Setting SMART Goals |At the Whiteboard

>> Edward: Hi, I'm Edward Museo assumed spelling, CEO of Group Harmonics and I'm gonna tell you how to set smart goals for the people

you work with. There's a game we can play called bring me a rock, here's how it goes. I say to you, "Bring me a rock," and you come

back with a rock. I say to you, "No, I wanted a smaller rock," and you come back with a smaller rock. I say to you, "No, I wanted a

different color rock," and you come back with a different color rock. Now, we can go on like this forever and bring me a rock starts

out funny and quickly becomes frustrating. When you're talking about asking somebody to do something at work, playing bring me a rock

is not just frustrating it's demoralizing and it wastes time and resources. The way to avoid that is by an old trick called setting

smart goals, SMARG. Smart goals means when you ask someone to do something your request follows 5 criteria. First, what you want to

ask for should be specific. I need to hone my request to you down to a fine point of what I want, I shouldn't just say, "Go find out

what's going on in sales," maybe I should say, "There's been a 10% decrease in sales figures over the last 6 months find me some

root causes please," it's a more specific more narrow request. Second, what I ask you for should be measurable; that means there's

a clear measuring stick a criteria that we can use to determine what success looks like and when you got there. Do I want you to find

me 3 root causes for the sales decline, do I want you to publish a report in some forum, do I want you to implement something and get

the sales figures back up by a few percent? Whatever the criteria is it needs to be clear and we need to agree how we'll know when

you got there. A stands for attainable. Now, I can ask you to climb Mount Everest this weekend, you can know what I want and not

be able to do it. I can ask you to produce a 400% increase in company revenue and you can know what I want and not be able to do it.

What I ask you for has to be something you can reasonably produce, if I don't know what's reasonable I need to work with you to agree

on what is a reasonable goal. My request should also be relevant and this means that it ties into and answers the question of, how

does this relate to the other work you're doing? For example, if you're a person that works in IT supporting computers and I'm sending

you off to look into sales figures, that might not be a very relevant request unless I can explain why you're the right person to do it.

On the other hand, if you work in sales it's much better. Somehow I should be able to answer the question, how does this relate to your

work and the work of your organization or group? Finally, my request for you should be time-based or time-bound and this just means

that I'm gonna put some kind of a clock or a calendar or something on my request to you so that you know when it's due, that way we're

clear on when I expect it. So that's it, when I ask you to do something for me I should make sure that my request is specific, I ask

you for exactly what I want, measurable, we agree on what success looks like, attainable, it's something you can do, relevant, it's

something that relates to the other work you're doing and time-based, you know when it's due. The next time you're gonna ask someone

to do something for you at work whether you're setting a major goal or just asking someone for a favor take a few minutes and figure

out the smart criteria for your request in advance. Those few minutes you take could save you and the person you're working with a lot

of time, energy and frustration.