50 SMART Goals

When I was a middle manager, I saw many goals that ended up as roadkill on the business superhighway. Whatever the flavor of the year was, that’s what was reflected in the business goals. Things like: reducing dependence on one client, diversifying our service offerings, and others made the rounds through our business units.

One year our vice president even said something to the effect of “My being here is dependent on reducing our dependence on one particular client.” In hindsight, that goal was accomplished by slowly losing business from that client (because it was clearly not a priority) while not getting new ones. In other words, the overall business is now much smaller, and that vice president is still there.

Goal accomplished, then?

I have the impression that I am not alone in my experience with business goals.

Business goals should be SMART:

  • Specific. If your goal is simply “to improve” I’ve got news for you.  You probably won’t.
  • Measurable. Many wonderful goals are not easily measurable, and their success or failure gets drowned out by the debate.
  • Achievable. There’s nothing more demoralizing than being given goals that are outside of someone’s abilities.
  • Relevant. Ensuring the coffee is always hot and ready is a fantastic goal (in my office) but not relevant. That’s an extreme example but suffice it to say that it’s easy to set goals for secondary things. Keep them focused on the important performance metrics.
  • Time-bound. In my previous company it was standard procedure to set goals that had no end in sight. Unsurprisingly, years later there was a different goal and nobody really knew what the goals meant. You can do everything else right, but you still need to have a time frame to achieve the goal.

Here are some examples of SMART goals you might utilize in your business unit or project:

  1. Revenue
  2. Number of clients/customers
  3. Number of projects
  4. Revenue per client
  5. Revenue per project
  6. Value of repeat business
  7. Number of repeat customers
  8. Deadlines achieved (yes/no)
  9. Number of milestones achieved
  10. Cost variance
  11. Schedule variance
  12. Number of safety incidents
  13. Amount of lost time
  14. Safety audit score
  15. Percent complete at a certain date
  16. Delivery time
  17. After sales support response time
  18. Number of stores/locations
  19. Number of dealers
  20. Number of scope changes
  21. Value of scope changes
  22. Employee cost
  23. Employee turnover
  24. Employee satisfaction
  25. Utilization rate
  26. Employee charge out rate
  27. Number of employees
  28. Client satisfaction
  29. Input cost
  30. Input cost growth/decline rate
  31. Product selling price
  32. Number of units produced
  33. Number of units sold
  34. Total manufacturing cost
  35. Price of a supply unit
  36. Margin
  37. Manufacturing time
  38. Amount/value of waste
  39. Product quality (i.e. six sigma score or similar)
  40. Number of defects
  41. Number of warranty returns
  42. Number of leads generated
  43. Conversion rate
  44. Market share
  45. Market share among certain demographic, geographic area, etc.
  46. Earnings per share
  47. Earnings per share growth rate
  48. Profit
  49. P/E ratio
  50. Return on Investment (ROI)

This is simply a list to get your brainstorming started. Good luck making your goals SMART and let me know if you have anything to add!

About Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP

Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP, is the president of Roseke Engineering. As a bridge engineer and project manager, he manages projects ranging from small, local bridges to multi-million dollar projects. He is also the technical brains behind ProjectEngineer, the online project management system for engineers. He is a licensed professional engineer, certified project manager, and six sigma black belt. He lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, with his wife and two kids.

View all posts by Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP

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