Company Goals: The Northern Star for Employees A robust and healthy goal-setting process begins at the top of the pyramid with a clear and well-defined vision for achieving company objectives

A business requires a strong vision backed by systematic processes, tangible goals with optimum and apt utilization of resources to succeed. In any business, goals are an intermediate step to perform the right actions.

Significance of an effective goal-setting process

A robust and healthy goal-setting process begins at the top of the pyramid with a clear and well-defined vision for achieving company objectives. Collaboration between manager and team members is the key. It is imperative that each team member understands how his/her individual goal aligns with the overall corporate vision. It is vital for the team to understand the impact of their daily tasks and how it will help move the needle towards achieving the organization's vision.

S.M.A.R.T Goals vs S.M.A.R.T.E.R Goals

A well-structured, comprehensive and effective framework cannot be complete without not just SMART, but SMARTER goals. Whatever be the modus operandi, setting SMARTER goals is the shortcut to success as it helps with clarity, increased effort, time management and productivity standards. In order for goals to be attainable, they must include the following aspects—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound, evaluate and re-Adjust, or simply SMARTER.

Specific: It's the fuel in the engine of your goals. In goal setting, in order to make it visceral to the mind, you have to be able to quantify (make specific) that goal. Without specifics, there's no real target, just some obscure direction.

Measurable: Moving towards a goal requires concrete steps and clear indications of progress, so it pays for team members to make sure their goals can be readily assessed.

Achievable: It's worth emphasizing that while distant objectives can be useful in motivating team members towards something big, they should have more short-term goals that can be achieved at their current experience level to build that all-important momentum.

Realistic: It is important to ensure team members set goals that are realistic. Remember they should be challenging but not impossible. Goals should also be in harmony with what you actually want out of life; they should match up with your core values.

Time-bound: Team members should hold themselves accountable by measuring those goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. How close are you to achieving your goals? How much further did you get from achieving your goals? Not only does this push them to succeed, but it also helps to move the goal from prototype to plan.

Evaluate: By evaluating your goals at regular intervals, team members will be much more likely to achieve them. Long-term goals can easily be ignored if they aren't evaluated every single day.

Re-adjust: Team members may have to figure out and try multiple approaches until they find themselves getting closer to their goals.

Goal-Setting Process: Not Rocket Science

With the help of an easy and simple goal-setting process, team members are made aware of the direction towards which the company is heading. They work faster and more efficiently irrespective of the monetary outcome. This is because it keeps them motivated by adding to their sense of achievement. Depending on the type of organisation or the sector it caters to, managers could let the team members schedule their own targets and achieve them. This approach boost's the employee's confidence, empowers him/her to manage time efficiently and most importantly keeps him/her motivated for a longer duration.

A well-defined goal-setting process helps in recruitment as it makes on-boarding employees relatively easy and less time consuming. Employees are also able to easily understand the pre-requisite skills required in their current position and the importance of skill upgradation.

Setting easy and simple goals ensures that the focus of team members and managers is primarily on essential tasks. This results in smooth transitioning between projects and weekly targets. It also improves the efficiency of team members by reducing the monotony at work. All these parameters contribute to higher productivity, a driven team, better profits and automatically lesser stress.