Common Problems with Goal Setting

SMART Goals! You probably hear this at least once a year. All of the planning meetings are going strong. Everyone is pouring over last year’s goals and metrics. Employee evaluations are underway. Bosses are asking for next year’s goals. Everyone is trying to remember what the "A" in SMART stands for. People are debating whether something is a strength or a weakness for their SWOT analysis, " well, it's really both" being the common compromise. Meanwhile, you are just trying to satisfy your boss or HR, and get back to all of the “actual” work piling up on your desk and in your inbox.

I have been in the corporate world for about seven years, though my work experience is far more extensive. I have participated in planning retreats, at different levels, with various organizations and companies, in many different industries, of vastly different sizes. I have wholly revamped non-profit boards, or created new roles for existing boards, and helped institute foundational and/or cultural changes for high-functioning organizations. I have written and facilitated almost a dozen strategic planning and goal setting retreats for multiple organizations. Additionally, I have trained individuals to facilitate these retreats. As a result, I am far more experienced than most people my age. With this experience, I see the same mistakes made (and made many of them myself) repeatedly at all levels, in every one of these varying environments.

In the series of articles that follow, I will address several of these mistakes in the hopes that people will have more effective planning sessions and hopefully move the needle in a positive direction in major areas. The biggest mistakes I see revolve around:                                                      

• Not having/not understanding different levels of goals.
• Not focusing on positive future outcomes, only focusing on fixing current problems.
• Not fully understanding what a SMART goal is, when to use the SMART method and how to properly make a goal SMART.
• Not setting regular intervals to revisit goals, not sticking to those intervals, and not completely re-evaluating the goals at the prescribed time (is this goal still relevant?)(Follow the OODA loop - more on this later).
• Not creating mutually agreed upon goals when others are involved (supervisor, report).
• Not agreeing on accountability for goals, or having no accountability at all.

This is a lot of ground to cover. Therefore, I will give each bullet a manageable platform to function as a standalone reference. However, this series has the ability to be utilized as a comprehensive guide.

To begin with, I want to pay respect to beginning with the end in mind. Meaning, we need to answer the overarching question of why do we set goals in the first place?

“Because my boss told me to!” Well, that answer will certainly not get us where we want to go. And that is the major point; goals are how we get where we want to go. I am going to begin with an analogy that will permeate throughout these articles, that of taking a road-trip to a friend’s house we have never been to before.

When embarking on a new journey such as the one mentioned above, there are two key pieces of information we need to start; where we are currently, and where we want to go. With those two pieces of information, we can determine how we want to get to our final destination; we can put it in our GPS and get turn by turn directions, traffic updates, and the estimated time of arrival. To bring it together, we have an ultimate goal, our destination; we also have many minor goals, each turn along the way, to get us to that destination. Goals are how we get things done with intention. Without intention, we have no way of setting our course, no way of knowing where we will end up.

WARNING: If you are comfortable right where you are, and do not want to move forward, this post is NOT for you. Otherwise, hop into the figurative vehicle and buckle up! Let’s get started down the road and enjoy this journey to effective goal setting.