Specific
The goal identifies a specific action you will take and/or outcome you will achieve.
Measurable
The goal includes a measurement that can be used to confirm it was achieved. This can be a true or false measurement.
Achievable
The goal is realistic and within your powers to achieve.
Relevant
The goal is relevant to your role and the goals of your organization and team.
Time-bound
The goal includes a deadline.
Revenue
Close sales representing $22,000 in monthly recurring revenue in the quarter.
Customer Service
Improve product knowledge to quickly find solutions to customer problems.
Timeframe: Q2
Measurement: customer satisfaction of 82% or higher
Timeframe: Q2
Measurement: customer satisfaction of 82% or higher
Coding
Increase productivity to deliver 14,000+ lines of code each month.
Testing
Develop test cases that capture all potential production failures.
Measurement: zero unknown defects discovered in production
Measurement: zero unknown defects discovered in production
Communication
Improve communication skills by giving more presentations.
Measurement: complete at least 4 presentations in Q1 & Q2, feedback from participants
Measurement: complete at least 4 presentations in Q1 & Q2, feedback from participants
Operations
Fix production incidents more quickly by improving the escalation and troubleshooting process. Measurement: Mean time to repair of 5 minutes or less in Q4
Marketing
Increase conversation rate to 2.3% for credit products.
Branding
Increase the value of the brand with successful promotional campaigns.
Measurement: brand recognition of 77% by the end of Q2.
Measurement: brand recognition of 77% by the end of Q2.
Sales
Increase win-rate to 55% or higher.
Projects
Deliver the ___ project to budget and schedule. Target: Budget and schedule variance of +/- 5%.
Customer Experience
Improve the business class meal service on the Berlin to New York flight.
Measurement: customer satisfaction with meal service of 67% in the December survey
Measurement: customer satisfaction with meal service of 67% in the December survey
Professional Development
Gain experience providing technical support and product knowledge to support sales meetings with prospective clients. Target: Assignment to 4-5 opportunities in a sales engineer capacity. Measurement: Feedback from sales.
Management
Increase average customer lifetime value to $1600 by the end of Q4 with new customer loyalty and upselling initiatives.
Leadership
Support junior team members to improve the quality of their work.
Measurement: feedback from junior team members, improvement in the defect rate of sprints by Q4
Measurement: feedback from junior team members, improvement in the defect rate of sprints by Q4
Executive Leadership
Improve operational efficiency by launching high margin products in the next fiscal year.
Measurement: Operating margins of 10.5% or higher
Measurement: Operating margins of 10.5% or higher
Student
Achieve a GPA of 3.4 this year.
Personal
Exercise 4-5 times a week this winter.
Summary
Smart objectives are a method for ensuring the quality of work objectives whereby you simply validate that each objective is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. This is intuitive and the only area where employees tend to struggle is with finding a measurement. This problem is easy enough to overcome with catch-all measurements such as budget variance, schedule variance and stakeholder feedback. The first two of these are ways to measure if you achieve your budget and deliver on-time respectively.
