When Setting Goals, Work SMARTER!

One of my favorite quotations comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice comes to a fork in the road and sees a Cheshire cat sitting in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asks the cat. “Where do you want to go?” the cat responded. “”I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

One of the key areas of leadership is the ability to set and achieve goals. Goal setting, therefore, is a fundamental skill every leader needs to develop. Goals set the vision of the organization, team, or individual. Additionally, the goals help indicate the direction to go to meet the mission. People want a strong sense of where they are going, and they do not want to feel like they are going nowhere.

When done correctly, goals can be a powerful motivator for individuals and organizations. But if done poorly, they have undesired effect of demotivating people, thereby diminishing the employee’s and team’s effectiveness. Even so, many leaders never develop this skill.

At this time of year, many organizations are going through their employee review process. So this is a great time to discuss SMARTER goal setting. The best goals are SMARTER (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound, Exciting, and Reevaluated).

Specific:

Specific goals are precise and clear in their intent. There is no ambiguity and they are not overly broad. Specific goals have a much better chance of being accomplished than general goals. For a goal to be Specific, it must answer these “W” questions:

· Who is involved?

· What do I want to accomplish?

· Where will this occur?

· When will it happen?

· Which obstacles will I need to overcome?

· Why am I doing this?

For example, an overly broad goal would be, “To get into shape.” Who is getting into shape? What shape? To make that goal Specific, you could state, “To improve my level of physical fitness, I will join a heath club, and work out 3 days per week.”

Measureable:

A wise man once said, “That which gets measured gets done.” And that man was right. If we know that we will be held accountable to measure something, we have a harder time trying to work around it – we are more likely to stay on track and reach key target dates. For goals to be effective, we have to set up concrete criteria for measuring success. To be able to measure goals, we have to answer the “How” questions:

· How much?

· How many?

· How will I know I’ve been successful?

Accountable:

All goals should spell out who you are accountable to for the goal. That accountability may be to you, but it should be clear. If we are accountable, we are more likely to follow through and complete the goal.

Realistic:

You must be willing and able to work towards a goal. We must be able to reach a goal, or we will give up. If a goal is realistically attainable, we will figure out ways to overcome obstacles to reach the goal by developing the attitude and ability required.

Time-based:

All good goals have an end point that you can point to on any calendar. Success can only be measured if there is a deadline. The time frame creates a sense of urgency to achieve a goal.

Evaluate:

Make sure that you are regularly reevaluating your goals. Things change throughout the year, and these changes may make a goal unrealistic. Look for changes in the work environment, business setting, people, etc.

Revise as needed:

If your evaluation shows that a goal is no longer realistic due to changes, be proactive and revise it. Don’t continue to work towards a goal that you cannot attain. Don’t make your team work towards an unattainable goal either. Don’t set them up for failure, let’s build them towards success.

Good goal setting will make any team stronger and more successful. Get in the habit of creating SMARTER goals for you and your team.