The New Year is Here! How to Set Effective Goals for Your Team in 2015

The difference between a team that is effective and one that is ineffective depends primarily on the goals the team sets for itself and how it goes about setting those goals.

There are several things that teams need to keep in mind about the nature of the goals themselves:

  • The goal must be clear and consist of something considered important and worthwhile. There should be a specific performance objective to be achieved, and it should be expressed in such a way that there is no uncertainty when it has been achieved.
  • The goal itself should be something that all the members of the team consider to be significant. It should be something that challenges everyone, requiring them to use all of their skills and knowledge. It should be something that will make a real contribution or bring real change to the company. A team can lose its effectiveness if the goal falls short of these requirements. It may be too ambiguous or fuzzy. It may fall prey to office politics. It may lose its importance. Or team members may put their own goals above the team goal. There is a well known acronym for goal setting in organizational management called SMART. It stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Trackable.
  • The goals must be concrete and detailed, not vague or general. The team should be able to achieve them in a timely manner. If the goals are concrete and specific, you should also be able to measure them, to determine how close your are to achieving them. Goals that state something along the lines of “giving more effort” are not enough, according to management experts. The goals should involve changes in the way things are done.
  • In addition to being clear and objective, the goals need to be written down and posted for everyone to see. The goals need to spell out exactly what the team is working on, when the team expects to achieve the goals, how well the team is doing, and who the team is doing it for. There should be both long-term goals and shorter-term benchmark goals along the way.
  • Some management experts say  the team should develop goals that yield a 50-50 chance of success. With a greater than 50 percent probability of success, the goals don’t present much of a challenge and could lead to boredom. But with less than a 50 percent chance of success, the goals may seem too intimidating and lead the team to question if they are worth chasing at all.

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