How to Measure Intangible Goals in 5 Steps

Follow these 5 practical steps for how to turn intangible goals into SMART goals you can meaningfully measure.

Intangible goals are everywhere. Typically we see them in large corporations or government agencies, where bureaucracy can’t be avoided. But we see them in most businesses and organisations, of all sizes and in all industries, because good goal writing is an elusive skill and there are not many practical instructions for how to write measurable goals.

Probably the most well-known goal-writing framework is SMART, which guides us to write goals that have five qualities: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Emily Esposito, on the smartsheet blog, writes?a very clear article about SMART, with two very clear examples.

But when it comes to strategic goals, or operational or team goals that cascade from a corporate strategy, making them measurable can be much harder. Finding meaningful measures or KPIs for intangible goals requires more than just the SMART framework.

You can access?the whole digest of how to measure intangible goals, or you can click through to the step you're currently grappling with:

Step 1: Involve the person or team that owns the goal so you get buy-in.?The best way to start when you want to measure important goals is to involve the people that own those goals. That’s one of the most important rules for getting buy-in for those goals and buy-in for the KPIs of those goals.

Step 2: Make sure the goal is results-oriented, and not an action or milestone.?Goals should be about making a difference, not just doing stuff. We need to stop writing goals that are action-oriented, such as tasks, projects, milestones or activities.

Step 3: Replace vague or ambiguous words in the goal with specific and observable language.?Weasel words are vague, ambiguous, broad and very non-specific. Our goals will never pass through the first gate of the SMART goals framework, 'Specific', while ever we use weasel words.

Step 4: Simplify the goal to focus on just one single performance result.?Often when we de-weasel a goal, we find it means more than one thing. A goal needs to focus on just one thing, before it can be meaningfully measurable.

Step 5: Be ruthless about whether the goal is worth measuring.?We need more than a popularity contest or voting exercise to ruthlessly prioritise our goals. Use three questions to help filter out the goals that really matter enough to measure.

You can dive into?the full digest here, where you'll find heaps of links to more detail you can pick and choose from.

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The post “How to Measure Intangible Goals in 5 Steps” was first published by Stacey Barr on https://staceybarr.com/measure-up.