Tag Archives: SMART Goals

Measuring Success: Why Sense (Not Just Dollars) Drives Results

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There is an old saying that you measure the success of a manager with dollars sold, saved, and earned. Leaders are measured by the number of people they develop. Because managers are often concerned with dollars, they lack the sense required to deal with the people who are in the best position to sell, save, and earn the dollars required for the organization’s success. Understanding different measures of success helps leaders teach their followers ways to measure success other than through monetary value. Such measures can be broken down into two categories: performance and effectiveness. When you teach others how to measure performance and effectiveness well, they will understand how they contribute to the organization and require less direct supervision.

There are two broad categories of measures: performance and effectiveness. Use performance measures to determine if you are executing the steps of your tasks appropriately. Measuring the process helps determine how well you are executing the tasks you identified when setting the goal as the most likely to achieve your goal. If your analysis was correct, these measures predict your success. In some disciplines of execution, they call such measures leading indicators.

Performance measures

Performance measures are those things that measure the processes and task steps selected to achieve the goal. These measures look at how well an operation, process, procedure, or other action is being performed against an established standard. These measures should be part of task step statements developed in the goal and refined as the person working towards the goal approaches that step. Performance measures help leaders determine if selected tasks are being performed correctly. Performance measures are leading indicators of effectiveness.

Examples of performance measures include:

  • Value of goods sold
  • Hours of billable time worked
  • Number of widgets produced in a period of time
  • Number of miles completed
  • Number of people contacted
  • Rate of data entry errors
  • Times an activity was completed correctly

This is not a comprehensive list. Notice how many examples in this list, however, deal with numbers—all of them. If one cannot understand how to measure performance when one reaches a particular task step, the person does not yet fully understand the problem and the task.

Let’s say you are leading a number of people who interview crime victims and there is a standard that each attends a peer review two times per year. Your big goal is to have an effective crime victim interviewing section. One of your selected task steps is to conduct four peer review sessions each year. In order to demonstrate successful completion of the task step, you have two measures. The first measure is to ensure each person you supervise attends two peer reviews each year. If someone has only attended one, or even none, you and they fail. Second, you chose to offer a peer review each each quarter to allow all interviews to attend at least two. It would be reasonable to assume that when October rolls around, you would have completed three peer reviews, once each quarter. These are two examples of comparing observed behaviors to required measures.

Learning to measure tasks and processes is important because this activity is how an organization accomplishes its what. For example, as a leader of a nonprofit, you need to raise $100,000 to execute a project. The $100K is what you need to do. How does a nonprofit raise $100,000? Those are the tasks and processes you, as the leader, establish. Those activities need to be measured to ensure you are doing them to achieve your what.

Effectiveness measures

Effectiveness measures demonstrate that your task steps and activities are making a difference, creating the change your organization seeks. The sum of all of your activities should equal that change. The first step in measuring effectiveness is to precisely measure your performance of tasks, activities, and processes. Next, identify the measures for your effectiveness. Like performance measures, if you do not know how to measure your effectiveness, you lack an understanding of the problem and solution. Effectiveness measures are trailing indicators that you are doing the right things.

Let us look back at the example of the nonprofit seeking to raise $100,000 for programming. This is a pretty simple effectiveness measure: how close to $100,000 are your activities getting you? If you engaged in a number of fundraisers and failed to meet the goals for those activities, you will not likely reach your goal. This shows your activities are not effective, and why you need to determine if your processes are being accomplished to your defined expectations.

Here is a short example of going through the process. You are the General Manager of a supermarket who wants to increase profitability. You meet with the bakery department manager to set goals that enable you to achieve your goal. The manager sets a goal to improve profits of his department by 3% through reduced waste from unsold inventory, and increasing the variety of products desired by customers over the next three months. This statement identifies the following in the SMART model:

  • Specific: Increase profitability of the bakery department
  • Measureability: Increased profits of 3%,
    • Less waste from unsold inventory,
    • Increased product variety.
  • Attainability: is partially answered by identification of two task steps listed in the above measureability statement above. These task steps require additional analysis to determine ways to accomplish those activities.
  • Relevant: The manager’s goals are relevant to your goal. If you can increase profitability in every department, you will increase the profitability of your store.
  • Time-bound: The manager set a three-month limit to accomplish this goal.

As you work through the process with the bakery manager, create a goal worksheet for both reducing waste and increasing product variety. Those are the two processes required to have the effect of increasing profitability. On the surface, both seem like they are easy to measure; you know how much unsold product there is at any given time and what your current product line is. As you diversify your product line, though, you may find an increase in unsold inventory because your attempts to find desirable products may result in unwanted items and therefore increase waste temporarily.

Think about what additional measures exist to identify reducing inventory waste. Are there products that sell out every day? What products only seem to sell at certain times of the year, or days of the week? Do you have feedback from customers about products they would like to see the bakery carry? What is the dollar value of each of the undersold products? You may find you lose more money with only two unsold cakes than you do from two dozen unsold cookies.

Once you think you help your workers identify the right processes, they are in place, and meeting your metrics; measure if they are having the desired effect. If we continue with the bakery example, your baker produces three fewer cakes per day. As a result, you find that profits have not increased and total sales have decreased. There is an old saying that you cannot sell what you do not have on the shelves. If people come into the bakery near the end of the day to buy a cake and find the display case empty, and they do this two or three times, they may start to buy all their products elsewhere. Work with your employees to identify other processes that impact profitability other than unsold products. Reducing product waste is not improving your profitability.

The reason the process of reducing product did not improve profitability was from several causes. This demonstrates that either you or your employee does not fully understand all the variables that drive your sales and expenses. Step back and evaluate again ways you can improve your profitability.

When you sit down with those you lead to help them establish goals, use this information about performance and effectiveness. Do more than explain the theory; ask them to provide examples in their goal setting about how they will measure both performance and effectiveness. Write down the metrics for both. This documentation accomplishes two things. The first is preserving the content of your discussion and mutual agreement. Second, each of you can use the document to determine progress on the goal in both terms of performance and effectiveness.

Remember that performance measures indicate you are doing things right. Effectiveness measures show you are doing the right things. Performance should be leading indicators to effectiveness. Effectiveness measures are trailing indicators, showing success because you selected and executed the correct tasks.

Spending time with those you lead to establish goals helps the organization accomplish its goals. The only way to know if individuals and the organization are moving towards their desired goals is by establishing measures of success. When a goal is set, task steps are established to move along. These are the processes to be performed at given intervals. These metrics are called performance measures because they measure how well a process is followed. Performance measures should be leading indicators to the effectiveness of a process. If the tasks and processes are being followed, leaders should expect to see movement toward the desired goal by both the individual and the organization. These metrics are called effectiveness measures. Effectiveness measures are trailing indicators because the change sought to accomplish goals is underway by the time these show positive results. Performance and effectiveness measures show you are doing things right and doing the right things. When you are doing the right things the right way, you will accomplish your goals.

Leading others to success in four easy steps

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Setting goals is an important personal skill to achieve and measure success. Teaching others to set goals is an important skill for successful leaders to master. Teaching people to set goals ensures their personal and organizations success. Unfortunately, too many people work for bosses who do not know how to set goals, let alone how to teach others to set goals. If you read and put into practice any of the suggestions from my earlier post, you know how to effectively set personal goals. Learning to teach others and helping them along the way is pretty easy when you follow these steps.

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Once you understand the process for setting goals and achieve a few goals you develop an appreciation for the importance of goal-setting. The process is pretty simple. First assess things you do well, things you can improve, and what you want to accomplish. Next, figure out where you are in life and where you want to be. Third, develop a plan to move closer to your desired end state. It does not have to be a perfect plan. By the time you develop a perfect plan it will be too late, so take your imperfect plan and adapt is as you move along the path to success. Written goals are more effective than those that are not written. Periodically check your progress. You will find that as you change, other things change too. That requires you to make adjustments to stay headed in the correct direction. That is also why perfect plans are rarely effective. This paragraph is intended to be a review. For more on setting personal goals see my earlier blog by clicking here.

You have to set and achieve a couple goals before you begin trying to teach others. If you are in a leadership position you probably have done that. Maybe you never thought about how you go about setting and achieving goals so you do not know how to teach others. That is the point of this post. It is only a little harder to teach others to set their own goals than it is to learn to do it yourself.

Start by sitting down with your employee or protegee and explain the goal setting process described above to them. Share a story of your personal success following the goal setting strategy to motivate them. Explain the SMART model Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. Share your version of a Goal Setting Worksheet to document their goal. Click here for an example.

When you introduce the goal setting process, take time to explain each step briefly. You will demonstrate each step when you spend time helping him set his first written goal. It helps to have a set of directions even if you do have a tour guide for the first trip. It also communicates credibility.

When you explain SMART goals, explain each term. Help them understand the difference between a specific and non-specific goal statement. There is a difference between saying, “I want to loose weight.”, and, “I want to loose 25 pounds.” It seems obvious on the surface and when the two appear side-by-side. People who have not successfully set and achieved goals think they are the same. Explain different ways to measure success when you talk about a goal being measurable. In the weight example you could measure fat lose by using a scale or waist size. The simplest way I ever heard to explain attainable is to ask the other person if someone has previously done what they want to do. If someone else achieved it then that person can as well. Relevant goals can be relevant. Explain that a work place goal is relevant to the workplace. Personal goals are relevant to their life. Relevance is the “Why” of the goal. When discussing time-bound explain it prevents or reduces procrastination.

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Introduce your version of the Goal Setting Worksheet. I learned in the One-Minute Manager that a written goal should fit on one page, be less than 250 words, and reviewed in less than a minute to ensure people review it periodically. The worksheet becomes the map to achieve the goal. In my work, I found a simple set up makes writing down goals easy. Put the name of the goal at the top. Next list the person completing the goal, the start date, and the target completion date. If you have more than one employee, it helps to have their names on the worksheet when you follow up later with them. List the steps necessary to complete the goal. Identify some measurements of success and what the desired end state looks like.

Start to put everything together. Work with the employee to find a goal. Help them conduct her first assessment by asking questions that guild them to find out what they want to achieve. Questions should include answers that provide insight to the SMART elements. Work with them to write out the goal on the worksheet. If you are working on a workplace goal, you, as the leader, must agree the goal is worthy use of her work time. Once the goal is established and written up, make a copy for you. The employee keeps the original.

As part of the goal setting process establish when you will meet again to review the progress. I recommend daily or weekly for small, simple goals with inexperienced employees. Eventually employees will develop bigger goals. You need to meet less often to assess progress and success.

During the periodic review meeting ask for details about the progress of each task step. Inquire about problems he encountered and how they resolved those problems. Review the measurements to help them understand if he is doing what he set out to do. Before you finish the meeting, ask if he needs anything from you to continue. Find out what steps he will take between this meeting and the next. Wrap up by setting the next meeting date and praising his progress.

Learning to set and accomplish goals is an important growth steps for individuals. Learning to teach others how to set and achieve goals is an importation growth step for leaders. Leaders first have to understand the process used to set and achieve goals. You cannot teach what you do not know. When you sit down to teach someone how to set a goal, review the goal setting process of assessing what you want to achieve, identify where you are and where you want to go, develop a plan, establish measures of success, and evaluating and adjusting the plan periodically. Explain why goals are SMART. Introduce the Goal Setting Worksheet because written goals are more likely to be achieved. Take time to walk the employee through the process of setting a goal. Meet periodically to assess progress and provide support. Before long, your protegee will be teaching others how to succeed and you will be known as a successful leader.

Inspire Others to Go Forth and do Good

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ImageAs the hour draws to a close the speaker comments on what a great bunch your group has been. She was so concerned things would not go well because she was not sure what she had to offer would meet the needs of the rest of the team or that she had enough material for the 60 minutes she was allowed. She asks of there are any questions; there are none, and thanks you all for coming. You stand up hoping to sneak out of the room before your boss has an opportunity to corner you about the poor performance of your direct report during the monthly senior staff training, too late, he yells across the room to meet him in his office in five minutes. What went wrong?

Often employees or outside subject matter experts are asked to make presentations about hot topics. Powerful presentations are not guaranteed just because the presenter possesses expert or referent power and may deny the members of the organization the inspiration to do great things with what they have learned. Even when the person makes a great presentation, they may end up talking about everything except the one or two areas of concern for your organization. Taking the time to identify objectives of what you want participants to learn helps you and the presenter focus on material that will enlighten, educate and inspire. Steven Covey calls it beginning with the end in mind.

It may seem too simple to write out a comprehensive terminal learning objective. Doing so focuses the efforts of the trainer to only that information which will help the audience achieve the final educational goal. The end result is a focused presentation meeting the needs of the audience. Steven Covey covers this principal when he advises his readers to begin with the end in mind.

There are three important parts of every learning objective whether it is the capstone objective, or a smaller piece of the puzzle. The parts are action, condition and standard. The action is what you want the student to learn how to accomplish when they complete the training. An example might be something like, “The clerk will complete a telephonic customer order on the computer.” The conditions for the task or action to be completed should include the environment and any tools or resources available while completing the action. Often training is conducted in a classroom or conference style setting and that should be reflected in the condition statement. Finally spell out how someone will know when the student has achieved success by stating the standard. This can be performance steps, standards for a finished product, a score on an examination or any other means of measuring performance. Often in a classroom this may be as simple as, “The student will respond correctly to questions related to the action.”

This is a sample of a TLO for a classroom setting where there will be no formal testing.

Action: Complete a telephonic customer order on the computer.

Conditions: A classroom environment, a block of instruction and random questions from the instructor.

Standard: Correctly answer questions related to taking a customer order on the phone and entering the data into the computer.

Ideally action statements start with a verb. Conditions describe resources available to complete the action. Standards should be measurable and attainable, very much like setting SMART goals.

Establishing learning objectives when assigning someone to conduct training improves communication and enables the trainer to understand the perceived needs of organization. Given an objective such as the one above instead of some generic statement like, “Hey Smith, I need you to give a class on that new software at the next staff training conference next week.” With the first, employees should walk out of the training understanding how to take customer orders using the new software. Who knows what you will get with the second. When you are tasked to provide training, having an understanding of the process allows you to develop a TLO, run it by the person who assigned it and then help you focus your attention on what is necessary to meet expectations.

Developing training objectives help trainers focus on presenting important information in the time allowed for students to achieve a given task. When assigned, both the manager and the trainer have better expectations of what the finished product includes. Quality learning objectives contain three parts, the action, the conditions, and the standards. When assigned by your manager to train others using a learning goal ensures you and he understand what is expected of you. Don’t let your next presentation flop. Take the time to develop an objective for the time you are given to teach others.

References

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. electronic edition. New York, NY: Rosetta Books, 2012.

Henry, V. E. (2002). The COMPSTAT paradigm: management accountability in policing, business, and the public sector. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law Publications.

http://www.grayharriman.com/ADDIE_Writing_Learning_Objectives.htm

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