Setting Smart Goals to Help People Shape Smart Plans
ByDeveloping Performance Goals to Achieve Success
We seem to be in the season when many individuals and organizations focus on goal setting or making resolutions. This in itself is a good thing. If a ship has no destination, then all winds are favourable. If we have no goals, how will we know which route to take, how we are progressing, and will we know when we have arrived.
Goals drive us! They allow us to determine our future, and help us to grow and excel in all of our endeavours. An important part of any manager’s role is to encourage team members to develop effective performance goals and to commit to those goals on a daily basis. In order to do so, the goals must be written down and referred to constantly. Then we know where we are going and how we are going to get there. Nothing is impossible! As Dr. Schuller says, “If you can conceive it in your mind and believe it in your heart, you can achieve it.” It’s now up to you. Whether you achieve your goal or not, is in your hands.
But the very essence of goal-setting is that you must have a vision; a clear vision of where you want to go or what you, or your organization, want to achieve at some particular point in the future. Unless the managers and team leaders are successful in spelling out the organization’s specific goals, their team members are not going to know how to meet those objectives.
In effective goal-setting it is important to look backward as well as forward. You should reflect on your successes. What went well in the past year? What could have gone better? What did not go so well, and how could it have been improved upon?
Dan Sullivan wrote the book, “The Dan Sullivan Question: Ask it and Transform Anyone’s Future.” His question is this:
| “If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to happen in your life, personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress?” |
This question can be applied to almost any situation, and the thoughtful answer to it could be the initiation of some powerful personal and professional performance goals.
And remember, your goals must satisfy the “SMART” Test:
S – Specific: answers the question How, What, Why, and clearly defines what you are going to do- M – Measurable: What are the criteria for measuring your success. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
- S – Attainable: A goal needs to stretch you so that you feel you can do it, but it will need a real commitment from you. If you believe it in your heart, you can achieve it.
- R – Realistic: It must be a goal toward which you are both willing and able to work.
- T – Time-Bound: you must have a timeline in which the goal will be achieved.
Now if you wish to learn more about performance goals You may read more about our online program entitled “Developing Performance Goals and Standards” by clicking HERE.
