From the course: Setting Team and Employee Goals Using SMART Methodology

Learn the importance of goal setting

From the course: Setting Team and Employee Goals Using SMART Methodology

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Learn the importance of goal setting

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- Why's it important to set a goal? Goals drive behavior. Goals help you establish priorities. They get people to focus on the right things to the exclusion of others. A clear set of goals helps advance the organization's agenda. Those goals are going to help you achieve the broader goals that the organization sets. Let me ask you this. Let's imagine you work for a car manufacturer. You're not given any goals. You're just put on the assembly line and told, "Go to work." How are you going to behave? Are you going to work fast? Are you going to be cautious and focus on quality? How safe are you going to be? None of it's clear. Without goals, you're just going to behave however you think is best. Following a rigorous goal-setting process is how you're going to drive the right set of behaviors across your entire organization and make sure that those behaviors drive toward the ultimate goals that the organization sets. Goals can come from a variety of sources, and you should build your goals based upon the organization's needs and the desired future state. Goals may be set by leaders. They can be jointly agreed upon by team members. Goals can be set by customers or business partners. Some goals are going to be individually defined by the members of the team. Goals can be a variety of types. You may have financial goals, operational goals, milestones you're trying to hit, project-based goals and even skill-based goals of trying to build a new capability. You'll need enough goals to drive performance and change behavior, but not so many goals that you confuse people because they can't focus on as many goals as you're giving them. So when you're setting your goals, you'll need to think through what are we trying to achieve as an organization, and how will it translate to a manageable set of goals that we can give to the members of the team.

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