In this Day 14 episode of the 30/30 Career Transformation Challenge, Margaret Spence—founder of the Employee to CEO Project and the 10X Leadership Academy for Women—guides viewers through the pivotal process of defining what they want to achieve in their careers. She stresses that clear, specific achievement goals (daily, weekly, or 90‑day targets) are the catalyst that moves professionals from point A to point B. Spence introduces a concise self‑inquiry framework consisting of three (or four) core questions: (1) What do I want to achieve? (2) What do I want? (3) Why don’t I have it now? (optional) What do I want to achieve? She explains how answering each layer—what, why, and the double‑why—uncovers motivations, required skill gaps, and obstacles. By articulating these answers, individuals can initiate purposeful conversations with managers, sponsors, or executives, shifting from passive expectation to active ownership of their career trajectory. An illustrative example shows how mastering a skill becomes a stepping‑stone for future roles, and how identifying missing competencies informs a request for support. The episode concludes with a call to action: ask the bold questions, capture the answers, and use them to shape strategic career discussions.
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Day 14 of the 30/30 Career Transformation Challenge. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we're on day 14. We're almost halfway through the month of September. Thank you for joining me on this journey. My name is Margaret Spence, and I'm the founder of the Employee to CEO Project and the 10X Leadership Academy for Women. If you've watched the prior videos, you know that I'm focusing on helping you create clarity in the month of September around your career vision and your career goals. I'm asking you 30 bold questions to really redefine what you want out of your career. So today's bold question, what do you want to achieve? That is a big one. I mean, that's probably bigger than the ones I've asked before. It's really important that you ask yourself that question consistently and repeatedly. What do I want to achieve? That's the pivotal question within your career. Being clear about what you want to achieve, either on a daily basis, a weekly basis, an annual basis, is going to be what pivots you from point A to point B in your career. If you're not clear about what you want to achieve, if you can't define for yourself, put it in a little box and say, this is what I want to achieve for the next 90 days. If you can't be clear about what you want to achieve out of your career, you can't expect your boss to figure out what you want to achieve. Knowing what you want and knowing why you want it is important. The two pivotal questions that I ask everyone who works with me is, what do you want? Why do you want it? And why don't you have it now? It's three pivotal questions, but then I could add a fourth one in, What do you wanna achieve? So the order of the questions that you should be asking yourself when it comes to achievement is, what do I wanna achieve? And then go a little bit further. What do I want? And then take it one step further and say, why don't I have it now? What's stopping me from having that achievement? Because it's not enough to say, I want to achieve X, X, or I want to achieve this learning outcome, or I want to achieve the, the goal of being the top producer in sales for my department. It's not okay to just have that big achievement goal. You have to ask yourself a little bit deeper, the what and the why, and then the double why. So the what do I want? Why do I want it? Why don't I have it now? And what do I want to achieve? The order is up to you. You could start off with what you want to achieve and get clear about that, because again, when you know what you want to achieve, you can have pivotal discussions with the people who control your destiny. So here's, here's an example. If you know that you want to achieve mastery of a particular thing, a particular skill set, I want to have that as an achievement. Okay, so now you're clear about the achievement. Then you ask yourself, why do I want it? Well, I want it because it's the prerequisite for the next 3 positions that I want to apply for. Okay, that makes sense. Why don't you have it now? Why don't you have that level of competency? What's missing in you or in the work environment or around you that's stopping you from having that one thing that you're thinking is your, is your goal for achievement? Then once you've figured all of that out, you can go now to someone and say, I want to achieve this. This is why I want it. This is where I plan to take it, and this is why I don't have it now, and I want you to help me achieve it. It's a different discussion. You're no longer at the mercy of someone else. You've taken control of your own destiny. So today's bold question: What do you want to achieve? And why do you want to achieve it? Ask those questions. Be bold enough to ask yourself those questions and be bold enough to take the answers and frame how you're going to have the discussion with your boss or your manager or your vice president or your division president about what you want to achieve. So thank you so much for joining me for the 30/30 Challenge, Day 14. It's been an amazing journey so far. If you enjoyed this video, please share it with your network and tune in tomorrow for Day 15. Thank you.
