what it is? How can a person build it? Methodology for building family goals and self-realization


Goal tree: what is it and how to build it?

Rais­ing a son, build­ing a house and plant­i­ng a tree is a list of life goals that every­one knows. Today we will try to ful­fill the third point. And not in the direct sense of it. Let’s cre­ate a goal tree. Ide­al­ly, in the future it will help to solve both the first two tasks and the third, but in its real sense.

What it is?

A goal tree is a fair­ly com­mon method for achiev­ing goals, which is main­ly used in man­age­ment. To use this method, a per­son needs to “grow a tree” of his goals. To do this, they should be dis­trib­uted accord­ing to the lev­els of sig­nif­i­cance. It can be said that this is the def­i­n­i­tion of plans in the form of a tree draw­ing.

came up with it Rus­sell Lin­coln Ack­off, a sci­en­tist from the USA, and it hap­pened back in 1957. The idea of ​​the Amer­i­can turned out to be so suc­cess­ful that it is still wide­ly used today. In fact, this is a method of plan­ning cas­es, only the sched­ule is com­piled in the form of a tree. Its trunk is the main goal, and branch­es are sim­pler or less sig­nif­i­cant tasks.

When cre­at­ing it, graph­ic images are used. More­over, the tree in such a fig­ure will be upside down.

Thus, the trunk is at the top and sym­bol­izes the main goal. And from its top, our oth­er tasks “grow”, as if form­ing the crown of the tree of goals.

Pros and cons


Struc­tur­ing infor­ma­tion in the form of a tree of goals will help to cope with the tasks set more effec­tive­ly. By “plant­i­ng” such a sprout, you will imme­di­ate­ly see what prob­lems you have to solve, what you will need in order to climb to the top, what addi­tion­al resources may be required.

In this way you can even deter­mine the time it will take to imple­ment your plan. How­ev­er, this will be a very approx­i­mate val­ue. But you can eas­i­ly fig­ure out how one of your actions affects anoth­er, how the com­plex­i­ty of per­form­ing one task depends on anoth­er. Track­ing rela­tion­ships will help not only to imple­ment ideas in busi­ness and cre­ate suc­cess­ful projects, but also to solve per­son­al prob­lems.

The dis­ad­van­tages can hard­ly be attrib­uted to some labo­ri­ous­ness of the method, because to build our tree of goals, you will have to try.

How to build?

The tech­nique itself is very easy to use. You just need to fol­low a few key rules. And this will make your life eas­i­er, help in self-real­iza­tion, and maybe even allow you to find hap­pi­ness. So, let’s get down to the task at hand.

The cir­cuit is very sim­ple. The main thing is to make it right. First, we define our main goal. It will become the sup­port, the essence, that is, the trunk of our tree. But in order for the trunk to become strong and pow­er­ful, it needs branch­es — oth­er tasks that sur­round it will form a crown. In anoth­er way, they can be called sub­goals that must be achieved in order to even­tu­al­ly begin to imple­ment the main idea. Each such branch can have its own “sprouts”.

One of the design rules is to thor­ough­ly “draw” each process. To cre­ate a tree, you need to scrupu­lous­ly describe each of its branch­es, and then your mis­sion will cer­tain­ly become fea­si­ble. This tech­nique will show you all of your upcom­ing actions that will need to be tak­en to achieve your plan, and will also help deter­mine the resources that you will need to use.


Consider needs and resources


A goal tree is cre­at­ed to solve very com­plex tasks or imple­ment large-scale projects that require a clear action plan. Some­times it is dif­fi­cult to esti­mate what this or that goal will cost us. In this case we will clear­ly depict the require­ments that each prob­lem places on us, and we will be able to deter­mine what we need to imple­ment it, what we already have at our dis­pos­al, what addi­tion­al forces and means will be need­ed.

Specify

When cre­at­ing a tree of goals, form your ideas clear­ly. Be sure to deter­mine what the final result should be. To do this, write on what grounds it will be pos­si­ble to call your task com­plet­ed, how you will feel when this hap­pens, what events will indi­cate the ful­fill­ment of a dream and the achieve­ment of a goal. Set a due date for the work.

Break the task down into steps

To save time and effort, divide your inten­tions into sev­er­al stages. The first, of course, will be the main goal. Next, dis­trib­ute the sub­goals along the “crown” of your tree. Then describe what you need to imple­ment them. You must write out all the resources you need. Only then will it become clear how to solve the main prob­lem.

For every­thing to work cor­rect­ly, you need to define each step. If your scheme does not get one or anoth­er stage, all efforts will be in vain. When at least one small branch is miss­ing in the goal tree, this leads to its “with­er­ing”. Only if you spec­i­fy every­thing you need to imple­ment your plan, the plan will work. If it turns out that you inten­tion­al­ly or acci­den­tal­ly missed some­thing, then every­thing will go down the drain or not.

Compliance with the structure of the enterprise


Imag­ine that your enter­prise is a tree. Each of its depart­ments is a sep­a­rate branch that helps to sup­port and strength­en the trunk. Every­one should have their own spe­cif­ic goal, a clear­ly for­mu­lat­ed task. If the load between units is dis­trib­uted cor­rect­ly, then your tree will def­i­nite­ly stand firm­ly on the ground.

An imbal­ance will lead to cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences.

Decomposition method

For more effi­cient work, the decom­po­si­tion method is often used. With him the main task is bro­ken down into sev­er­al less com­plex and less time-con­sum­ing to per­form.

Anoth­er vari­ant — build a kind of stair­case from small tasks lead­ing to the top of your tree. Which method to use, you need to decide based on the spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion. In each indi­vid­ual case, one or the oth­er option may be more effec­tive. The main thing is to cor­rect­ly assess the avail­able resources and cor­rect­ly dis­trib­ute them to solve the tasks.

Construction examples

As we already know, the goal tree can help not only in the imple­men­ta­tion of busi­ness projects, but also in solv­ing pure­ly pri­vate tasks. For exam­ple, let’s take a sit­u­a­tion that is faced, per­haps, in every fam­i­ly. Name­ly, the prob­lem of the child’s admis­sion to a high­er edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion. The appli­can­t’s goal tree will con­sist of a trunk (the main task is to become a stu­dent of a cer­tain uni­ver­si­ty) and branch­es (resources avail­able for this and a list of addi­tion­al ones).

First you need to deter­mine what is already avail­able on the items:

  • the lev­el of knowl­edge gained in sec­ondary school, USE scores;
  • the pres­ence of con­nec­tions in the edu­ca­tion­al envi­ron­ment;
  • finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties of par­ents, oth­er rel­a­tives who can pro­vide assis­tance.

Next, you need to ana­lyze the state in which these resources are locat­ed, and begin to search for “fer­til­iz­ers”, that is, the cre­ation of sub­goals. Let’s start from the very begin­ning — if the knowl­edge that the child receives in the class­room at school is not enough for admis­sion, addi­tion­al class­es are need­ed. You need to find a per­son who has suf­fi­cient knowl­edge and the abil­i­ty to teach a child. Most like­ly, he will not do this for free, so it is nec­es­sary to find funds in the fam­i­ly bud­get to pay for the ser­vices of a tutor.


Besides, you will have to rad­i­cal­ly reshape your child’s sched­ule and set aside time for extra class­es. From here, new shoots “cut through”. For exam­ple, to find a tutor, you can use your con­nec­tions: remem­ber, maybe your old friend still teach­es at MGIMO? In case of a short­age of mon­ey to pay for the work of a tutor, you need to think about where you can get them. This may be a loan, and the search for addi­tion­al sources of income, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask for finan­cial assis­tance from friends or rel­a­tives.

Of course, if your child intends to go to study at the Ivano­vo Tex­tile Insti­tute, all this is unlike­ly to be required. There are enough uni­ver­si­ties in Rus­sia where you can enter with an aver­age lev­el of marks. If this is your goal, then the tree cre­at­ed to achieve it will be dif­fer­ent. Among the sub­goals will be the col­lec­tion of nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, cer­tifi­cates from a doc­tor, and so on.

If your goal is Moscow State Uni­ver­si­ty or a pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ty abroad, then your tree will turn out to be more cum­ber­some, but, you see, it will be more dif­fi­cult to grow it, but much more attrac­tive and inter­est­ing for each mem­ber of your fam­i­ly. This most often requires not only a bright mind, but also a tight wal­let.

You can also achieve finan­cial well-being with the help of a goal tree. So, our trunk (main task) is finan­cial well-being. Its branch­es (sub­goals) are the main and addi­tion­al earn­ings, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of earn­ing income through invest­ments in banks, the pur­chase of secu­ri­ties, play­ing on the stock exchange or the lot­tery.

It all depends on how “strong” your trunk is.


If your main idea - enter the Forbes list, then there will be no less branch­es on your tree of goals than pages in this pres­ti­gious mag­a­zine. Its branch­es will accom­mo­date addi­tion­al edu­ca­tion, a change in pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty, the search for “the right peo­ple” in the indus­try you are inter­est­ed in, mov­ing to anoth­er region or even to anoth­er coun­try, and so on.

If you just need to find an extra cou­ple of thou­sand rubles for finan­cial well-being, then the branch­es of your tree will look dif­fer­ent. The list of sub-goals in this case would include find­ing extra or over­time work, buy­ing a lot­tery tick­et, vis­it­ing a rich aunt, and so on.

In both cas­es, the goal tree will cer­tain­ly help you. Remem­ber, the main thing is to accu­rate­ly for­mu­late your desires, care­ful­ly ana­lyze your capa­bil­i­ties and find addi­tion­al resources to real­ize your dreams.. And then you will cer­tain­ly raise a son, build a house, and plant a tree near him, rem­i­nis­cent of the tree of goals that once helped you ful­fill your desire.


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