Without Clarity, Your Goal is Just an Idea
We all have goals. Some businesses meet theirs, some exceed, and some fall short. When pursuing a vision or goal there are three main factors that determine your success. Effort, feasibility, and clarity. The effort, in theory, is easy. You know how much work is necessary to put forth to attain the goal at hand. Feasibility summarizes the possibility of attainment. If you set a goal that is too far out of reach, then it will be next to impossible to succeed. Clarity, the third of our three factors, is the topic of today’s conversation. Clarity of your goals will make every step towards success easier. It will allow for better planning, execution, and measurability. If you set out to achieve a goal and the purpose is blurry, how will you know the right steps towards achievement? How will you know if it was truly a success? How will you know if you fell short? The importance of clarity plays a great role within the life of a goal; from before execution begins and after success has been achieved. Clarity should be the focus of any goal planning.
The following article was written by Dr. Jon Warner for Ready To Manage — July 14, 2012
In general terms, the process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve directionally, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts and hopefully you will also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
To be able to even begin the journey of working towards a goal, we first need to ensure that we have complete clarity. Goal clarity can be simply described as your ability to set a clear and specific objective that all affected parties understand and can work towards achieving. The important part of this definition is the word “specific.” A very broad or general goal won’t help drive you or anyone else to succeed. If your goal is simply to “shape up,” that is not a well-defined goal. It may be broadly accurate but is not helpful to describe what actually has to be done and to give others a clear guide as to what is expected.
All goals need to be clear, concise and action-oriented and be expressed in such a way that there can be little doubt about the specific outcome that is being sought. Unfortunately, we are less likely to consistently set such specific goals. People generally tend to stick to the safe and secure status quo and often fail to either get out of their comfort zone or convert loose language into meaningful action-centered words. In others words, people can be lazy and express goals in vague and ambiguous ways and think that they have told people what they need. These are often called “soft” goals.
Soft goals stands for: S — Some, O — Other, F — Future, T — Time. In other words, on occasions our goals are for show only or to achieve at a time in the future. In actual fact, ‘soft’ goals usually mean that the person setting this goal may not be committed to getting a real result or doesn’t really want to achieve any change or be held accountable for moving forward to a new position or situation. It is therefore critical for any person who is going to be responsible for making a change to clarify exactly what is expected and ensure that there is a clear mutual understanding about what is to be done, by who and by when.
The following article was written by Dr. Jon Warner for Ready To Manage — July 14, 2012
https://blog.readytomanage.com/creating-goal-clarity/
Without goal clarity, your vision will never be complete. For our purposes, we are going to drop a scenario that encapsulates goal clarity.
Company XYZ has a goal to increase its gross sales revenue by 13% within quarter 3 this year. To do this, it has been decided that the marketing department needs to increase their number of email campaigning by 30 emails a day, to the newly selected target audience. On top of this, the customer service department will call previous customers 10 days before their monthly service is up for renewal. At this time, if the customer is not interested in renewing, the representative will offer a discounted service for the next 2 months.
The goal at hand is specific: Increasing gross sales by 13%. It is measurable: Sales within each quarter are accounted for. This goal is also attainable: previous quarter growth has been near 10%, so with new strategies in place, this new goal is possible. It is also relevant to the company; it makes sense to the departments involved and improves the business. Finally, there is a timeframe, this lets us know when the goal has either been achieved or not.
Setting goals is not an easy task and executing them is even more challenging. The pursuit of a goal becomes much clearer and more attainable if you sit down and clarify exactly what needs to be done, and how it will be achieved. Without clarity, Your goal is just an idea.
How will your company make sure its goals are achieved?
Have you been achieving your vision without really clarifying what the goals are?
