Roundtable Member, Matt Webster, Director of Marketing for Frito Lay Clean Brands & Innovation Strategy at PepsiCo Foods Canada, shares strategies for setting (and sticking to) career goals. You can also download the PDF to read later.
Q: As a leader I help my team set goals and targets and meet them. In the overwhelm of daily work life, I realize that I’m struggling to set my own personal goals for my career. As we approach the end of 2022, I want to set myself up for success. Do you have any advice or tips for setting (and sticking to) some personal goals.
Matt’s Point of View
Raising the bar on your personal goals is always important, and it’s always the right time to advance your development. But to effectively set goals and stick to them, you need the right energy, motivation, mindset and habits.
What will energize you in the direction of your personal goals and provide the on-going fuel to keep you going, is being deeply rooted in your personal ambition. As a leader, you have both the power and responsibility to consistently raise your level of ambition to drive direction and performance. Once you have that energizing ambition, what will drive your consistent progress forward is having a growth mindset and implementing habits that drive continuous improvement. Ultimately, you might just be amazed at what an inspiring personal ambition, growth mindset and simple habits can do in achieving your goals!
Set Your Ambition
Ambition gives you purpose, fuels your life and is where your clearest and most compelling goals emanate from. In your journey to achieve your goals, start by asking yourself, “What is my inspiring, personal ambition?” Raising the bar on your own personal ambition will give you a clearer long-term term vision for what success looks like and provide you with greater motivation for achieving your goals. In the short-term, raising the bar on your personal ambition provides you with a clear purpose, focus and energy for actions.
Have a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is the belief that you can always continue to learn, change, and improve with time and effort. It includes having an unwavering commitment to getting better. People who have a growth mindset build up the strength to overcome challenges and not give up. They feel energized to achieve their goals because they believe they can do what it takes to succeed. A growth mindset is foundational in the journey to achieving your goals.
Create Effective Habits
To make progress toward your goals, identify and create the most important habits that will drive your actions. Habits are the routines you develop through constant practice, and that happen subconsciously. They create the behaviours you need to achieve success. An important aspect of building a new habit is to start small. Once your small habits become ingrained, you can elevate them and grow their complexity. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So, drive consistent progress toward your goals by developing simple, effective habits.
Celebrate Progress
Keep celebrating and rewarding yourself for the progress you make toward your goals, no matter how huge the target you’re attempting to reach. The more you celebrate yourself, the more you raise your own confidence and attract more positive energy to keep fueling your journey. You are unstoppable and deserve celebration. Keep up your incredible efforts and keep aiming high with your ambition!
Matt Webster is currently the Director of Marketing for Frito Lay Clean Brands & Innovation Strategy at PepsiCo Foods Canada. He is responsible for leading the long-term strategic plans on Frito Lay’s premium and better-for-you portfolio of brands including Miss Vickie’s, Smartfood, SunChips, PopCorners, bare, Simply and Off the Eaten Path, Multicultural marketing strategy, and Costco marketing support. In this role, Matt has the privilege of leading a team of eight world-class marketers while focusing on building their team capability, talent and culture.
Matt has a strong breadth of marketing experience including leading iconic global and local brands, developing long-term brand strategy, setting portfolio & channel innovation strategies, driving business turnaround, motivating sales teams to deliver best-in-class retail programming, and has been recognized with multiple industry and PepsiCo awards.
