Goal Setting

Goal Setting involves establishing specific, measurable and time-targeted objectives. It suggests that it's an effective tool for making progress by ensuring that participants in a group with a common goal are clearly aware of what is expected from them. In business, goal setting has the advantages of encouraging participants to put in substantial effort and because every member has defined expectations set upon him or her (high role perception), little room is left for inadequate effort going unnoticed. 

Dream big visions and the visions drive you to dream goals. Once goals are defined, plan of actions takes place. Concrete action plans and calculated efforts turn your dreams into reality and win you exuberant success. If your aims, desires and aspirations are properly formulated in right direction, you are automatically charged to concentrate on your endeavours with great enthusiasm to reach the goal. When your behavioural pattern conforms to the above state of mind, goals dreamed by you become challenges for you. 

If you try to assiduously visualize your goals, you must be full of zest and vitality. You have to make yourself capable enough to accept the challenges that come to your way and to convert them into the steps to success. If you raise yourself to such position, nothing can prevent you from reaching set targets. We all strive very hard to achieve our goals by exerting whole hearted efforts, but even after achieving the same, we do not feel satisfied or we do not rejoice.  Why?  The reason lies not with the achievement of goals but the goal itself does not bring any enthusiasm to otherwise nonchalant employees.  

Setting of goal and measurement of the progress are very important. Goals are to be fixed very scientifically with a tremendous zeal for the same. People mostly follow the method called as SMART which is the most ideal method of setting goals.  It is as under:-

S          =          Specific things which are being qualified

M         =          Measurement

A          =          Attainable

R         =          Realistic

T          =          Timely

This method will definitely invigorate a person to put his best to convert the set goals into reality.  But, sometimes, it happens that the people, who remain successful in achieving goals, lack profound involvement in their endeavours which results into a total apathy to their own achievements. The main reason is that the goals set by them fail to rejoice them even in case of their achievement.  If this is a fact, then the goal setting is quite discouraging.  These might have not framed in line with the need of personal goals. Definitely, personal goals are the derivatives of the organizational goals and vice-versa. So organizations must see that their goals meet the personal values of employees. A goal setting should have a very wider prospect.  It should not be visualized merely as a yardstick to achieve a periodic target or pass an examination which is conducted each year for any given course. An achievement is seen with the exertion of resources and the toils put in so that a complete joy, pride and self-satisfaction are truly enjoyed.

How to fix goals: To be most effective, goals should be tangible, specific, realistic and have a time targeted for completion. There must be realistic plans to achieve the intended goal. For example, setting a goal to go to Mars on a shoe string budget is not a realistic goal, while setting a goal to travel to Mumbai as a backpacker is a possible goal. To be most effective, your goals should be tangible, specific, realistic and have a time targeted for completion. There must be realistic plans to achieve the intended goal.

Motivation: Goal setting also requires motivation. Simply setting a target may lead to progress in the desired direction, but understanding why the target is desired encourages personal investment into the achievement of the goal. In the motivation film "The Opus" (2008), achievement expert Douglas Vermeeren explains this important principle clearly: "When people talk of clarity it often gets described as just writing down your goals. The most important element is often left out. That is finding your motivation. If you want to get to your goals quickly you have got to clarify on why you want it. What does it mean to you? Why do you need it in your life? And the stronger and the more important the why, the more power you will have to pursue that goal." 

How goal setting works: Simply urging employees to “do their best” will prove as an advice only.  But if a goal is established and set for them, they will have to focus their attention to the same. A goal is thereby of vital importance because it facilitates an individual in focusing their efforts in a specified direction. In other words; goals canalize behavior