execute, stop holding yourself back. Go get it be bold in 2023. I'll be reminding you as we progress this year. Number four become a finance leader. I shared with you a few minutes ago the definition of a finance leader. So here it is again. A finance leader is an expert of finance and accounting principles, who fuses technical expertise with leadership to make others around them better and to positively transform the organization by using accurate, relevant and real time data. To help other leaders to make better decisions to execute the strategy. I will continually challenge you to become a leader and not just someone who sends data, but someone who leads with the data so you can improve the organization. So how do you become a finance leader? First, own your portfolio? Own the metrics and routine tasks you complete? Become an expert. Find the person and leadership team who are responsible for delivering the metrics you report on and then learn everything you can about those metrics, what affects them, what are the variables? How does this metric affect the business? And what additional insights can the leadership team need to make better decisions that should get you started in the right direction that work to become a finance leader in your organization so you can bring about positive change and do your part and delivering the strategy. Since this is the beginning of the year, it is also a great time to plan out your 2023 CPE requirements. Get those annual plans so you don't have to rush at the end of the year. And episode 61 I shared a few sites and resources you can use to plan out and achieve your annual CPE credits. Don't forget to keep them completed on time and turn down. Now for action today. First, I want you to develop your 2023 Individual Development Plan if you have not already, write it down and updated often. Second, be bold this year. I covered what this means a few minutes ago. Be ready to take some risks so you advance your career. So you become a finance leader to write down your goals and be bold. If you have not already I want to invite you to download a leadership guide for finance and accounting leaders. You can go to Finance leader academy.com and select Free leadership guide on the main menu. It's free, and it may give you a few ideas for your own leadership development. Today I talked about making 2023 a year that we will be bold and I highlighted the following points. Number one, take action in your career. Number two have a written plan. Number three be bold in 2023 and four become a finance leader. It's a new year, which means new beginnings and a fresh start. Take advantage of it to become a new you ready to tackle great challenges this year. Be ready for when new opportunities present themselves. They can come any time grow into the finance leader I know you can become. Next week we'll be talking about the SMART Goal Setting model. This will help you as you set your goals for this year. I hope you enjoy the finance leader podcast I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills to change your mindset and to clarify your goals so you advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast. Until next time, you can check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you