SMART Professional Goals

The New Year has arrived and along with it comes the time honored tradition of the New Year’s resolution. New Year’s resolutions are infamous for setting us up to fail. Resolutions likely to fail tend to be trivial, unrealistic, or unable to motivate us. If you are not dedicated and motivated to do things like “work out everyday” or “change your diet”, your chances of failure are quite high. Just ask the millions who set resolutions like this and never follow through with them!

This time of year, many IT professionals choose to harness the spirit of the New Year’s resolution in creating professional goals. Professional goals are subject to the same general pitfalls as New Year’s resolutions, but unlike most resolutions, there is far more at stake when we fail to create and accomplish professional goals which help us get to where we really want to be professionally. Thankfully, there are some best practices and guidelines for goal setting that can set us up for success.

Setting Goals

Setting professional goals and objectives is much like planning a journey.  The goals are the destination, representing where we want to be at the end of our journey. The objectives are the waypoints which we must pass through in order to arrive at our destination. Arguably even more important is the act of choosing the journey itself. If you aren’t setting off on a path to where you really want to be, chances are you will eventually stray from that path, especially when the inevitable challenges arise.

The first step in setting professional goals is to identify points of congruence between yourself and the company you work for. Match your desires, purpose and vision, and the vision, mission, goals and philosophies of the company. This may require some extensive introspection, along with analysis of the company, but it is certainly part of the critical path to arriving where you want to be.

Once you have identified where you want to be and how this conforms to the company, the specific goals should be set. Try to set 3 or 4 goals for the year. Each of your professional goals should be traceable back to one or more corporate goals. Progress and achievement of goals should be quantifiable and associated with specific achievement dates.

Setting Objectives

Objectives are the waypoints and milestones you will reach along the path to your goal. Each goal should have its own set of objectives. More extensive objectives may be broken down into sub-objectives or tasks. Since your goal path is essentially a project, the principles of project management very much apply. Identifying deadlines, dependencies and the critical path should be part of the process. A helpful guideline to follow when creating your objectives is S.M.A.R.T.: objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Specific: Objectives should be action-oriented and have specificity in terms of what you are going to do, why it is important, who must be involved, when will it occur, and how it will be accomplished.

Measurable: The progress of each goal is quantified by the achievement of the objectives which support it. The supporting objectives should be quantifiable in more detail. Your objectives are action-oriented, but should be measurable in terms of outcomes. Measurable outcomes include quantities, rates of change, completed actions, efficiencies, observable actions, and other data.

Achievable: Objectives must be achievable given the timeframe and resources you have available. Consider the potential obstacles to achieving your objective. Do you have enough time? Do you have the resources required? Is achievement within the scope of your authority and control? Keep in mind the distinction between your perception of control and actual control. Some individuals are biased towards attributing outcomes to their locus of control, while others tend to attribute outcomes outside of their locus of control. Understanding your own personality and biases will help you set objectives which are both challenging and achievable.

Realistic: Objectives should not only be achievable, they should also be in line with the vision and mission of both yourself and the company. They do not need to be easy and may require changes to your behavior and priorities. Such changes will require determination and motivation which will be lacking if the objectives are not realistic. If objectives are beyond your reach or not closely aligned with your goal path they are not realistic.

Timely: Your objectives are the waypoints on your goal path. However, you clearly don’t want to merely arrive at the desired destination, you want to arrive on time. Your objectives, sub-objectives and tasks should adhere to a schedule. There should be deadlines and milestones which are both realistic but create the sense of urgency required to keep you moving on a steady pace in the right direction. Consider using a Gantt chart or some other tool which allows you to track the progress of your “goal project” to ensure you are staying on schedule. Being on time requires you to identify the dependencies and critical path so you know when and where to allocate your resources and efforts.

What path do you want to take?

For IT professionals, there are many paths to professional development which are mutually beneficial to both the individual and the company they work for. Perhaps the company is looking to win more projects which require competence in Oracle, so a database administrator sets a goal to become Oracle certified in database administration. Perhaps a software developer working for that same company sets a goal to become Oracle certified in application development. Do you work for an IT consulting firm which desires to stay on the leading edge of technology? Perhaps you set a goal to acquire a new skill, like learning an emerging programming language or software framework. Maybe the company’s clients are moving to a more agile methodology, so you set a goal to learn agile and utilize it on a project.

Once you find your path, follow the guidelines above to ensure you stay on it and arrive at the right place at the right time. Take the time required to find that happy medium between your personal desires and the vision and mission of the company. Set S.M.A.R.T. objectives which will guide you to where you want to be. Make sure you can trace each task to an objective, each objective to a goal, and each goal to where you want to be professionally. And hey, try and have some fun along the way. If you don’t enjoy the path you’re on, you won’t be getting very far on it!