Big Dot Little Dot with your Individual Development Plan

LESSON 3: BIG DOT LITTLE DOT WITH YOUR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

In this lesson, we will learn how to use the Big Dot Little Dot method to help you map your career goals and actions into the 70/20/10 formula. Using this approach, you will be able to see your career goals in a visual way and begin to find relationships between your goals and actions in the three different categories of CONTEXT, CONTACTS and CONCEPTS.

Before we map, however, it will be important to identify some specific goals and actions you can work with in this exercise.

Exercise: What do you want?

1. Using a small stack of 2” x 2” papers (such as Post-It Notes ®), brainstorm 10 things you want in your work/career. The things you identify can be broad or specific, and it’s helpful to choose a timeline for yourself, such as 1 year, 3 years or 5 years. Write just one of your ten “things” on each of the notes.

Examples might be:

• Become a Director
• Increase my salary by 50%
• Have more flexibility to work from home
• Travel 25% less
• Feel more passion and purpose in my work
• Start a side business

• Once you have identified 10 things you want in your job/career, now sort the papers by priority and reduce the number to 5. Set the eliminated papers aside. (You don’t have to give up on these aspirations. You can save them for later.

• Now, reduce the number of things from 5 to 3, using the same elimination process. It’s helpful to consider the timeline you set for yourself earlier. If you’re working with a partner, this is a good time to sit down together to compare notes. Walk each other through your rationale for each of your choices and ask each other questions to make sure you understand each other’s thinking.

• You should now have three things you can use as your goals for the remainder of the exercise. Start by choosing just one now, and you can use this as your Big Dot goal. Don’t worry if it doesn’t to be your top priority as you reflect later, as we’ll be going through the exercise for practice. You can make any changes you wish later on.

View: Big Dot Little Dot in Action: Example

This short presentation demonstrates how to complete the next step in your Lesson 3 assignment: Using one of your career/work goals, brainstorm some Little Dot actions that will help you move closer to your Big Dot goal, according to the three categories of development: CONTEXT, CONTACTS AND CONCEPTS.

Complete: Practice mapping your selected Big Dot goal on the Big Dot Little Dot Mapping Handout, and include Little Dot actions for each of the three categories of development.

Complete: Lesson 3 section on the INSIGHTS handout