The starting point for this exercise is a quote from Gary Latham, the world's leading authority on goal setting, motivation and performance:
"difficult, specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best" 1
For this exercise you will need to be pretty clear before you start about the fundamental purpose of your role / your team, and what your customers want. To help with this, you may want to check out the setting goals for teams section or the clarifying objectives overview section and / or do the getting it right for customers exercise first.
You can also download our briefing sheet on SMART and compelling objectives, giving you more detail on how to express your objectives..
The exercise
We are simply going to turn your knowledge of the purpose of your role, and your customers' preferences, into recognizable objectives. The key is KEEP IT SIMPLE and concrete.
Taking each key result area in turn:
- Write a straightforward sentence stating what you are aiming to achieve. Start with a verb and then state your aim (eg Increase our percentage of satisfied customers).
- Then describe what measure will be used to indicate success, when the measurements will be made, and how (eg the target is 95% "satisfied" or better by March, as measured by our monthly Customer Satisfaction survey).
- Repeat this process for each of your result areas, analyzing and defining objectives for each one.
1. "Motivate employee performance through goal-setting", Latham - in Handbook of principles of organizational behaviour, Locke(ed) Blackwell, 2000