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Defining Great Goals – Thoughts from Thinking Engineer Graham Field |
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At a recent exhibition where Go MAD had a stand, one of my colleagues had a great idea to stimulate interest from the passing public. We would have a competition where people would be invited to write a SMART business goal on the back of their business card and drop it into a box. The best SMART goal would receive a prize. We called it the 'One Minute Challenge'. The response was fascinating. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Timescale) is very widely known these days, and supposedly implemented, even if the definitions for some of the letters of the acronym do vary slightly. So we thought that the take-up for our challenge would be good. How wrong we were!
Most of those who enquired further, did not want to commit themselves to entering the competition. One person even made a very hasty get-away from our stand with "I'm definitely not doing that!" It was a talking point and enabled us to engage with people, but in the end we still only had a handful of individuals who dared to take up the challenge. Why? It was not as if we had asked people to do a fire-walk or abseil down a steep rock-face.
The truth is that although the concept of SMART is widely known, people still find it a huge challenge to put this into practice successfully. It is hardly surprising when you also spot poor role models at the top. Last year I came across one blue chip company that had as one of its major goals 'To double profits by 2006'. Matching this up against SMART, it begs questions such as:
Specific – What and when is the starting baseline for profit?
Measurable – What is the exact figure that we are looking at here? Will it be based on a monthly or annual profit figure? If it's a monthly figure, are we looking for a sustained doubling of profits over a number of months, or would we be happy just hitting that figure once?
Achievable – possibly, but what would make me feel that it is more achievable would be to know the exact target figure, the exact target date, and when the start date was.
Relevant – How does this goal fit with the company values? How compatible is it with other company goals? How relevant is it considering the market for the product(s)?
Timescale – What is the exact timescale for this? Are we talking about 1st January 2006, 31st December 2006, 31st March 2006 or some date in between?
So a SMARTer goal in this instance might be 'By 31st December 2006 to have achieved 4 consecutive months of a minimum of £200,000 profit margin on UK sales', or possibly 'In the financial year ending 31st March 2006 we will achieve an annual profit of at least £5m'.
There are some common words that crop up in goals that always need to be clearly specified:
Improve/increase/decrease – what precisely is the measurable improvement/increase/decrease that you want?
Better – specify how much better?
More/less – specify how much more/less?
Feel – specify what you will feel?
Wish – state what will happen?
Learn/understand – specify how you will measure/evidence your learning or understanding?
Some – how many exactly?
Let me give you a couple of examples. We could say that our goal is to increase subscription levels to this newsletter. At the moment this is just an aim – it is vague. Would it mean that we would be happy with one more subscriber as we would with 5,000? To say 'By 31st December 2006 we will have 20,000 newsletter subscribers' clarifies exactly what we are working towards.
When we run short introductory sessions to Go MAD Solution Focused Thinking, I typically ask what people want from the session. Sometimes I get an answer like "I'd like some new ideas to take away". My typical response to this is:
"How many ideas would you like?"
"How will I see the evidence of these new ideas? Will they be written or would you like to tell me verbally?"
"What should the ideas enable you to do that you can't do now?"
The goal might end up as 'By 4pm I will have 3 new written ideas on how I might use Solution Focused Thinking to increase my team's sales target to £xxx'.
Solution Focused Thinking uses 3 other goal defining techniques to be applied dependent on what it is that you want to achieve. To find out more about one of these techniques, qualitative goal defining, and how to define goals for things you can't easily measure download:
'Six steps to defining goals for things you can't easily measure'.
Over the last few weeks thousands or possibly millions of people will have made New Year Resolutions. Perhaps they want to get fitter, lose weight, stop smoking or get a new job. According to research more than 90% won't achieve their resolutions with most having given up by the end of January.
One of the contributing factors to this will be the lack of clarity about what it is they want to achieve. Just starting by turning a resolution into a SMART goal will increase your probability of success. There will be other things to think about, however creating a clearly defined goal is a good starting point. You can greatly increase your probability of success in achieving your goals by applying all the solution focused thinking principles to whatever it is you want to achieve.
If you are unfamiliar with solution focused thinking and would like to find out more you can download a free e-book 'How to achieve what you want, when you want!' which will give you practical steps to take in working towards your goals.
Or if you know someone who sets New Year Resolutions every year, doesn't achieve them and is unhappy with their lot, simply forward this newsletter to them so they can start to make the differences they want.
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Nine Top Tips to SMART Goals |
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Ensure that your goal only contains one measurable difference. If there is an 'and' in your goal, there are probably two. Separate them and you can celebrate two wins! |
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Write your goal in the positive. E.g. for losing weight, concentrate on your target weight, not the amount you want to lose. For decreasing costs, what is the target level of expenditure? |
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Always use a precise date, i.e. DD/MM/YYYY rather than 'end of year', by 2007 etc. This helps to focus your mind.
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Convert percentages to an actual number. In most cases an actual number will be easier for the mind to visualise or recognise. |
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For a goal which involves developing a habit, set your goal date for when you know the new behaviour will have become a habit rather than the date on which you intend to start otherwise you will still have achieved your goal by stopping again the next day! |
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Break down large goals into a series of steps or sub-goals. Write a SMART goal for each step. This will help to measure progress and will increase your self-belief about achieving the end goal. |
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Check that your goals do not conflict. E.g. too many goals and not enough time, or personal goals which conflict with work goals. |
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Ask yourself, "How achievable is this goal on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)?" If your honest answer to this is 5 or less, then look to increase your score by extending the timeframe or reducing the measure. |
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Ensure your goal is understandable to others (you may want them to help you!).
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