It’s February 2023. Have you written your goals for the year? One of the most important factors in achieving success in a project is by setting goals. Goal setting is a great way to keep your team motivated and engaged with the project at hand. You want to be sure that you’re setting goals that are realistic and achievable but also challenging enough to make an impact.
If you want to learn more about project management and effective goal setting, we’d love to have you at our next Project Management Professional (PMP) class which takes place in February! This is a great chance to sharpen your skills and start off 2023 with a plan for success.
Back to goal-setting! Here are some tips for setting project goals for your team.
Make your goals SMART.
Goals that are “SMART” are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, giving a framework for effective action.
Let me explain this acronym further…
- Specific: Clearly defined and described to avoid any room for interpretation.
- Measurable: Quantifiable, objective criteria that can be measured to determine whether the goal has been met.
- Achievable: The goal is something that you can accomplish with minimal effort and resources. It isn’t too complicated or overwhelming, but it still requires effort on your part.
- Relevant: This means that the goals are aligned with your company’s overall mission and values and the goal of the project and are worth pursuing.
- Time-bound: Goals must have an end date when they’re achieved; otherwise, they’ll become vague or meaningless over time (and perhaps forgotten entirely!)
Keep everyone on the same page.
As a project manager, you’ve got a lot on your plate. You need to keep the team on track and make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You also want to make sure that everyone understands the goals of your project and knows how they can contribute to achieving those goals.
But how can you do this? How can you keep everyone on board with the goals of the project?
One way is by making sure that every member of your team has clearly defined roles and responsibilities in relation to achieving those goals. This means identifying each person’s role within their team and ensuring they understand what’s expected from them for everything else on the project to run smoothly.
Make sure they understand how they will be measured and what success looks like. This not only shows them where they can improve but also helps them feel a sense of accomplishment when they meet their goals.
Don’t forget to ask for feedback!
Don’t forget to ask for feedback!
As a project manager, you’re usually in charge of managing other people. That means that you need to get their input on how things are going. You may have meetings with your team members where you discuss projects and goals, but there is another way to get their feedback: through regular 1-on-1 meetings.
The purpose of these conversations is not only to discuss progress on individual tasks in the current phase of work (for example, “I’m currently working on creating this report”) but also to review overall goals within each phase and make sure they’re aligned with one another.
The clear everyone is about their individual roles and responsibilities within each phase, the better we’ll be able to coordinate our efforts toward achieving them together!
Conclusion
Setting goals is an important part of a project’s success, so it’s important that everyone on your team understands them. It’s also important that they know how they can help you achieve them and what kind of feedback they should give you along the way. Setting goals is a great way to motivate yourself and others toward success!
Want to learn more, check out our next PMP class.
