Personal Strategic Plan
Mission Statement: To attain excellence in professional and personal life.
My objective is to be the epitome of success in my career and personal life. I am keen on ensuring that I display stellar performance at my place of work. This stratagem is geared towards facilitating the attainment of excellence in my profession (Thomas 3). I appreciate that I need to strike a healthy balance between professional and personal life.
As a professional, I want to be renowned as an individual with excellent leadership skills and outstanding performance. I am aiming at securing a job opportunity at Wall Street. As a financial analyst, Wall Street serves as the most suitable place where I can kick-start my career. I appreciate the competitiveness of the job market at Wall Street. In fact, it is one of the most competitive job markets across the world. As a result, I will employ a unique strategy that will facilitate me to secure an opportunity for employment within a comparatively short duration. During my time at the university, I concentrated on establishing robust networks with my schoolmates (Morrisey 16). This is mainly because I appreciate the essence of networks in the marketplace. I will rely on the networks that I built for purposes of attaining employment as well as enhancing my competitiveness at the workplace. Information is the most essential product at Wall Street. Information is only valuable when the majority of the people in the market are not aware of it. As a result, I aim at utilizing my networks for the purposes of attaining information in a timely manner. The acquisition of timely information will facilitate me to analyze the current and anticipated performance of the equities, bonds, and other financial instruments that are being traded in the financial markets effectively.
Additionally, I am keen on establishing a family. I intend to start a family approximately five years after gaining employment on Wall Street. I am informed of the nature of pressure that financial analysts face when working on Wall Street. Wall Street is characterized by a comparatively high degree of competitiveness. As a result, there is a need for an individual to attain financial stability prior to starting a family. Financial stability is vital to developing a healthy and sustainable family. The competitiveness of Wall Street leads to a situation whereby job security is extremely elusive. Therefore, there is a need for an employee to develop strategies that will facilitate him or her to attain financial stability within a relatively short duration. Investing is the most suitable practice that will facilitate me to attain financial stability (Morrisey 43). I intend to invest in the financial instruments of the broad variety of companies that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I am keen on developing a portfolio that is well diversified to attain maximum growth and return. In the light of this, I will set a financial advisory firm. This will serve as my primary source of income after working for seven years on Wall Street. The financial advisory firm will target corporate clients. The establishment of the financial advisory firm will facilitate the attainment of a healthy work-life balance, hence the maintenance of a good family life.
Over the years, I have been concentrating on developing my leadership skills. As a result, I have read numerous books on this particular subject with the aim of gaining insight. Bibliographies are my preference concerning books on leadership and personal development. This is because they facilitate me to gain a perspective pertaining to the applying of the broad variety of concepts on leadership in both personal and professional lives. Decision making skills, emerge as one of my core strengths, in pursuant of a successful professional life. I am a good at making high quality decisions on a regular basis. I carry out research prior to making any decision (Berger and Berger 13). This move aims at ensuring that I take account of all the relevant factors whenever I am making decisions. High quality decisions can only be made when an individual is conscious of the primary factors that can affect the nature of the outcome that will be realized. Given the prevailing degree of competitiveness at Wall Street, sound decision making skills will be instrumental in facilitating the progression of my career. The majority of the people are not willing to make decisions in high stakes situations. This is largely because the nature of decisions that they make will have direct implications for their future on Wall Street. All the decisions that are made on Wall Street have a monetary implication. As a result, decision makers face the pressure to make sure that the decisions that they make, are in line with the best interests of the organization. Individuals who make low quality decisions are normally rendered unfit for the job; hence, they are likely to be dismissed or demoted.
As an intern, I was responsible for ten financial analysts who were also working as interns. That position offered me exposure pertaining to the nature of challenges as well as decisions that are normally handled by leaders of professional teams. Motivation is amongst the primary challenges that are experienced by leaders of such teams. As a leader of such a team, I had to ensure that my members maintained comparatively high levels of motivation. This served as the main way through which the team could manage to remain relatively highly productive over a long duration. There was also a need to fostering a team spirit (Jackson and Mathis 27). The fostering of a team spirit is extremely essential to the success of a professional team. The prevalence of a team spirit makes teammates care for each other. This implies that teammates will be keen on encouraging each other to improve on their performance. Team members will strive to ensure that all the members have the ability to exhibit outstanding performance in the long term. As a leader, I will strive to engrain the philosophy of continuous self-improvement. This philosophy will be aimed at motivating my team members to look for ways of enhancing their previous performance consistently. The attainment of small levels of improvements on a day-to-day basis will facilitate the realization of a relatively high degree of improvement in the long term. Striving for perfection is one of the traits that I need to change. This is largely because perfection is elusive, and it is hard to attain. It is more important for me to maintain a high degree of productivity through consistent improvement, than strive to be perfect.
Abram Maslow’s theory best applies to me. As indicated in the preceding paragraphs, I am keen on progressing through the various elements of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Prior to starting a family, I will strive to make sure that I have bought a house, and I am able to cater to my basic needs. Given the nature of my careers, network is essential. As a result, I will join both social and professional clubs. My main intention for joining the aforementioned form of clubs is to gain the opportunity to network with various members of my profession, as well as key stakeholders in the industry (Thomas 17). I am also focused on ensuring that I succeed at developing a robust relationship with my spouse. The establishment of a robust relationship with my spouse will facilitate me to be happy. Happiness is vital to the development of a happy family. The development of a happy family will serve as my main motivation as I strive towards progressing in my career. Moreover, I am aiming at the attainment of various professional and academic credentials. These are some of the academic and professional credentials that I want to earn the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Master in Business Administration, and Certified Public Accountant (CPA). The attainment of the aforementioned credentials will facilitate me to scale greater heights in my career. This is mainly because they will equip me with the skills that will enhance my overall competitiveness and productivity at the place of work. Integrity is my mantra thus will strive to ensure that I maintain high levels of integrity both in my personal and professional life.
Works Cited
Berger, Dorothy and Lance Berger. TALENT MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK. New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2004.
Morrisey, George L. Creating Your Future: Personal Strategic Planning for Professionals. New York: Berret, 1992.
Thomas, Kenneth W. Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement. New York: Berret, 2009.
Jackson, John and Robert L. Mathis. Human Resource Management. New York: Cengage, 2011.
