Set a goal! - Sure! - but... How?
Johan Meyer
Helping You Improve Payments & Collections to Increase Cash Flow and Improve Client Retention. If You Need Your On-Time Payments & Collections to Improve, Let's Chat.
DUMB goals
We're all familiar with the concept of a "goal". Regardless of where you are on your professional or personal path, somewhere in your journey you were advised that you should set a goal. And that this goal should be in writing. And that it should probably be a SMART goal. Or, if you wanted to be different, you could set a goal with another acronym.
Ever heard of CLEAR goals? Or SMART-R goals? Or even... DUMB goals? Here is a good post about 7 alternatives to SMART goals - worth a read to see just what people can come up with.
Does it matter?
Look, at no point am I going to say that having a system of some sort to help define a goal is a bad thing. Systems are good. But you can easily get stuck in the quagmire of trying to to understand which system to choose - and given that a goal is intended to initiate action, that's a bad thing.
Let's get practical
By all means, get some tips and wisdom from the various goal setting systems out there. Someone spent a lot of time trying to understand how to define an objective in an achievable manner. But fundamentally a great goal has the following 4 elements:
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Where should you start?
In our experience people who are new to working with goals make one fundamental mistake. They go to big from the start. Setting great goals is a skill and just like any other skill this is something you need to practice.
Our advice to the teams we work with are as follows:
What about relevance?
For this first bit of work, it is important that you understand how to set a goal and how to pursue that goal. This is a skill to learn and master.
In our next piece we'll talk about setting goals that matter and aligning it with a deeper objective.
Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Global Service Delivery and MI Management Lead
1 年Sometimes setting goals become the new flavour of the month. I found this article to be insightful especially on the different tools. I have also fallen prey to the "analysis paralysis" i.e. getting bogged down by what tool to use instead of moving into action. Looking forward to the next instalment.