Podcast Ep 71 | How to Use SMART Goals with Your Team

SMART goals are used to help teams achieve bet­ter out­comes. They turn a vague intent into a direct, spe­cif­ic under­stand­ing of what needs to be achieved. This helps in both mea­sur­ing progress and deter­min­ing whether the goal has been achieved.

The prob­lem with goals that aren’t SMART is that they don’t clear­ly state what needs to be achieved and when. This leads to poor exe­cu­tion and ulti­mate­ly teams who reg­u­lar­ly don’t achieve their goals.

This week we dis­cuss what SMART goals are and why you should use them in your strate­gic and busi­ness planning.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:12

Wel­come to the growth whis­pers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Not good com­pa­nies, not okay com­pa­nies, but amaz­ing, endur­ing com­pa­nies. I’m Kevin Lawrence. I’m here today, as always with my co host, Brad. Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles 00:28

Very good. Very good. Actu­al­ly. My gosh, it has been the wettest win­ter, I think ever or maybe by one year. It’s very, very wet. Look­ing for­ward to now begin­ning to get clos­er towards spring. How are you doing? Awesome.

Kevin Lawrence 00:45

Actu­al­ly, we had rain here for the first time in over a month today. It was our last cou­ple of days. It was kind of wild. Yeah, I’m doing great. Real­ly good. Look­ing for­ward to the show today. And what are we dig­ging into today?

Brad Giles 00:56

Oh, today we’re talk­ing about smart goals, how to use SMART goals where your team why they mat­ter. And why you and I are so picky about them why we are so annoy­ing­ly yes annoy­ing­ly picky and dig right into them with the teams that we work with why we make sure that they’re always smart. But let’s begin with Oh, yes. Yeah, it

Kevin Lawrence 01:22

seems to be for­ev­er. It’s one of these things that we work on and con­tin­ue to work on. Because it’s very hard to stay smart. When it comes to goals. We’ll dig into that. Let’s talk about the word of the day. Bri­an, was indeed I was okay. Let’s hear it. What’s the word, the phrase the sen­ti­ment of the day?

Brad Giles 01:38

That’s what we advo­cate peo­ple do. So mine is per­for­mance. Now why? Because we have just fin­ished the Olympic Games who bought that the 2020 Olympics would be done. But yeah, per­for­mance we’ve seen per­for­mance. I know Aus­tralia has done quite well only because it’s my coun­try. But there’s a big focus on per­for­mance for myself. And it’s, I guess it’s a glob­al are­na. That high­lights where peo­ple focus on per­for­mance. What’s your skin?

Kevin Lawrence 02:15

Oh, by the way, I think Cana­da did pret­ty well in the games, too. I think we did quite well, I was the best that we’ve done in a while I think I haven’t been up on it. last few days, I’m mine. My word of the day is nor­mal seat. So it was on an air­plane last week, and went to take an actu­al meal trip to anoth­er place on an air­plane in air­ports and hotels and tourist attrac­tions, that kind of stuff. And then even today back into a sports car group. And we had a lit­tle mini car ral­ly today with a bunch of peo­ple. And it was just, it was great to be back on the whole bunch of things with humans. So a lit­tle bit of nor­mal­cy, hop­ing it stays that way.

Brad Giles 02:57

or so. Awe­some. Yeah, I think I think just quick­ly, I think that Cana­da got sev­en gold medals and 24 medals over­all. So that’s quite a good outcome.

Kevin Lawrence 03:08

Well, with­in Aus­tralia get 17 gold and 46 medals over­all. So Holy

Kevin Lawrence 03:15

yes. Sim­i­lar populations.

Brad Giles 03:17

Yeah, East sim­i­lar episode that I did­n’t mean to bring that up. Sor­ry about that.

Kevin Lawrence 03:21

I am well, you know, and that’s good. I set myself up there and wait­ing to go the fact spread. So smart goals we’re talk­ing about today. And it’s and it’s some­thing that it shocks me how smart peo­ple are when it comes to goals. It’s it is mind blow­ing, actu­al­ly, and incred­i­bly smart, edu­cat­ed expe­ri­ence, exec­u­tives and lead­ers come up with these mushy, squishy, and smart goals all the time. And even when they under­stand that there’s, there’s some­thing about human nature that gets in the way. And it’s some­thing that we basi­cal­ly end up putting a lot of ener­gy into, we have some tools to help to do it. So it’s a, it’s a real chal­lenge for a lot of com­pa­nies in teams. So to start a lot of talk about what is a SMART goal

Brad Giles 04:16

is it? Well, a SMART goal. It’s an acronym, an acronym, but what it does, and we’ll dig into what the acronym stands for in a moment. But what it does, is it helps you to set a tar­get or a goal. That is I guess, that that is more spe­cif­ic than oth­er­wise An exam­ple might be so we’re going to sell more stuff. You and I have both been in many, many meet­ings where many peo­ple put down goals or pri­or­i­ties that are not spe­cif­ic that are very gener­ic. So we need to increase sales. And the obvi­ous come­back is well, how much and by when. And then like, the per­son who’s mak­ing this state­ment kind of looks and thinks lemon real­ly thought about that, but we def­i­nite­ly need it need to increase sales. So smart goals help us to be very clear about what it is that we’re try­ing to achieve. So that in the progress of the 13 week race or the year over the time peri­od, that I we can mea­sure it and be we know when we’ve crossed the fin­ish line.

Kevin Lawrence 05:40

Yeah, it just makes it real clear what it is. And it’s shock­ing how a lot of times peo­ple think in gener­ic terms, and they have good inten­tions. You know, one that I’ve seen in peo­ple’s per­son­al life is I want to get health­i­er. While Isn’t that nice? Was it? Okay, well, I’m gonna work out more. Okay. And if you so so what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that so we’re all going to work out three times a week. Okay? What kind of work­out? Are you going to? Do you know what I’m going to want to want one of my team mem­bers and Tim, he’s got his goal, his goals around sweat­ing. I think he says he wants to sweat three times a week. Not work­out, but you know, still sweat­ing three times a week for at least 30 min­utes. Because it takes into account a whole bunch of things, it means your body’s work­ing real­ly, real­ly hard. That’s a cer­tain type of work­out. Go ahead, right? Or it’s sum­mer. Or it’s or it’s some­where Yes, or, or he went some­where real­ly hot, or he just came out of the sauna. But it is and whether it’s an activ­i­ty goal, you know about that, or it’s a goal some­one has around blood pres­sure or weight or who knows what, it’s just get­ting real­ly tan­gi­ble. And the more tan­gi­ble, the eas­i­er it is to know what it is you need to focus on. Num­ber one, num­ber two was eas­i­er from a man­age­ment per­spec­tive to hold peo­ple account­able or to hold your­self account­able when you get down to release some­thing’s tangible.

Brad Giles 07:03

Yeah, yeah. So. So smart goals, or smart pri­or­i­ties are real­ly, I guess, we would talk about it in the con­text of pri­or­i­ties, because KPIs are almost by their very nature, smart. So if I was a sales per­son, okay, I would prob­a­bly have a sales bud­get. In oth­er words, I need to sell 100 units. And that 100 units inher­ent in that would be a time peri­od per month, or per week, or per year. So So in a way, it’s a lit­tle bit like the KPIs or work­ing in the busi­ness. They’re kind of in their very nature set in a often­times, in a smart way. But the pri­or­i­ty is to work on the busi­ness. That’s what we’re real­ly big. That’s where I need to be smart.

Kevin Lawrence 08:03

As I said dif­fer­ent­ly, you know, KPIs or per­for­mance indi­ca­tion, errors and met­rics, what­ev­er you want to call them. They are num­bers by nature. Yeah, we’re goals gen­er­al­ly are more like­ly to be projects. So num­bers by nature are mea­sur­able, and they can be a bit messy. But goals or projects need a lit­tle bit of help. By nature, they’re good, intense, but they’re con­cep­tu­al, rather than tan­gi­ble. So So Brad, I know you did a lit­tle research on the his­to­ry of smart goals. You want to share that and then we can dig into what they are and some examples.

Brad Giles 08:40

Yeah, so where did SMART goals come from they, they were devel­oped by a chap called George Doran, Arthur Miller and James Cun­ning­ham in a 1981 arti­cle, there’s a s m AR t. y way to write man­age­ment goals and objec­tives. So it’s very close­ly linked and with Peter Druck­er’s man­age­ment by objec­tives, so so he refers to the SMART goals as well. And it very much comes from that very pop­u­lar school of thought. And so then, I’ve heard before that there are about 81 dif­fer­ent ways to write the acronym smart, you could set start with spe­cif­ic or you could use tar­get­ed or time based. So these are the ones that that, in my hum­ble opin­ion, are most pop­u­lar. But real­ly, there there are some sim­i­lar­i­ties. So let’s just quick­ly go through them. If you like.

Kevin Lawrence 09:51

And before you before you men­tioned Druck­er’s man­age­ment by objec­tive. Yeah. And when we look at lead­er­ship’s you know, lead­ers or CEOs or execs, that is The one gap a lot of them have with their peo­ple because their peo­ple are hard to man­age, they’ll say or they dri­ve them crazy. And time and time and time again, what do we do? We start and set objec­tives. Because end of the day, how I feel about Fred on my team is inter­est­ing. But how did Fred pro­duce ver­sus his goals? And how did he do on his oper­a­tional met­rics. And when you start man­ag­ing by objec­tive, takes a lot of the emo­tion out of it starts with a lit­tle more facts behind it. And at the end of the day, it makes it more con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tion with some­one like Fred or eas­i­er to have con­ver­sa­tion, because it’s about things hap­pen­ing or not hap­pen­ing, ver­sus maybe how you feel. And you know, you might not even be jus­ti­fied to have a con­ver­sa­tion about how you feel. But when it’s around objec­tive, it’s the thing that’s sup­posed to hap­pen is less per­son­al, it just, it makes it a lot eas­i­er to lead and man­age peo­ple and for them to know, their march­ing orders to.

Brad Giles 10:55

Yeah, it intro­duces a third ele­ment to the rela­tion­ship. I like you, Kevin, but you know, you’re only doing 50% of the stuff that you’re sup­posed to do to retain your posi­tion. And that’s a prob­lem that we got to work through. And so that’s a very dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion to only it being the two of us. And I don’t think that you’re doing the right thing. In that sense. It, it intro­duces that impor­tant third ele­ment. So let’s per­haps go through them, Shall we do it Pacif­ic is num­ber one s smart, spe­cif­ic. So they need to be these pri­or­i­ties need to be spe­cif­ic and nar­row for more effec­tive planning.

Kevin Lawrence 11:41

So Rob, we can’t be wired. Yeah, it just it needs to be very point­ed at some­thing. And often they will have words in there like all or every or things like that, which are dan­ger words, to improve all things, or every­thing is almost sta­tis­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble in a lot of cas­es. So it’s spe­cif­ic nar­row­ing down on something.

Brad Giles 12:03

One exam­ple is I’m sor­ry, one exam­ple is soft­ware project. So in a per­son­’s pri­or­i­ties, they might write the new Sales­force project. And that’s it. And it’s, it’s, that may be way too wide, or way too big rel­a­tive to the time­frame of 90 days.

Kevin Lawrence 12:23

Yep, exact­ly. sec­ond one’s mea­sur­able, and basi­cal­ly define the evi­dence that will prove you’re mak­ing progress, and have com­plet­ed the goal. This is the one that I am a big stick­ler about. It’s what’s the num­ber and I always say, what, what num­ber can we put in here, that would make an accoun­tant hap­py, because then they can know for sure if it’s hap­pen­ing, or not hap­pen­ing, it’s not just sto­ry, it’s a sta­tis­tic. This is crit­i­cal. So it’s, you know, no sweat. By work­ing out at the gym, three times a week for at least 45 min­utes as an exam­ple of exer­cise sales. It would be, you know, a mea­sur­able would be to sign con­tracts with for new clients to a val­ue of a min­i­mum of $2 mil­lion per con­tract. Right? And then there’s the dol­lar val­ue in there. There’s also whether it was signed con­tract or an invoice con­tract all these lit­tle details that real­ly help you to get a measurable.

Brad Giles 13:30

And yeah, very sim­ple. The sim­ple thing that I say is, how do you know when you’ve crossed the fin­ish line using a metaphor of a rice? Like, because we if we don’t know, we don’t know, we can look at the gold medal tal­ly, and know exact­ly where coun­try rates? And so the sim­ple, quick and dirty that I use with teams is I say, so. Does your pri­or­i­ty have a num­ber or a per­cent­age on it? Is it mea­sur­able? Because if it does­n’t, we’ll let’s put it and I would be as picky as to say rather than fin­ish the project 100% com­plete is what I would encour­age them to write

Kevin Lawrence 14:12

it right when and I will add in things some­times like pre­sent­ed to the Board or approved by the board or pre­sent­ed to the exec­u­tive team or approved by the exec­u­tive. The fact that you wrote your report is inter­est­ing, did it get approved, because maybe the approval is good or pre­sent­ed to the Board and fund­ing secured? Right, like what­ev­er the final line, you want to cross this mea­sur­able piece and I find gen­er­al­ly, there often needs to be two or three or four spe­cif­ic, tan­gi­ble things and it’s like, I’m going to get the gray, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be to weigh under 72 grams and make main­tain the qual­i­ty of at least x, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be this, you gen­er­al­ly need to add quite a few clar­i­fy­ing things. Because also what hap­pens is three months or a year lat­er, you sit back and look at it and you for­get what it was. Yeah, like I’ve learned, for exam­ple, after doing this, so many times the, when it comes to rev­enue, invoiced ver­sus signed are two very dif­fer­ent things. The con­tract signed, ver­sus the invoice sent to a client, those are drawn in some busi­ness­es, that can be a lag time of an hour, or it can be a lag time of two years. Yeah, depend­ing on so that that that detail there when you’re talk­ing about sales. The oth­er piece is all sales aren’t cre­at­ed equal. We’re gonna ale sign those clients for $2 mil­lion each. Okay? At what mar­gin, because not all sales are cre­at­ed equal. So any­way, there’s all kinds of oth­er things we can get into lots of details, but being real­ly spe­cif­ic will being measurable.

Brad Giles 15:56

And the last thing about mea­sur­able is that you can track its progress through the peri­od. So if you need to sell 130 wid­gets in the next quar­ter of 13 weeks, that means that you’re going to have 10 wid­gets per week, on aver­age being sold. So at the week­ly meet­ing, you can report to the team on the progress. If it’s not mea­sur­able. What do you talk about it? The week­ly meet­ing, it’s is

Kevin Lawrence 16:26

an opin­ion fest is going great.

Brad Giles 16:29

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 16:29

it’s going awe­some. And the last thing I’ll say a mea­sure, well, we got­ta we’re gonna move along over there. We’re try­ing to do a lit­tle quick­er episode here today. Is the oth­er thing I’ve mea­sur­able, just slipped on my brain, it was real­ly good. Brad, it was one of those things, it was mea­sur­ing the whole, it’ll come back and come back. The key is, is being crys­tal clear. And mak­ing it eas­i­er for peo­ple to know what great looks like, so they can help them­selves and their teams to lead towards

Brad Giles 17:00

Oh my god, I’m so excit­ed about the next one. achiev­able. Oh, my God, it is achiev­able. Yeah. So here’s what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna build a new elec­tric car with no expe­ri­ence in the next 13 weeks, and it’s gonna be awe­some oil. And every­one gets super excit­ed about that. And they’re high fiv­ing, they’re pump­ing each oth­er on the back of the back. And then we get 10 weeks in, there we go. And you know what, like, maybe we set the bar a lit­tle bit too high.

Kevin Lawrence 17:34

And we did­n’t even get gov­ern­ment approval to test one nev­er­mind, build one, you know, or what­ev­er. And, and so this is a part of the achiev­able some­times we work on action plans, in our meet­ings, we’ll build a 10 2030 point action plan. And you’ll notice things that are time sen­si­tive, or depen­den­cies. And it also helps you to lock down the achiev­abil­i­ty because you real­ize some things just aren’t pos­si­ble. But the achiev­able one is big, because that’s why we have things where peo­ple will say all and every, yeah, we’re going to ful­ly imple­ment the RP sys­tem this quar­ter. Like hell you are, what specif­i­cal­ly Will you absolute­ly get done will be this year piece tak­en a cou­ple years to imple­ment nor­mal­ly, because there’s a whole you know, but it’s Is that pos­si­ble? Or, you know, we’re gonna land for new clients at 2 mil­lion bucks apiece. Great. How many did we land in the last year? Yeah, none. Okay. Or we’re gonna do it a gross mar­gin of 48%. Okay, what’s our mark? Gross Mar­gin? No, 32? Well, no, that’s not pos­si­ble. Like, there’s a build, even if it could be pos­si­ble. It’s, is it real­is­tic, and, you know, where peo­ple when I was younger, and a lot of youth­ful exu­ber­ance, you know, we often would set stretch goals, and real­ly push your­self too hard. But that sets up as orga­ni­za­tions get larg­er for a lot of fail­ure. So is it is good to stretch, but is it actu­al­ly seri­ous­ly achiev­able. And some­times your best to talk to some peo­ple on your team to real­ly get a real­i­ty check on it. We also have in meet­ings, a cool­ing off peri­od of 48 hours. Because some­times peo­ple get excit­ed and over com­mit­ted to meet­ing because they feel pres­sure or just enthu­si­asm. And then they get a real­i­ty check. So with­in 48 hours, you can come back and make a change. Because we like to give peo­ple time, so we don’t over com­mit because you’re going to be held account­able. Yeah,

Brad Giles 19:27

I do a very sim­i­lar thing I would say you’ve got between now and the first week­ly meet­ing, to stress and test your ideas to make sure that we’re going to go for 100 we’re actu­al­ly going to go for it because I learned a lit­tle bit of stuff to tight­en up that stuff. But it’s let’s say it’s with­in the ball­park at the end of a plan­ning ses­sion. And I guess the only oth­er thing about achiev­able is peo­ple will some­times say when they have failed at the end of the quar­ter about the pre­vi­ous quar­ter. Yeah, look, I just did­n’t I just did­n’t real­ly real­ize I had as much time as I did, like I thought I had more time to devote to this and my team took all this time away. So it’s got to be achiev­able with­in the time peri­od. Right? And, and, and give your­self a bit of grace in the ear­ly days, because you get, you get to bet­ter appre­ci­ate this, the more that

Kevin Lawrence 20:19

there was, there’s achiev­able based on the forces of nature and resources, that is achiev­able in your sched­ule. Any­one and when peo­ple are tak­ing vaca­tions or oth­er things that are going on, so when shape­able con­tent con­cern­ing every­thing in the envi­ron­ment, alright, so that’s what we got spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, achiev­able. Now we’ll go to the are in smart, which is rel­e­vant, basi­cal­ly, do they mat­ter? Like, does it relate to your long term goals? Does it fit with your val­ues and your cul­ture and what you’re about, if you have a big we’re at an event today. And we were doing an envi­ron­men­tal tour. And we’re we went through a bog called burns bog near where we live, and learn­ing how bogs are cre­at­ed, which is like a wet­land. And, and, and we went on, there’s a lot of stuff about wet­lands today, it was quite fas­ci­nat­ing this event, but the long sto­ry short is, you know, as some­one was say­ing, you know, here we are dri­ving around in sports cars, which is the oth­er spec­trum of the envi­ron­men­tal world. And then this beau­ti­ful woman was walk­ing us through and teach­ing us all about wet­lands and reha­bil­i­tat­ing wet­lands and how it’s good for the world and the envi­ron­ment. And we’re dri­ving gas guz­zling cars. And it sort of say, that’s, you know, in many ways, it’s almost kind of fun­ny, it’s almost like a val­ues con­flict. You know, and, and I care about the envi­ron­ment stuff. But it’s almost like if you’re, you know, if you’re a real strong envi­ron­men­tal com­pa­ny, you know, buy­ing or set­ting up some­thing to start burn­ing fos­sil fuels, you’ll may not fit, it’s not rel­e­vant, even though it could be a good busi­ness idea. It may not be rel­e­vant for your cul­ture, it could be a con­flict with what you’re about as a com­pa­ny. And then there’s ones where goals, just, peo­ple get excit­ed about it and have pet projects, but they actu­al­ly don’t fit into the strat­e­gy. Yeah. And that’s why we have our top three or five pri­or­i­ties for a three year time hori­zon, and a one year and a quar­ter. But it bet­ter darn well fit into what we want to make hap­pen in the next three years. Oth­er­wise, it may not even though it’s your pet project, it may not be rel­e­vant enough to even be on the list.

Brad Giles 22:22

Yeah, I met with a CEO recent­ly. And she was say­ing how, how her biggest prob­lem is that she had these eight areas of oppor­tu­ni­ty. And she was over­whelmed because she did­n’t know where to focus, which is kind of rel­e­vant, irrel­e­vant. Okay. And that. So what we did then is we focused in and dis­cussed the hedge­hog, we dis­cussed what we’ve spo­ken about the hedge­hog on this pod­cast from Jim Collins before, we dis­cussed the hedge­hog, how it works. And she pret­ty much elim­i­nat­ed about four or five of them to focus on the things that real­ly mat­ter. So when build­ing your smart pri­or­i­ties, they’ve got to be rel­e­vant to your, your over­all com­pa­ny val­ues and goals and long term objectives.

Kevin Lawrence 23:16

Yep, not maybe not just you or some­one’s pet project, okay. And then final­ly, the T in smartest time based, just a real­is­tic time. Now nor­mal­ly, in the meth­ods that we use, most goals have a quar­ter­ly rhythm, it’s makes it sim­pler. So most of our pri­or­i­ties, it’s based on the 90 day rhythm maneu­ver, our firm and lots of our clients run on a cal­en­dar year. So that this quar­ter that we’re in is July, August, Sep­tem­ber, which means at this point, we have about two months left lit­tle less than two months left. And by default, it’s by the end of Sep­tem­ber is us is the start­ing point. Now, we might sequence them and have them at dif­fer­ent times, but a clear dead­line of when you are going to aim to have a com­plete and it helps that’s why we do quar­ter­ly goals is you’ve got you know every­one crams for the exam leaves their home­work till the end. But real­ly at the end of it, it’s when we do coor­di­nate because you have four times a year you cram for the exam, you might do some month­ly goals or even week­ly goals to help move progress more often. But the point is a dead­line to help you stay focused. So you can be cre­ative about get­ting it done more quick­ly, rather than let­ting it dry.

Brad Giles 24:29

And maybe it relates to oth­er peo­ple’s pri­or­i­ties as well. Maybe some­one else has a goal or a pri­or­i­ty for the quar­ter that’s rely­ing on what you’re doing. So you’ve got to liaise with them to make sure okay, so I’ll get it done by week four, so that you can get yours done by week 12 or what­ev­er it is. But it must absolute­ly must have a date on a pri­or­i­ty. It must have a num­ber and a per­cent­age and a date. If it does­n’t, then that’s the ques­tion you’ve got to ask.

Kevin Lawrence 24:58

Yeah, and so that’s it. I’m gonna show them both. I have anoth­er exam­ple, we’ll wrap this one up. But there are Spe­cif­ic, Mea­sur­able, Achiev­able, Rel­e­vant and time based. I just had a flash of a meet­ing I was in. And in one of the com­pa­nies that we work with, we review com­pa­ny lev­el goals and depart­ment goals, right? Each of the there’s like sev­en or eight key depart­ments. And we review those every quar­ter, we set them every quar­ter and review them. And I remem­ber being in a meet­ing when I was, you know, prob­a­bly like 18 months ago. And as we went through this, we saw and reviewed the depart­ment goals and one of the depart­ment, their goals weren’t smart. And every­one’s going through and you can feel the ten­sion in the room. Peo­ple are like, Ah, you’re say­ing you’re 87% com­plete? Like, yeah, I’m not buy­ing it. But I can’t chal­lenge you. Because there’s noth­ing there to chal­lenge against. It was their opin­ion that they were 87% com­plete, there was no way to have an intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion. And I believe they worked hard. And I believe they did some good work. But the goal was much and it was very, very hard to do any­thing con­struc­tive with it for them or for us, because there was the mea­sur­ing stick was non existent.

Brad Giles 26:09

Yeah, it’s like, go back to the Olympics. Imag­ine being at the Olympics, when there was no def­i­n­i­tion of when you crossed the fin­ish line. Yeah, like, you absolute­ly need that. And you need the time to know how oth­er peo­ple are per­form­ing. Yep. So awe­some. What a good chat around SMART goals today. And a quick note, our next two episodes are going to be about how the best lead­ers hold peo­ple account­able. So how to cre­ate a cul­ture of a cul­ture of account­abil­i­ty. So do look for­ward to those ones. So let’s do a super quick sum­ma­ry here. Often the prob­lem is goals aren’t smart, they don’t goals or pri­or­i­ties. They don’t clear­ly state what needs to be achieved. That leads to poor exe­cu­tion. So they need to be Spe­cif­ic, Mea­sur­able, Achiev­able, Rel­e­vant and time based. Kevin, would you like to close this out, please?

27:10

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 27:11

and it’s a very smart thing to have smart goals. And the truth is, it makes your life and their life he’s not cheesy as an awe­some, but it makes your life in their life bet­ter, because it’s crys­tal clear what great­ness looks like in their world and what they must achieve. And it’s crys­tal clear for you as a man­ag­er, because you can have con­ver­sa­tions, how you doing on the five things you said are so impor­tant. And because it’s math­e­mat­i­cal, the mea­sure­ments, you don’t have to have an opin­ion fast, and you have a lot less ten­sion. So basi­cal­ly, in many ways, it’s like hav­ing lines on the high­way and speed signs on the high­way. Every­one knows what to expect. And it makes it a heck of a lot eas­i­er. So be smart. Help your peo­ple be smart. That’s kind of what we’re here to help you. And if you’re already doing it, con­grats and if not, if you need a tune up, just tight­en it up. So let’s say want to wrap this up there, Brad. Okay.

Brad Giles 28:01

Thank you for your time today. We heard that you’ve got­ten very about smart goals. As always, this is the growth whis­pers and I’m Brad Giles. You can find me at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au. Kevin, you can find out Lawrence and co​.com. And of course if you are so inter­est­ed, this is on not only pod­casts, but also on YouTube. So do have a good week and we look for­ward to chat­ting to you again next week. Take it