It’s January! Another new year and it is normally the time for sitting down thinking about your yearly goal setting. Time to set those goals, write them down, set up measures and probably track your progress throughout the year. We all like to think that way. Anyways – it probably will be a waste of time.
Why? If you are writing those goals on where you want to go for the complete year… A year is a long time to try and stretch out your goals. Look at how well people do with their new year’s resolutions. Anyone already stop doing one of them?
I have the experience in yearly goal setting and then breaking those goals into a more manageable quarterly cycle. I also have volunteered at organizations that are on the yearly only cycle. After watching both in action… Time to really breakdown your goals into manageable cycles (whatever works for you!). For me, I am sticking to the quarterly cycle.
As a refresher, I have linked to my SMART goals post.
I did a training session with an organization last year about using SMART goals vs. their old way of doing things. They were open to using a different approach, but were not overly drawn to the quarterly aspect (or a different time stamp). I discussed with the leader about how he thought the new process went and what he learned. His simple take away was he needed to shorten the time frame. Although he is happier with the organizations results, he still saw some actions that slipped due to lack of forced review. He said, “it felt like if we did not force a review, the goals just seemed like out of sight, out of mind.”
Remember, you have to make sure that your SMART goals are within a process that works for communication, accountability and rewarding success. You want to get where you vision is taking you – make sure to break that journey into manageable chucks.
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