SMART goals been around since 1981 when George T. Doran, from Washington Water Power Company in  Spokane, Washington published a paper entitled “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives”.  For those of you who already know, eat, breathe and live by this, you can probably skip this post.  On the other hand, you might need a review.

As I’ve discussed in a prior post (You can’t track what you can’t measure),  The One Page Business Plan® requires that  your Objectives be graphable.  That’s rule number 1. Developing SMART goals (Objectives) will force you to contemplate what you want to measure, how you measure it, and how you present the progress towards that goal in graphable form. 

SMART goals

The One Page Business Plan®, also provides templates to develop your Objectives. 

In general, an Objective is:

 an action to be taken + a graphable result + a completion date. 

 

 

And specific examples for a project:

Reduce manufacturing price of Product A by 20% by year end 2018.

Increase number of website visits by 10% by 5/1/17.

Once you ensure that your Objectives fit the S.M.A.R.T. criteria, you are ready to start tracking and move on to setting some Strategies, which I will cover in the next post.

If you are ready to ‘dive all in’, of course buy the workbook here or send me an email at lzettler@coreimpactcoaching.com to inquire about private planning sessions or sessions for your team.  Otherwise, there are more instructive posts coming.

Check out our video workshop here.

Related posts:

How is a business like a wedding?

Assess Your Starting Point

Describe your end result.

Why do you exist?

You can’t track what you can’t measure.