make sure you know how they align with your purpose

We all have goals, whether we write them down or not. Maybe we want to travel to far-off places or hit a certain milestone in our career. However broad, they’re still goals.

For your business, your goals should be more deliberately planned so they translate into action.

You've probably heard of SMART goals. As it turns out, the SMART acronym has had many different words stuck in to fit the situation. The words most commonly used—and perhaps most productive—are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Here’s what that means:

Specific: What you want to accomplish, communicated as specifically as possible.

Measurable: How you measure your progress so you know when you’ve successfully hit your goal.

Achievable: Do you have the skills and resources required to accomplish this goal? If you don’t, can you obtain them in time?

Relevant: Why you’re setting this goal now. Is it relevant to the team’s roles and responsibilities? Does it advance your strategy?

Time-bound: You need to have a deadline. A deadline allows team members to prioritize which goals should come first, and it provides a sense of urgency.

As a purpose-driven business, take this one step further and make a SMART-A goal. Yes, smart-ahhh, said with a thick Boston accent.

The A in this case stands for Aligned. Some people tuck this under Relevant, but since it is so critical for purpose-driven businesses, it should be broken out so your team and stakeholders can plainly see how this goal ties back to your purpose — aka: why it matters and why they're spending their time on it.

Let’s look at a goal example a leader like you might set:

I’m going to help the team communicate better.

It's a good thing to work toward, but a SMART-A goal will serve you better. Here’s what that might look like:

Specific: Help the team communicate more efficiently.

Measurable: Our time-tracking software shows that team members spend an average of 1.5 hours per day on email. We aim to cut this time in half to 45 minutes per day.

Achievable: We have the budget and time to explore and implement other technical solutions like Slack or Loom to reduce the time spent digging through long email threads. We also have team members who have experience using them successfully.

Relevant: We’re growing, and we can increase our impact by reducing time wasted on unnecessary and inefficient tasks.

Time-bound: We will implement a new solution within two weeks and reduce the time spent on communication by half within the next month.

Aligned: We’re launching a new product and creating a whole new mission area by doing so. Making our communications more efficient is essential to focus our time on mission-area activities.

Now you and your team understand all aspects of the goal and why it matters, enabling you to put a plan together to reach it.

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Setting SMARTA Goals

make sure you know how they align with your purpose