Smart Objectives & SMART Goals: A Guide to Goal Setting
In this blog post, you will learn all about defining goals and setting smart objectives. Goal Setting is all around. New Year's just passed, and many people are setting goals for the coming year. But why is it important to have goals? And how can a proper understanding of SMART Goals and Effective Goal Planning help you actually achieve them, ensuring Goal Achievement?
Welcome to our first thematic entry. In this post, we want to share the knowledge we've gathered since our founding and even before that. Our goal is to create a broader understanding of topics like collaboration, project management, process management, and self-organization, particularly how they contribute to Goal Achievement. We also want to discuss these topics with you (e.g., on Bluesky or LinkedIn).
Why Clear Goals Are the Key to Success
By engaging in Effective Goal Planning and setting clear smart objectives, we can focus our resources on a selected topic and a result to be achieved. If we follow this approach, we consume fewer resources. By resources, I mean time, attention, money, etc. — generally things necessary for Goal Achievement. It's about using resources efficiently and effectively.
Efficient vs. Effective: What's the Difference?
Efficient and effective are not the same. Efficiency means achieving our goal with as little resources as possible. Effectiveness means that the goal is actually achieved as intended. In other words, being efficient means doing the necessary steps right (e.g., without errors), while being effective means doing the right steps for successful Goal Achievement (and not suddenly doing something entirely different).
How to Find the Right Steps to Achieve Your Goals
First, you need a clear idea of what your goal includes and what it doesn't. This is the first step in Goal Setting. It's best to write down all your ideas and make also a list of things that are not included. Be specific and concrete, e.g., "I want to run a marathon, but I'm not interested in triathlons." Choose only ideas that you can influence, that you consider realistic, and where it's possible for you to determine whether you've achieved them or not. Finally, set a time horizon by when you want to achieve your goal. Wanting to run the marathon tomorrow when you're just starting training today isn't particularly realistic.
To make sure you don't forget anything, the acronym SMART can help you define truly smart objectives. It stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
Got everything together? Then try to formulate your goal, now a smart objective, in a sentence that includes all the components for successful Goal Achievement.
You can now reflect all your future steps toward your smart objectives against this sentence to find out if they are goal-oriented — that is, if they bring you closer to your goal or not.
In our planning, we found that we liked to write down big goals. Sure, you need a vision of where you want to go, but Effective Goal Planning also involves defining smaller intermediate SMART Goals. You achieve these more easily, you know better if you're still on track with your time and resource plan, and above all, motivation for the ultimate Goal Achievement remains high.
Practical Example: Mia's Path to Goal Setting
In the following, I'd like to illustrate the theory with an example.
Let's assume someone wants to implement an IT project. We'll call her Mia. She thinks that video chats are great for improving communication within project teams. Unfortunately, all versions cost money, and she wants to create a free version that anyone can host themselves.
Mia works in the IT department of a large company and has about 10 hours a week to work on the "free video chat" project. She has many ideas about what she wants to implement and writes them all down. The list becomes very long, and she considers which ideas will bring real value in the first step. She tries to concretize her goal, transforming it into a set of smart objectives:
"I want a video chat where I can communicate with people I know. Therefore, having a friends list is helpful but not necessary. In the first step, it's sufficient to distribute chat invitations via email. The whole thing should simply run in the web browser. I'll focus on Chrome as the web browser. I don't want to support an installation version. On smartphones, it doesn't need its own interface...."
Mia becomes even more specific and writes down all the things she wants to implement and those she doesn't. She also marks the things that are absolutely necessary and bring direct value, as well as those she wants to implement later. This detailed Goal Setting is crucial for defining clear SMART Goals.
Now Mia considers how she can measure if she's done—because software is never finished, right? She decides to define a series of software tests that must run successfully to be considered done.
Since she has a lot of experience in software development, the goal is achievable for her. Only the marketing area is unfamiliar to her, and she definitely needs support there. She notes that she won't include marketing as her own goal but will actively seek support from her friends.
Next, she considers when she wants to be finished. Next winter would be great; that gives her about a year now. She checks her list of things she wants to implement and thinks about what she can accomplish with 10 hours per week. The best way is to roughly estimate the effort of each step and add them up. She has to remove a few of the not absolutely necessary topics from the list, but overall she's satisfied. This makes her Goal Setting seem realistic, making Goal Achievement more likely, and she's excited to finally get started.
Next, Mia wants to set up a work plan and talk to a friend about the marketing topic. For managing her tasks and tracking her progress towards Goal Achievement, she might also consider using goal setting software. More on that in the next article: Creating a Rough Plan.
Note: This article is part of our series on Effective Goal Planning and Goal Setting. Check out our other posts to learn more about project management, process optimization, self-organization, and how tools like goal setting software can support your journey to Goal Achievement with smart objectives and SMART Goals.
Do you have questions about setting smart objectives or want to share your experiences with SMART Goals? Leave a comment or discuss with us on Bluesky or LinkedIn!