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Setting Smart Objectives

Decent Essays

Setting effective objectives to guide your team and organisation is very important for a leader to get right. Badly formulated objectives will steer an organisation in the wrong direction. I found this ten step approach to setting SMART objectives:

Sort out the difference between objectives and aims, goals and/or targets before you start. Aims and goals relate to your aspirations, objectives are your battle-plan. Set as many objectives as you need for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Don't try to use that order M-A/R-S-T is often the best way to write objectives. Measurable is the most important consideration. You will know that you've achieved your objective, because here is the evidence. I will know too! …show more content…

Now, let's look at some samples of SMART objectives for managers.

Examples

Team management and coaching are key soft skills for managers.

These soft skills require SMART objectives. Similarly, hard skills also require SMART objectives. Have a look at the samples of SMART objectives below to get an idea of how they used in various types of management:

Customer Support Management SMART Objectives

Decrease the time to respond to customer queries by 3 minutes by the end of this quarter. Decrease the time to resolve customer issues from 2 hours to 1.5 hours by July 2014.

Note: If the objective stated Decrease the time to resolve customer issues from 2 hours to 0.25 hours by July 2014, alarm bells should ring because the objective would not be realistic.

Event Management SMART Objectives

Reduce the cost of the SMART conference by 20 percent by benefiting from process improvement and better procurement management. Increase the attendance of the SMART conference by 100 guests by speaking to the guests via telephone and writing to them by mail. All communication should happen three weeks before the event.

User Experience/Usability Management SMART

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