Setting SMARTER Goals at Early Stage

… achieve more in the rest of 2022

Hi Tribe
Happy new month to you
Cheers to a progressive rest of 2022

It is the first post of the new month and we’d be looking at setting up for success in the remaining months of the year.

Read on…

Starting right might mean different things to different people but it is usually best to start with a goal in mind. Whether you are starting a business, learning something new, starting a new quarter, even a new week. You should think, what do I hope to achieve with this and how do I do that? So the first thing should be setting goals, followed by plans to achieve them.

Briefly, we’d look at setting goals and planning for success. I am sure you have heard about SMART-ER goals, that is, the goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound, Executable and Realistic but how do you get to this point.

1. Reflect on the year so far. How did you do? What were you able to achieve? What didn’t you achieve? What helped? What challenges did you experience? All the good, bad, worse, best, everything.
2. Brain dump all your idea of success in your business this month — it helps to look at your overarching goals for the year and other ideas you had in the course of the year.
3. Before moving forward, identify the critical objectives you want to achieve in the next 3–5 months. Could be customer acquisition or an important event coming up or updating your products (based on feedback). Use this to set the theme for the rest of the year.
4. Look through your brain dump and prioritize. Which ones are important and essential right now? Which tasks can be reasonably completed within the available time frame? Based on the theme you’ve set in no.3 above, you can pick out important to-dos.
5. Next step is to look at each item selected and think about the nuances. Define your objectives without ambiguity. Make them as specific as possible.
6. Set your Key Results for each objective using concrete KPIs whenever possible. Also break this down into weekly key results
7. List the initiatives that will help you to achieve the KRs
8. Now write/type out your master list of goals with all the details
9. Keep it top of mind. Either put it somewhere visible or go through it daily
10. Share with the necessary stakeholders on your team so everyone knows what their actions should be driving at
11. Track it weekly, not monthly or at the end of the quarter
12. Most importantly — take action, try things out to figure out what works and remember, progress over perfection.

Some business areas to set goals around are: Minimum Viable Product, Launch, Key Hires, Design/Redesign, Feedback loop, Operations, Marketing, Investment, etc. depending on where your startup is currently at.

BONUS POINT: Try to set 12-week goals rather than yearly goals. Read The 12-Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington for better insight.

There you have it,
…ways to set SMARTER goals for your startup
Have any additions? Share them with me in the comment section

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