Thank you to Shelley who stepped in to write this blog last week whilst I was holidaying in Wales. If you do blog let us know on LinkedIn or leave a message below and we’ll share it with the Business Training community.
The Business Training Community
This includes all our past, present and future students. And you can be involved in the way you’re most comfortable with. For example, you can join in discussions in our LinkedIn group, ask questions or leave comments on our Facebook page, follow our Tweets and once you are a student you can discuss your studies and network through our forum in the Student Community Area of our website.
SMART Goals
You may have come across a goal setting tool known as SMART that helps with planning and execution of projects.
For those who haven’t come across this before here is a quick explanation.
SMART is an acronym which helps you to define your goals. So make sure your goals are:
S – specific, significant, stretching
M – measurable, meaningful, motivational
A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented
R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented
T – time-based, timely, tangible, trackable.
To find out more visit: http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/smart-goals.html where you can download a SMARTER Goals template.
When SMART doesn’t work
I like SMART goals. They help a group of people understand what they are supposed to be doing, when and where. They give projects clarity.
But not everybody is a fan and one person who doesn’t like SMART goals is Alistair Dryburgh. Read his article Don’t you believe it: It’s smart to have SMART objectives. He sees SMART goals as a hindrance to innovation and development and pushing things that extra mile.
I agree with him in the sense that you can’t innovate using SMART goals. It’s more about developing the right kind of culture that will help with innovation.
Take Google for example. They famously let their staff use 20% of their working time to work on projects of their choice. This means that anyone in Google can come up with a great idea and work on it. See what Scott Burkan has to say about this in his blog.
However, now that Google is a larger company this culture seems to be going by the board. See what ex-employee Hans Cardinal has to say.
The 20% culture won’t work for every organization. But it’s worth thinking about how you can innovate in your business – new products, diversification and so on.
I’ve started a discussion on how to create new ideas in our LinkedIn group. So join in and let’s swop ideas on how to be innovative!
