One of the commercials at my gym uses a tagline “what gets measured, gets improved” to promote their personal training services. Another phrase that I have heard in my travels says “what gets managed, gets accomplished.”
A lot of folks get caught up with saying they want to improve or accomplish something but don’t create a “SMART goal” to tie in what will constitute improvement or accomplishment and simply end up getting frustrated for one reason or another.
SMART stands for Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely
While it’s great to say “I want to earn more money,” “get more clients,” or “get better projects,” it’s not enough to put out one of those statements and call it a day.
It’s not enough to say “I want to earn more money.” How much more are we talking about? By not specifying what constitutes a “respectable” increase, there must be some frustration at the end of the year. For example, one could’ve made 50K one year and made 51K the following year; quite frankly, the objective to make more money was accomplished but if the goal wasn’t put in place somebody will say “I don’t get it, you did make “more” money.” Revenues are usually viewed on annual or quarterly terms so timeliness isn’t an issue here. If one wants to say, “I’m looking to increase my revenues ten-fold this year” it might not be realistic unless there are some systems in place to really make that happen.
It’s not enough to say “I want to get more clients.” Once again, how many are we talking about. Sometimes the number of clients might not be enough but one may need to look at what revenue will be generated by a client and if there’s a potential for repeat work.
It’s not enough to say “I want to get better projects.” What constitutes “better” projects? One may need to drill down and think about what was wrong with previous projects to determine what will be an improvement with better projects.
In addition to stating the goals in question, it would be helpful to create an action plan to make these goals happen.
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This post first appeared on Kupchamkt's Blog | Sharing My Thoughts On Assorted, please read the originial post: here
