| Goal Setting |
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| Sunday, 28 June 2009 20:23 |
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Take our online test Topic Summary This topic contains relevant information on how to: • Use your work priorities to set effective goals • Plan for obstacles in achieving goals • Monitor implementation of your goals • Evaluate your process for achieving goals Topic Map Topic Overview What Would You Do? Topic Map Topic Summary About the Mentors Using the Topic Core Concepts Goal Setting: an Overview Setting SMART Goals Developing Unit Goals Developing Individual Goals Maximizing Goal Success Accomplishing Goals Evaluating Goals Steps Steps for Identifying and Prioritizing Goals Steps for Accomplishing Your Goals Steps for Monitoring Your Progress Tips Tips for Setting Unit Goals Tips for Setting Your Team Members’ Goals Tips for Increasing Goal Success Tools Goal Development Worksheet SMART Goal Worksheet Goal and Task Worksheet Obstacles/Solutions Worksheet Worksheet for Evaluating Goals Test Yourself Instructions To Learn More Online Articles Articles Books eLearning Programs About the Mentors Penny Locey Prior to joining Polaroid Corporation, Penny Locey was cofounder and director of the New England Institute for Career Development, an organization dedicated to training and development of career development professionals. She has also consulted for over 10 years, helping organizations with management training and career development. Currently she is a Manager of the Executive and Career Development Group at Polaroid where she has had a range of responsibilities in the Organizational Development and Training group, including team and leadership development. Professor Linda A. Hill From her more than 20 years of extensive field work, Professor Linda A. Hill has helped managers create the conditions for effective management in today’s flatter and increasingly diverse organizations. She is a Professor and chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School. She is also the author of the best-selling Becoming a Manager (Harvard Business School Press), now out in paperback. Linda served as the content expert for Coaching for Results and Managing Direct Reports, two award-winning interactive programs from Harvard Business School Publishing. She also served as a mentor for many Harvard ManageMentor topics. What Would You Do? Margie was having a tough time managing her product development group. Team members were frustrated because they were being pulled in a hundred different directions. Customer Service needed this. Marketing needed that. Finance was waiting on a report that should have been submitted a week ago. Amid all these different requests, the team was supposed to release a new product in two months! It was simply too much. Morale was low and team members were overworked. How could Margie get the group to focus on what they were trying to achieve, rather than on the challenges they were encountering along the way? What would you do? What Could You Do? Even though Margie and her team are overworked, she needs to step back and prioritize all the work they have to do. Since releasing the new product on time is, in all likelihood, the highest priority, Margie should focus her team's efforts on getting this job accomplished. The requests from Customer Service, Marketing, and Finance will either need to be delegated to someone else or postponed until someone on her team has free time. By setting this goal, Margie will be able to focus the energy of her team and provide a unified direction for the group. In this topic, you'll learn to work with your team to establish goals, break down goals into manageable tasks, and assess your progress as you move towards your goals. Using the Topic Topic Structure The content for Setting Goals is divided into the sections listed below. Links to these sections appear across the top of your screen. Topic Overview Click Topic Overview for an introduction to the topic. Review a hypothetical situation, What Would You Do?, followed by a possible solution, What Could You Do? The Topic Map provides a "site map" with links to all the elements within the topic. Core Concepts Click Core Concepts for a comprehensive presentation of the main ideas in the topic. Learn how to identify the most appropriate goals for you and your team. Other topics include developing, accomplishing, and evaluating goals. Steps Click Steps for procedures that can help you prioritize, accomplish and monitor your goals. Tips Click Tips for brief reminders about setting successful unit and team goals. Tools Click Tools for forms that can help you draft, track, and evaluate goals, as well as overcome obstacles. Test Yourself Click Test Yourself to see what you’ve learned. You will receive immediate feedback on your choices. A summary page provides links to reference material. To Learn More Click To Learn More to read two articles related to the topic. You will also find an annotated list of articles and other resources. Topic Navigation To navigate through the topic, click the links at the top and on the left of your screen. When you click a link at the top of the screen, the links on the left will change. For a comprehensive, linear path through the topic, follow these steps: • Visit each section in the topic by clicking the links at the top, from left to right. • Review the information within each section by clicking the links on the left, from top to bottom. • In the Tools section, click on an icon to open a tool. You can print a copy of the tool to use offline. Or, you can complete the tool online and save it to your hard drive. • Finish by taking the quiz in Test Yourself and reading the Online Articles in To Learn More. ________________________________________ Goal Setting: an Overview Goal setting is a formal process during which you define targets that you plan to achieve. When you set goals, you commit to outcomes that will be accomplished personally or through your team. Purpose and benefits Goal setting creates a long-term vision for your unit and provides the motivation to get you there. It has the additional benefit of helping you decide how you want to focus your resources and spend your time. By setting goals and measuring their achievement you can: • Focus on what is most important to accomplish on a daily, weekly, and annual basis • Provide a unified direction for your team • Prioritize your workload to focus on critical tasks • Motivate your team and boost team members’ overall job satisfaction Types of goals As a manager, you are responsible for working with your team to set: • Unit goals: what your group as a whole will try to accomplish. For example, redesigning a Web site to make it easier to update and to improve your customers’ experience. • Individual goals: how each employee will contribute to achieving the unit goals. For example, a designer might set a goal of creating a site that has a modular architecture but is still attractive and compelling for online shoppers. Goal alignment Unit and individual goals should emerge from the strategy of the company as a whole. For example, if your organization’s strategy is to become the market share leader through rapid product introductions, your unit and individual goals should serve that strategy. The following figure illustrates the corresponding levels of aligned goals that flow from top to bottom: The real power of these cascading goals lies in their alignment with the objectives of the organization. Ideally, every employee would understand his or her goal, how it relates to the unit’s goals, and how the unit’s activities contribute to the strategic objectives of the company. Time frame and level of importance Goals differ in terms of time frame and importance. Short-term goals are achievable within one or two months, and long-term goals are achievable over the course of several months or even years. This topic focuses primarily on long-term goals. In terms of importance, goals generally fall into one of the following categories: • Critical: These goals are crucial to your operation. They must be accomplished in order for your unit to continue running successfully. For example, a product manager would want to ensure that the technology used to process orders for a customized medical device was up to date in order to get deliveries done on time. • Enabling: These goals create a more desirable business condition or take advantage of a business opportunity. They are important, but accomplish a better business environment over the long term rather than keep your business on track and successful. For example, a marketing team may set the goal of capitalizing on a new fad diet to increase sales of a healthy snack food by 5%. • Nice-to-have: These goals make improvements that enhance your business. They usually relate to making activities faster or easier. For example, an environmental consultant creates a document to use as a boilerplate for completing field assessment reports. This topic will teach you how to set unit and individual goals effectively as well as learn strategies for accomplishing goals—and evaluating them once they have been achieved. Setting SMART Goals Effective goals setting will help you and your direct reports make the most of your time at work. The two most common methods of goal setting are top-down and bottom-up. • Top-down goal setting: Unit management sets broad goals, and each employee is assigned objectives that are aligned with and support those broad goals. This approach is most appropriate with employees who need close supervision, are new to an organization, or aren’t familiar with unit or organizational goals. • Bottom-up goal setting: Direct reports develop individual goals and their manager integrates them into larger unit goals. This approach is most appropriate when employees are fairly self-directed and clearly understand the business strategy and customer needs of the organization as a whole, as well as their own roles within it. In most cases, however, a company’s goals are determined through a process that includes both approaches. Usually, management does not dictate objectives to employees without consultation, nor do employees have a free hand in determining their own goals. Instead, goals are determined through a negotiation process in which management and employees discuss what is necessary and feasible. Making Goals SMART Regardless of whether your goals are set top-down, bottom-up, or something in between, it is important that they be expressed clearly. The more explicitly you state your goals from the beginning, the less chance you have for disagreement at the end about whether or not you have met them. As you set both unit and individual goals, write them down. Doing so can help you more clearly define what you hope to accomplish and strengthen your commitment. Use the following SMART criteria to draft clear goals: • Specific. You can describe the details. • Measurable. You can measure the goal using either quantitative or qualitative assessments. • Achievable. You can achieve the goal. • Realistic. The goal is realistic given existing constraints, such as time and resources. • Time-limited. You must achieve the goal within a specified time frame. See also SMART Goal Worksheet. Quantitative versus qualitative goals As you write down your goals, you will notice that many of them can be quantitatively measured. For example, your goal may be to increase sales in a region by 10% in the next quarter. This topic primarily focuses on these quantitative goals. Some goals, however, are not so easily measured, such as goals related to professional development. For example, an employee may want to increase her comfort level with speaking in a public forum. She may set a quantitative goal of making six public presentations in the upcoming year. But how can you assess if she actually is more comfortable speaking to large audiences after completing these six presentations? You might begin by scheduling a follow-up discussion with her after each presentation to evaluate how she felt and discuss possible improvements. Achievement of these types of goals is more subjective, and therefore difficult to measure. However, don’t shy away from establishing such qualitative goals even though they may be hard to evaluate. They are still important because they will challenge you to improve and can ultimately help you develop valuable skills. See also the Harvard ManageMentor topic Assessing Performance. Developing Unit Goals Identify potential goals You are surrounded by potential goals. In a typical day, you probably think about how your unit could operate more smoothly, what new responsibilities to take on, and how your staff could work better as a team. Each one of these areas could have associated goals. Your challenge is to sort through all of the potential goals you could pursue and identify those that will create the most value for your unit and your organization. On a regular basis (usually once or twice a year for most organizations), review your unit’s diverse activities and your team’s roles. Look for opportunities to draft goals in areas that will make the greatest impact. Bring your team together to brainstorm possible goals by asking questions such as: • What initiatives need to be accomplished to ensure success? • What standards are we striving for? • Where can productivity and efficiency be improved with the most impact? • What benefits do we want to give to our customers? • Are the required specifications for our products and services changing? How can we respond? See also the Harvard ManageMentor topic Solving Business Problems. During this brainstorming phase, don’t limit yourself by worrying about constraints or execution. Also, don’t forget to examine goals that should be developed as a result of pressure from your customers or a changed organizational environment. See also Goal Development Worksheet and Tips for Setting Unit Goals. Prioritize and select goals Once you have generated a list of possible goals, your next step is to narrow it down to the ones that you will pursue. Start by asking questions to help you distinguish high-priority goals from low-priority ones. For example, ask yourself which goals: • Does your organization value the most? • Do you find most interesting or challenging? • Provide the most leverage for your team? • Will have the greatest impact on performance and profitability? See also the Harvard ManageMentor topic Leading and Motivating: What Leaders Really Do. At this time you might also notice that some goal ideas overlap and can be consolidated into one larger goal. Next, review your list of goals and use your criteria to rank them as A-, B-, or C-level priority. Add the ranking to the goal. • Priority A: Those goals having high value and primary importance. • Priority B: Those goals having medium value and secondary importance. • Priority C: Those goals having little value and little importance. Eliminate all Priority C Goals. Then, look again at your Priority B goals. Reassign them as either Priority A or Priority C—they are either worth your time or not. The goals that are now on your Priority A list are your top-priority goals. Since resources are usually limited, you must prioritize what you will try to accomplish once again: As a last step, review your Priority A goals separately and rank them according to importance. Be careful not to let your short-term goals automatically take precedence over your long-term ones. Finally, write down your final, ordered Priority A list. Periodically reassess your list to ensure that it continues to be consistent with your organization and unit priorities. See also Steps for Identifying and Prioritizing Goals. Developing Individual Goals Each of your direct reports will need to establish individual goals that reflect the unit’s overall goals. Your role is to support and assist them in this process. At the end of the goal-setting process, individual employees should be able to say (without prompting): “Our company’s goal is to _____________. My department’s contribution to that goal is to _______________. And my part in this effort is to ____________.” Clearly define the goals Make sure that all team members are clear as to unit goals, their specific roles, and your job expectations for them. Ask each person to use the SMART criteria to draft—or to modify—a set of goals for him- or herself. Together, you then need to: • Negotiate the details on commitments to particular goals, including your role in supporting each goal’s achievement • Tie goal achievement to performance evaluation • Develop clear descriptions of expected output • Confirm that everyone knows who is responsible and accountable for each goal’s achievement Strategies for success Team members will be most likely to achieve their goals if the following conditions are in place: • Each individual agrees with you on his or her specific goals and the output required. • You establish clear checkpoints and designate time to provide feedback. • Team members have the resources, appropriate skills and knowledge, and authority to accomplish their goals. • Individuals understand how their efforts will impact team goals. • Management recognizes and acknowledges when employees achieve their goals. See also Tips for Setting Your Team Members’ Goals. Set goals for yourself As a manager, you also need to establish individual goals. These may include: • Unit goals, or components of unit goals, that require your specific skills and that you therefore cannot delegate • Goals that reflect your contributions to your team members’ goals • Goals that involve communicating your unit’s activities throughout the broader organization, securing resources for your team, and integrating the unit’s goals with those of other units You may find that your role within your company warrants creating goals that are not specifically related to your unit. For example, you may serve on a task force or assist in community-relations activities. Tying goals to these responsibilities will help ensure that you follow through with the commitments you have made. Work with your manager to reach agreement on your goals, build a shared understanding of the expected outputs, and secure the support and training that you will need to be able to achieve them. In addition, make sure to communicate your goals to your team members. If they understand your priorities and how the team’s activities fit into those priorities, it will help all of you work together more smoothly. See also the Harvard ManageMentor topic Managing Your Time: Identifying and Prioritizing Goals. Maximizing Goal Success Whether you are working with your employees to set unit or individual goals, paying attention to the following guidelines will maximize your ability to create successful goals. Establish a sense of ownership You and your employees must see your goals as being important and worthy of effort; otherwise, you will lose your motivation when you hit obstacles. One way to achieve this sense of commitment is to involve your employees in setting goals and determining how to achieve them. This gives employees a sense of ownership—and will help them hold each other accountable for the end result. Begin by discussing corporate goals and how your unit can help realize them. Explain why you are selecting challenging goals and why achieving them is so important for both the organization and your team. Make sure people see a personal benefit. This approach will build awareness of how your goals align with organizational strategy and demonstrate to employees the importance of what you are asking them to do. Set achievable, but challenging goals If your goals are too ambitious, you risk the embarrassment of not accomplishing them—and potentially much more serious repercussions such as having to reduce an employee’s bonus for missing a target. Your team members are also likely to resent you if you set goals that are not achievable. At the same time, you don’t want to aim too low, either. If you are overly cautious, you will miss opportunities and settle for mediocrity. Starting with focused goals that you can later expand into larger ones may help you achieve the right balance. Focus your energy on specific targets Starting with small, specific goals is also a way to motivate your team and keep it on track. Many managers try to do too much too quickly and fail to focus on one or two sharply defined targets. It is nearly impossible to succeed when you establish vague or overly broad goals. Consider the example of a management team at a newspaper publishing plant that tried to institute a comprehensive quality-improvement effort. The team accomplished very little because the company’s needs were so great and employees were focused in many different directions. After this failed attempt, the team then worked with production managers to target a specific, achievable goal. They aimed to reduce the number of typographical errors in the company’s products. With this clear focus, they ultimately succeeded. They were then able to repeat the process they used and apply it in identifying and accomplishing additional goals. Establish performance metrics Another problem with stating a goal in vague terms such as “we will reorganize our systems to make the customer our top priority” is that at evaluation time, it is difficult to say whether this goal has been met. A better way to state the same goal would be to say: “We will redesign the entire customer service process. If we are successful, 95% of customer calls will be handled by a single service rep, and 80% of all calls will be resolved in three minutes or less.” Performance metrics are important, but be careful not to get too caught up in evaluating your employees exclusively on these metrics. For example, if operators are judged only on whether their calls last three minutes or less, you may be encouraging them to provide quick answers that aren’t in the customer’s best interests. Explicitly assign responsibility Once you and your employees agree on a set of measurable goals, make it clear who is responsible for each component. When responsibility for results is not explicitly assigned, employees often “delegate” it upward, especially when a manager is also involved in the project. Consider the president of a company whose customers were complaining about bugs in its new software product. She set a goal of eliminating 90% of the bugs in the following quarter. She met with the heads of the development, design, and quality assurance departments, and each claimed that his group was doing its job and that the quality problems originated in a different department. After spending many hours talking with these managers, the president was not successful in making changes in any of the departments. She knew that without a change, the next release of the product would still have a significant number of bugs. The turnaround came when she told her department heads that she thought it was unwise for her to try to come up with a solution to the quality issue by herself. Instead, she gave her direct reports the full responsibility for reducing the bugs. She assigned to one executive the responsibility for developing a comprehensive plan to achieve the necessary quality improvements. She then requested that each of the other managers produce a plan with a timetable for his unit’s contribution toward achieving the goal. Using these plans, the department heads were successful in reducing the number of bugs in the subsequent product release. Assigning responsibility for a clear set of measurable goals will help you succeed when it comes time to implement them. See also Tips for Increasing Goal Success and the Online Article: “Why Good Projects Fail Anyway.” Accomplishing Goals Creating a clear set of goals is an important accomplishment, but it will not mean much to your organization unless you actually deliver results. Pursue your goals Making your goals a reality involves breaking them down into actual tasks, planning the execution of the tasks, and following your plan. Use the following process for achieving unit goals: • Identify your key unit goals. • Ask, “What specific tasks will have to be done in order to accomplish each goal?” • Determine which tasks need to be completed sequentially and put those in order. If there are tasks that can be completed simultaneously, incorporate them into your plan accordingly. • For each key task, describe measurable results or outcomes. • Determine what resources (money, people) are needed to carry out each task. • Establish a time frame for the completion of each task. Include a start and finish date. • Set up milestones along the way to review project completion and overall impact. Make sure to include what you expect to achieve by each milestone. You and your team members can use this same process to pursue individual-level goals. See also Goal and Task Worksheet. See also the Harvard ManageMentor topic Project Management. Manage obstacles Anticipating obstacles will help prevent them from disrupting your progress toward your goals. For example, you may set a goal of promoting more women and people of color to management positions in your unit. However, if your company does not have recruiting, orientation, and support programs to help these employees develop, it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve your goal unless you find a way to make up for the lack of such internal resources. Before you begin executing plans toward a goal, consider the potential obstacles that might confront each goal and its associated projects. Then, map out possible solutions for each obstacle. Some of the following strategies may be helpful: • If a task seems overwhelming, break it down into smaller tasks. • If your team members are having trouble completing their tasks, perhaps they are losing their motivation to achieve one or more goals. Examine the payoff and remind yourself and your team why all of you are dedicated to the goal(s). • Line up your resources before committing to a goal. Make sure you have committed people in place so staffing gaps will not become an obstacle. • If you find you are paralyzed by the risks associated with a goal, evaluate the probability that the risks will occur. List the benefits of taking the risks and succeeding. • From the outset, keep in mind that the goal process has natural stops and starts. There are also periods when the tasks become difficult or tedious. Always focus on the payoffs. See also Obstacles/Solutions Worksheet. Monitor goal achievement It is important that you always know whether your pursuit of your goals is on track. For example, do you know if your sales team is ahead or behind schedule? Is the Web site task force moving forward according to plan, or is it stuck on some technical problem? This knowledge allows you to constantly modify tasks, contingency plans, and follow-up criteria. You or a project manager reporting to you must: • Update everyone involved as you make progress toward each goal • Review the upcoming projects and required resources • Check off completed projects as you reach milestones • Revise completion dates, when necessary • Record actual completion dates for future reference if you change the dates originally committed to. Review the impact on later tasks, and adjust those accordingly See also Steps for Monitoring Your Progress. Strategies for success These strategies can help maximize the odds that you will reach your goals: • Share your goals with colleagues and friends. In addition to being supportive, they may have ideas on how to accomplish them. • Create goals that are compatible with one another. Conflicting goals compete for your attention. • Work with goals that will give you and others the greatest sense of accomplishment. • Spend priority time on completing the tasks that relate to your most important goals. • Be persistent about working toward your goals. Remind yourself of the payoff when you hit snags. • Be flexible about how you accomplish your goals. When you revise your unit’s project list to reflect changes in your situation, you increase your chances of achieving your aim. • Don’t be afraid to ask for help from upper management, direct reports, or other stakeholders. • When you have achieved a goal, take the time to celebrate with your team. Be sure to reward yourself and your team members appropriately. See also Steps for Accomplishing Your Goals and the Online Article: “Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms.” Evaluating Goals As you work toward your goals, take the time to step back periodically and review them. • Are they still realistic? • Are they timely? • Are they still relevant? You should consider very carefully before modifying a goal midstream. Changing goals abruptly can create confusion. If the organizational or external environment has changed and reaching the goal will no longer create value, it is certainly appropriate and indeed important that you adapt. On the other hand, you should not alter goals in reaction to obstacles such as personnel changes or schedule slippage. When you do need to change a goal, make sure to get buy-in from your team, upper management, and other key stakeholders before proceeding. How do I evaluate a goal after I’ve achieved it? Reaching your goal is not the end of the process. You need to evaluate the goal’s impact, and whether you might be able to accomplish similar goals more effectively in the future. • Confirm that others agree that the goal was accomplished and the expected impact was achieved. • Examine how the goal was achieved. • Identify what was successful and what you would change in the future. Record both. • Evaluate the payoff. If the payoff did not meet your expectations, determine whether you overestimated the goal’s impact. • Communicate your evaluation of the goal to everyone involved. • Identify issues you need to address next time. Lessons learned Identifying lessons learned is one of the most important aspects of the goal evaluation process. Once you internalize these lessons, you can begin to apply them as you develop new goals or adapt existing ones. • If a goal was too easily achieved, make future goals more challenging. • If a goal took too much effort, make new goals a little easier. • If you noticed a skill deficit while pursuing a goal, make attaining those skills a goal for the future. • If a goal was unrealistic, make sure that new goals better reflect organizational realities and time constraints. • If team members lost motivation, make sure that new goals are viewed as valuable and that you communicate the value. Evaluating and learning from your achievements and failures will help you be more successful in the pursuit of future goals. See also Worksheet for Evaluating Goals. ________________________________________ Steps for Identifying and Prioritizing Goals 1. Once or twice a year, review your unit’s diverse activities and your team’s roles, looking for possible high-value goals. Include relevant customers, team members, and your manager in the goal-setting process. 2. Identify criteria for prioritizing your goals. For example, which goals will contribute the most to revenue growth? 3. Review your list of goals and use your criteria to rank them as A-, B-, or C-level priority. Add the ranking to the goal. o Priority A: Those goals having high value and primary importance. o Priority B: Those goals having medium value and secondary importance. o Priority C: Those goals having little value and little importance. 4. Reassign your Priority B goals into Priority A or Priority C—they are either worth your time or not. The goals that are now on your Priority A list are your final goals. 5. Review your Priority A goals separately and rank them according to importance. 6. Goals on the Priority C list can be delegated, put on the back burner, or discarded. Steps for Accomplishing Your Goals 1. Break each goal down into specific tasks. 2. Determine which tasks need to be completed sequentially, and put those in order. If there are tasks that can be completed simultaneously, incorporate them into your plan accordingly. 3. For each key task, describe measurable results or outcomes. 4. Determine what resources are needed to carry out each task and make sure that you have them available. For example, do you have the money to get the job done? Do you have people with the necessary training to complete the task? 5. Establish a time frame for the completion of each task. Include a start and finish date. You may want to use a Gantt chart or some other time-scaled task diagram to make your schedule clear to your team. 6. Set up milestones along the way to review project completion and overall impact. Make sure to include what you expect to achieve by each milestone. 7. Consider the potential obstacles that might confront each goal and its associated task, then map out possible solutions for each obstacle. Steps for Monitoring Your Progress 1. Work from your own daily and weekly schedules, and from your team’s overall work plan. Check off completed tasks as they occur. 2. As you reach milestones, review upcoming tasks and required resources. 3. As you progress, update everyone involved in achieving the goals. 4. Step back periodically and assess whether your goals are still realistic, timely, and relevant. 5. If reaching any of the goals no longer creates value, revise that goal. However, be sure to get buy-in from your team, upper management, and other involved groups before you do. 6. When you feel you have reached a goal, confirm that others agree that the goal has been accomplished and the desired impact achieved. 7. Identify what was successful and what you would change in the future for each completed goal. Record both and communicate your lessons learned to everyone involved. ________________________________________ Tips for Setting Unit Goals Keep a running list of possible goals to consider when brainstorming your goal list. Make sure that your goals fit into your manager’s and organization’s goals. Keep goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-limited). Write your goals down and keep the list visible. Combine tasks from different goals where possible. Tips for Setting Your Team Members’ Goals Give as much control and input as possible to your staff in developing their own goals. Be especially sensitive to time frame suggestions. Tie goal achievement to performance evaluation; this will demonstrate to the team how much you value achieving the goal. Once you have agreed to a goal, set up adequate resources and authority to do the job. Make sure that others are supportive too. Encourage your staff to consider goals that require them to have additional training. Follow through on getting them trained. Let your staff decide how to recognize goal achievement. Tips for Increasing Goal Success Spend priority time on completing the tasks that relate to your goals. Do not allow Priority C goals to creep onto your Priority A list. Work with goals that are compatible with one another. Conflicting goals compete for your attention. Make your goals known to others who can help directly or be supportive. Be persistent. Remind yourself of the payoff when you hit snags. Take the time to celebrate after reaching critical milestones. Take our online test |
