Setting the Right Goals to Be Successful

We tend to set and reach goals in personal life and professional careers. Desired outcomes may have met victory and failure. Right goal setting is the key to achieve goals and become successful. Goal setting at work and personal life gives extra motivation, identifies necessary resources and creates the strategy. In this article, learn about the OKR goal-setting method that helps reach the aim and learn which skills are needed to achieve goals. Read more: Why Setting Goals is Important.

Objectives and key results: sub-objectives & traceability

In the 20th century 70’s Andy Grove, Intel Corporation CEO, invented a goal setting and reaching system called “Objectives and Key Results.” This method applies to the individual, team and organizational levels. The objective is the desired goal, plus it needs to be concretely formulated and challenging, framed in a spesertain time period.

The passion behind the main objective

Right goal setting includes more than one “what?”, what you want to attract and achieve. It’s essential to think, “why?”. The passion behind the aim and the actions helps not to give up and work until the aim is achieved.

Key results

And the key results are the main elements that lead to goal-reaching. Key results are measurable results achieved by self actions in the middle of the objective. They are specific, time-bounded and measurable, making them into quantitative metrics. A couple of smaller completed objectives lead to one bigger desired goal. Objective and key results is a widely used and powerful method and has helped many well-known companies to achieve their objectives and become successful. The OKR proves that goals don’t get achieved just by magic. Well-defined, measurable and action-driven key results help to reach the main goal. Create a goal-setting plan and follow the steps to succeed.

Tips for right goal setting

The planning process and sub-objectives are a part of goal setting and achieving. It also requires some important skills and thoughtful steps.

1. Helpful skills

These are skills needed to achieve the goal: planning, self-motivation, time management, flexibility, self-regulation, commitment and focus. Specific skills are mainly identified in Gray P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke’s Goal setting theory of motivation.

2. Correctly formulates key results

Jeff Gothelf, in Harvard Business Review’s article, wrote that key results in OKR should be created and formulated in the way to measure a change in the target audience’s behavior as a result of your specific actions. The target audience can be customers, clients or the work team itself.

3. Power of writing down the goal and sub-objectives

Research by Dominican University reveals the importance of writing down the goals. That helps accomplish the goal more successfully. 

4. Feedback importance

A progress report in the goal achieving process helps accomplish the aim significantly better. Because people don’t want to give up when others know their plan, peer support and suggestions may help find the best strategies for the desired goal.

5. Goal clarity in team

When the goal is clear for each team member and has a common goal understanding, the team performs better. Information flow and goal visibility are tools to create goal clarity.

Goal types 

In literature, goals are divided into two types – learning and performing. Performing goals, for example, are for creating something new in a limited time period. It requires specific knowledge and skills. Learning goals also are specific and challenging. Self-efficacy and strategies, information search, improve learning goals. Studies suggest setting learning goals instead of performing goals when not every team participant has all the required knowledge and abilities. Right goal setting includes planning and measuring processes. Accomplished sub-objectives lead to the main goal achievement. Goal setting opens doors for growth and development.

“Goals are the road maps that guide you to your destination. Cultivate the habit of setting clearly defined written goals; they are the road maps that guide you to your destination,” Roy T. Bennet, author.