Last Sunday I joined a meetup of 40 aspiring people to collectively discuss goals. Inspired by that session, I am going to talk about goals in this episode. The importance of setting goals cannot be overstated. Goals help to align intentions; to summarize a complex effort; to prioritize activities and processes; to tell us how to allocate resources; and to monitor our progress. But are all goals created equal? Setting vague goals without enough planning on what you’re trying to achieve before you move to action is poor practice that often invites failure.With the vague goals, you are essentially shooting in the dark trying to improve.
On the other hand, it has been widely accepted that a well-structured approach based on the acronym SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound – forces you to think more carefully and methodically about the desired outcomes and reevaluate goals as needed. Perhaps that’s why SMART goals have become the standard bearer for goal setting worldwide because they push people to keep their aspirations specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound —all guideposts that make achievement more likely.
Specific
Define exactly what is being pursued. Saying you ‘want to increase my LinkedIn followers’ is vague. Instead, pick a number to show how many followers you want to gain. Do you want 10,000 followers? Do you want to double your followers? This concept applies to other goals as well. Let’s say that you’re a white belt now. A specific goal that you could work toward would be to earn your blue belt. Having a specific goal helps you better visualize your outcome, know exactly what needs to be accomplished and set a clear target to monitor your progress.
Measurable
There is a long-standing saying in management circles that, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” If your goal isn’t measurable, you can’t objectively say you’ve achieved it. In our example, the specific goal is already measurable: You can check the numbers as the year goes on to see if you’ve reached 10,000 linkedin followers. Likewise, working toward a blue belt is a measurable goal because you have a way to gauge your progress along the way.
Achievable
If the established goals are not reasonably achievable with respect to available time, talent and resources, frustration is sure to follow. Therefore, goals need to be realistic in order to maintain the enthusiasm to try to achieve them. Attaining goals should require you to push yourself but if they are outrageously lofty such as raising linkedin followers from 100 now to 500,000 in a year, then it may seem impossible and you’ll find it difficult to keep yourself motivated over the long term. So avoid setting yourself up for failure with out-of-reach goals. You can always increase your goal as you start achieving more.
Relevant
Extraordinary goals get extraordinary results, so you want to be ambitious. At the same time, you also want to ensure that your goal is realistic within the availability of the resources, your knowledge and your time. Few things are more frustrating than using scarce resources to pursue irrelevant goals. One of the straightforward ways to ensure that goals are relevant is through clarifying the relationship of expected outcomes with the intended goals and then to list each objective in writing in their order of priority. As business guru Jay Abraham reminds us, “You’ve got to know what you’re trying to do, why you’re trying to do it and what your skill sets are.”
Time bound
Goals are to be accomplished by an agreed-upon point in time. Do you think you can get 10,000 LinkedIn followers in one year, or six months? Having a clear time frame establishes focus and a sense of urgency. It also helps in checking your progress along the way to reaching your goal. Without a predetermined deadline, there is only a general notion about due dates, which in turn generates a less than rigorous pursuit of closure. Where there is only a loose expectation of closure, prioritizations and associated time management requirements are more apt to lack needed discipline.
Individuals and teams have found SMART goal-setting technique a valuable tool. That’s why it is one of the most widely used goal-setting techniques. But despite being a great tool, SMART is incomplete, argues Craig Wortmann, a clinical professor of marketing at Kellogg and executive director of the Kellogg Sales Institute. Wortmann says there are three things that people forget to consider when setting goals: tools, support, and a “stop” button. Let’s talk a bit more about them.
Tools
To maximize their likelihood of success, goal-setters should consider what tools they will need to achieve their goals. Let’s say you want to write for a reputed publication such as Forbes. In this case, tools might mean taking some coursework on professional writing at a local university. Many times though, one of the simplest tools you need is your calendar. But too often people resist putting time blocks in their calendars to work towards their SMART goals. Without blocking time to practice and get coaching, people are putting a hurdle in front of that goal before they even start, claims Wortmann.
Support
The other thing that needs to be considered is support, an example of which is coaching. Your manager can be your coach but Wortmann suggests having multiple coaches. Different coaches can provide different perspectives. There’s no harm in even having some family members as coaches. Their work can be to do nothing but hold you accountable for working toward your goal.
Stop
The next important thing to consider is the stop button. It may sound weird but stopping helps to prioritize, slow down and reflect on how you spend your time. We all have limited time and already a lot on our plate. So when we try to just cram one more thing on, it’s a recipe for failure. Here the coaching support can come into play. They can hold you accountable, tell you stop doing that and start doing this. It’s great that you want to increase your LinkedIn followers by 20%. What are you going to stop doing in order to achieve that?
So if you have a SMART goal, the tools and support to tackle it, and a plan to stop doing something else in order to make time for that goal, you’re more likely to achieve the goals, claims Wortmann. However, it’s important to realize that in dynamic and uncertain environments, you should be open to experimentation, learning and revising your goals so that they remain relevant and meaningful.
