How to Write SMART Goals: Examples, Step-by-Step Guide, and Free Template

 

In order to be effective, your goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. In this guide, we’ll show you how to write effective SMART goals for professional and personal scenarios.

What Is a SMART Goal?

A SMART goal is a framework for defining objectives, where each goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Follow this method to establish clear, attainable goals that hold you accountable to a deadline.

SMART goals are useful in all professional sectors and industries, as well as in personal life (see examples of personal and professional SMART goals below). Using this framework will help ensure that you are working toward clearly defined goals that you can execute by a deadline.

Additionally, the SMART framework eliminates guesswork and back-and-forth among parties. It also helps individuals and teams track progress with pre-defined success metrics.

Jake Munday is the Founder and CEO of Custom Neon, a company that creates custom signage. He says, “This framework ensures that objectives are not simply aspirational but also actionable by helping you create precise, manageable goals that can be tracked within a given timeframe.”

How to Create a SMART Goal

S	Specific	What do you want to accomplish? What specific outcome do you want to achieve?
M	Measurable	How will you measure your success? What type of data will you include? How will you evaluate it, and how frequently will you check?
A	Attainable	Do you have all the necessary skills and resources to achieve this goal? If not, can you obtain them?
R	Relevant	Is this goal aligned with your other goals, or the overarching goals of your team or organization?
T	Time-Bound	What is the timeframe for achieving this goal?

To create a SMART goal, decide what you want to accomplish, and then address each component of the SMART acronym. Make sure that your goal centers on an outcome, not a practice or set of behaviors. A SMART goal should, in the end, achieve something.

Use the chart below to see if your goal meets the SMART criteria at a high level. For a more in-depth discussion of how to write SMART goals, see our step-by-step how-to below.

Though it’s important that you clearly define your goal using the method above, remember that it’s still worthwhile to brainstorm all your various ideas. Once you see all the potential options, work with your team to refine the list and create SMART goals.

“I like to brainstorm with my team about our overarching or more nebulous goals, and then turn those into SMART goals,” says Allison Schmidt, the Marketing Manager at Get Online NOLA. “For example, a more vague goal could be to increase sales this year or to grow a TikTok following. However, that doesn't set you up for success. But having a broad goal helps you to break that down into more specific pieces or your SMART goals.”

To turn Schmidt’s example into a SMART goal, you would simply run it through the chart above — or follow the in-depth how-to below — to make it actionable, concrete, and measurable.

How to Write SMART Goals

To write a SMART goal, simply define each component in the SMART acronym. Go in order, and ensure that your proposed goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If it doesn’t meet each of these criteria, slowly refine it until it does.

Follow the step-by-step how-to below for guidance on how to write and refine your goals to ensure that they are SMART.

S: Ensure Your Goal Is Specific

Think about this step as the mission statement for your goal. Focus on an outcome you want to achieve, not just a set of practices you want to implement. Be as specific as possible.

To do this, answer the five W questions (who, what, when, where, and why):

• Who: Consider who needs to be involved to achieve the goal. Consider appointing roles and responsibilities.
• What: Dive into the details of what you want to accomplish.
• When: Envision a general sense of the timeline you anticipate you’ll need to achieve this goal. You’ll have to be much more specific about this in the “T” section of the how-to.
• Where: This question may not always apply, especially if you’re setting personal goals, but if there’s a location or relevant event your goal is tied to, identify it here.
• Why: What is the reason for the goal? When it comes to using this method for employees, the answer will likely be along the lines of company advancement or career development.
   

“Define the goal as clearly as possible. Avoid vagueness which can lead to misdirection,” says Munday.

M: Decide How You Will Measure Your Goal

In this step, decide which metrics you will use to track your progress and to define whether or not you are successful. Doing so makes a goal more tangible because it provides a way to concretely measure progress. If your goal will take several months to complete, set some milestones tied to specific subtasks.

“Ensure that the goal can be quantified or a clear indicator of progress can be identified,” says Munday. If the goal can’t be quantified, you will need to adjust it.

A: Ensure Your Goal Is Attainable

“Your goal should be challenging yet attainable with the available resources,” continues Munday.

Look at the resources available to you — people, capital, tools, etc. — and assess whether this goal is realistic with your current means. You might also look at data on past projects to determine whether this new goal is attainable.

If not, that doesn’t mean you need to abandon your goal. Simply assess the costs of investing in additional resources, or consider extending your timeline in the time-bound section below.

R: Ensure That Your Goal Is Relevant to Larger Objectives

In this scenario, relevance refers to how well your goal aligns to larger team or organizational initiatives. Ideally, your goal will support the other work you’re doing and serve your long-term goals in some way. If nothing else, it should not detract or divert energy away from goals you’re already committed to.

T: Give Yourself a Time Limit for Accomplishing Your Goal

Setting a hard deadline will help you measure progress, even if you don’t accomplish your goal in the allotted time period.

Anyone can set goals, but if it lacks realistic timing, chances are you’re not going to succeed. Commit to a target date for deliverables, and ask all stakeholders whether this goal is likely to be completed in the allotted time period.

If the goal will take three months to complete, it’s useful to define what should be achieved halfway through the process. Providing time constraints also creates a sense of urgency.

Microsoft Word SMART Goals Worksheet

When to Use: Use this worksheet to brainstorm and refine your SMART goals. Start by making an extensive list of all possibilities, and then slowly edit and refine that list in order to draft your final SMART goal.

Notable Features: The template is broken out into sections for each letter in the acronym: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Each section includes prompts that will help you brainstorm all the variables that you need to take into account. Then, you can home in on your priorities and write your finalized SMART goals.

How to Pick the Right SMART Goals

The “right” SMART goals will be in line with larger team or organizational objectives. Don’t commit to any new goal that conflicts with or counteracts an existing goal. Instead, make sure all goals align and work together to achieve organizational success.

“To choose the right SMART goals, I first assess the overall objectives of the project or initiative,” says Munday of Custom Neon. “Understanding the end game allows me to reverse engineer the steps needed to get there, which I then shape into specific SMART goals. It’s crucial that each goal directly contributes to the larger objective to maintain coherence and focus throughout the project.”

Alex Ugarte, the Operations Manager at London Office Space, echoes this sentiment. “Ensure [your goals] align closely with broader ambitions,” he says. “This ensures that every effort directly supports your overarching aims, optimizing impact and resource use.”

One way to accomplish this is to look at the larger organizational goal and break it down into smaller, more manageable goals. This not only makes it less intimidating to get started but also brings the loftier goals out of the abstract and transforms them into concrete, actionable steps.

Examples of SMART Goals

You can write SMART goals for any professional setting or industry, as well as for your personal life. Below, you’ll find real-world examples of initiatives and how to format them as SMART goals.

Professional SMART Goal to Improve Employee Performance and Retention

Ritchie Tendencia, the CEO of CSV Now (Consult Silicon Valley Now), wanted to improve overall employee satisfaction and performance. That’s a great impulse, but as written, it wasn’t concrete enough — that is, SMART enough — to be achievable or impactful.

Tendencia then defined the parameters of his goal using the SMART framework. The SMART version of this goal is as follows:

I want to reduce employee turnover rates by at least 10 percent in the next quarter.

This specific, measureable, and time-bound goal led to an “increased employee satisfaction via a structured training program [that] led to a 15 percent reduction in turnover rates and improved client satisfaction,” says Tendencia. “[This demonstrates] the effectiveness of the SMART framework in driving meaningful outcomes.”

Professional SMART Goal to Decrease Customer Churn Rate

Axel Lavergne is the Founder of ReviewFlowz, a review and testimonial service for SaaS companies. He wanted to increase customer satisfaction and retention — in other words, to decrease customer churn. His team needed to define both the timeline of this objective and the success metrics.

We aim to reduce customer churn rate by 10 percent in six months.

Once Lavergne and his team had clear-cut metrics and a schedule to adhere to, he ended up exceeding his goal. “We achieved this by improving our onboarding process, offering more comprehensive training resources, and regularly checking in with new customers. This resulted in stronger customer relationships and a significant reduction in churn,” he says.

Personal SMART Goal to Become a Better Leader

Jake Munday of Custom Neon wanted to improve his leadership skills and become a stronger CEO. However, he needed to focus his efforts on something tangible so the goal could be measured and the necessary actions wouldn’t be so vague.

Here’s how he turned it into a SMART goal:

I want to complete a leadership development course in three months, by dedicating two hours every week to study.

“This goal was specific to professional growth, measurable by course completion, achievable within my weekly schedule, relevant to enhancing my leadership skills as a founder and CEO, and time-bound by a three-month period,” says Munday.

Personal SMART Goal to Increase My Business Knowledge

Lavergne of ReviewFlowz wanted to increase his business knowledge by reading more books but needed to concretize the goal. He followed the SMART formula and wrote the following SMART goal:

I will increase my business knowledge by reading one business book per month for a year.

“This goal was specific, measurable, achievable, relevant to my professional growth, and time-bound, helping me stay disciplined and informed,” says Lavergne. “It significantly broadened my knowledge and improved my business strategies, making me a more effective leader.”

How to Track SMART Goals

It is imperative to track SMART goals to measure your progress and assess whether or not you were successful. Because SMART goals require you to define the metrics and timeframe of each goal up front, they are relatively easy to track and report on.

Below are some expert tips for tracking SMART goals:

• Ensure That the Goal Is Actually Measurable: “Make sure the goals you set out are actually measurable,” says Ugarte of London Office Space. “Have quantifiable criteria to track progress and determine when the goal has been achieved. For example, rather than aiming to ‘improve customer satisfaction,’ instead set a goal to ‘achieve a customer satisfaction score of 90 percent as measured by our end-of-service surveys.’" 
• Stick to the Metrics You Defined Up Front: Part of defining a SMART goal is choosing how you will measure success. To effectively report on your performance, don’t change these metrics midway through.
• Set Up a Tracking System: Use project management software or another goal-tracking program to monitor your progress. This ensures that you have a single source of truth for all team members to refer to and will help keep you accountable to your goals. Visit our complete roundup of goal tracking templates to get started tracking your progress.
• Consistently Evaluate Your Progress: Decide how frequently you will track progress. Don’t refer to your metrics so often that it becomes its own source of stress (i.e. every day), but check often enough that you are looped into any unanticipated hangups. Consistently monitoring progress will allow you to communicate and collaborate early if things go off course.
• Celebrate Every Win: “Make sure you celebrate once the goal's been hit,” says Logan Mallory, VP of Marketing at Motivosity, “recognizing that hard work, energy, and commitment is how you keep folks motivated, preventing future goals from feeling like a thankless hamster wheel.”

• Reflect on and Learn from Each Round of Goals: Even if you fall short of a goal, it’s worth reflecting on it with the team. What went well, and what could have gone better? Bring those new insights to your next round of goals, and adjust criteria — such as time or resources — to hit your new goals.
• Don’t Be Afraid to Reassess and Edit Your SMART Goals: “I always make sure I've got a few sessions scheduled across a week or two to revisit my SMART goals before finalizing them,” says Mallory of Motivosity. “SMART goals are like any rough draft. The very first stab at it probably won't be the best or most elegant. Give yourself time to play around with the goals, revisiting their clarity and details and really leaving space for final tweaks.”

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Setting goals and delivering value

 

Although positive, productive relationships will be your lifeblood as a new manager, you also need to get tactical. Follow these tips to ensure that you start making a difference as soon as possible after you start working as a manager:

1. Gather all the information you need. (Weeks 1–3)

How will you know what to focus on if you don’t understand the expectations, needs and goals of your supervisor, team, peers, customers and other key stakeholders? You won’t. And the consequences could be disastrous.

This is why you absolutely must get input. Immediately start scheduling informational meetings with key stakeholders. Prepare a list of good questions that will yield fertile ideas. And get ready to listen and observe like crazy. For more details on how to conduct these kinds of informational interviews, see No. 8 in our article How to ace your first week.

2. Zero in on your priorities. (Weeks 2-4)

Once you have a lay of the land — and have started building a solid reputation thanks to a few quick wins — it’s time to think carefully about what to focus on first in your new job.

Most experts recommend that you choose only three to five basic priorities. There might be a whole laundry list of items you’d like to work on, but you need to be disciplined and pick your battles. You’ll be a lot more likely to win them.

A good way to really focus is to ask yourself questions that get to the heart of the matter, such as:

• What will be most helpful to my manager, my team and my company?
• When my team and I look back on things a year from now, what do we want to be able to say we accomplished?
• What absolutely needs to happen for this team to move forward? 

Some priorities might come directly from your boss. Others might bubble up from conversations with your team or customers (make sure you always give credit where credit is due). Others may be ideas of yours that you’ve verified to be on-target during the information-gathering stage.

Examples of priorities to set during your first 90 days:

• Review and optimize all fundamental team processes.
• Meet or exceed the sales goals my supervisor expects.
• Break down communication barriers between our team and the customer success team.
• Improve my team’s morale.
• Remain one of the top-10 websites for technology news.

Tip: Try to also include some priorities that are centered on the human side of your work (e.g., Help team members create and reach long-term professional goals)and stability (e.g., Maintain the team’s status as a customer service leader).

Experienced manager Grayson Morris explains how he brought order to the chaos of a new role by focusing efforts on his top three goals.

Startup leader Jit Bhattacharya describes how his team’s planning process went from excruciating to effective.

3. Create SMART goals.

Once you’ve decided on some priorities, it’s time to get real — and real specific — about how to bring those priorities to life. In other words, you need to break them down into goals.

Stay away from lofty, vague goals. They’re tough to track, never mind reach. Make sure you create goals based on the SMART model. That means they should be:

• Specific: What exactly do you want to accomplish, in what time frame and with whom?
• Measurable: What milestones can you set to track your progress?
• Attainable: Can you really do it? Really really?
• Relevant: What matters most to you, your team and the company? Why mess around with anything else?
• Time-bound: How much time do you need to achieve the goal? How long did it take you or others to achieve something similar?

Example of a not-so-SMART goal: Eliminate long customer service calls.

Example of a SMART goal: By April 30, keep the team’s average number of customer service calls that exceed five minutes to fewer than 15 per day.

Tip: Don’t think about goals in isolation (i.e., as individual tasks to tick off one-by-one). This linear approach doesn’t reflect reality. Instead, think about how your goals interrelate. For example, let’s say you want to see stronger individual performance from your team members. That goal could also be driven by one around communicating better internally or designing more effective incentives. Make progress on one, and you’ll likely make progress on them all. And keep in mind that sometimes goals won’t advance one another; instead they could detract from one another.

Once you determine how your goals are connected, it will likely become more clear which ones are the most important, and how you can best allocate resources and time.

4. Communicate your priorities and goals. Until you sound like a broken record. (Weeks 4-12).

How you communicate your priorities and goals is just as important as which ones you choose. If you fail on this front, you simply won’t get any traction, and a few months down the road, your plan will be a distant, foggy memory.

Some experts have conducted research indicating that ideas aren’t internalized until they’ve been communicated 22 times. That’s a lot. Clearly, talking about or emailing your priorities and goals once just isn’t going to cut it!

You need to think about both how to relay your message, and the best media to use in doing it. And then you need to do it again. And again. And again. Think about this question whenever you tell or write to people about your intentions: What’s in it for them? The best way to get people to pay attention is to answer that question and address it immediately.

You should also consider the different forms of communication at your disposal. Do you want to give a presentation? Hammer home your priorities during one-on-one and group meetings? Use thank-you and update emails? Leverage your company’s intranet?

5. Enact your plan and measure progress. (Weeks 5-12)

Your priorities and goals won’t be perfect. That’s OK. If they are 80 percent of the way there, it’s time to run with what you’ve got. Break each SMART goal down into action items. Start delegating. And track your results. Every mini-goal reached along the way (or missed) is an opportunity to communicate your message, thank or course-correct your team, and ensure your legacy as a great manager.

For a full list of activities that we recommend you complete during your first 90 days, see our New manager to-do list.

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SMART

 

SMART is a methodology used to define goals and set tasks. The inventor of the SMART scheme is George T. Doran. He described this approach in the article ‘There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives’ for the magazine Management Review in 1981.

There are various ways to decipher the abbreviation SMART. The most well-known interpretations:

SMART is Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Assignable, Relevant/Realistic, and Time-bound/Time-limited.

There are also extended versions of this model, for example, SMARTER, in this case, two more criteria are added, which are interpreted variously in different sources. You may encounter the following options: Evaluated and Reviewed, Evaluate consistently and Recognize mastery, Exciting and Recorded, and others. Each criterion in SMART has its characteristic. Let’s see what they mean.

Specific

At this stage, you should answer the questions that begin with What? Who? Where? You must set a goal so that it is clear not only to you but also to everyone else who will participate in the process of achieving it. You can ask questions such as:

What do we want to achieve? What exactly do you need to do for this? Who will do it? Where will you do it?

You must plainly understand the result of your actions. Unambiguously formulate the goal, so that there is no temptation to interpret it differently.

Measurable

Here we are talking about indicators. It is necessary to set some value that we need to achieve. As a rule, it is expressed in quantitative terms (pieces, percent, money, etc.), but qualitative indicators can also be used. Everyone chooses the right one for themselves, the main thing is that these selected metrics can be tracked and compared. It is with the help of this data that we will be able to see the progress, as well as understand whether the goal has been achieved or not.

Achievable

We all dream about something, we want something, but we need to clearly understand which of our dreams are real, that is, feasible, and which are not. The same applies to goals. If you set a goal that is not achievable for objective reasons, then you will at least waste your time and effort. You will only be left with a sense of frustration, and this is certainly not what we are aiming for. Therefore, set achievable goals, to assess the situation and the resources that you have.

Relevant

Before you set a goal, you must understand its necessity. Is the chosen objective important? There are cases where even when you reach some goals, you do not get what you expected, because, in the end, your goal does not relate to the overall direction of the activity. This can be seen especially clearly in the business sector. Your specific goal should correspond to the company’s mission, its overall development, and relate to other tasks. If you notice contradictions after the analysis, then you should think again about your goal.

Time-Bound

The time frame is also very significant, if you do not limit yourself, then the whole process can be delayed for an indefinite period. Your goal may lose its relevance when you complete it. You can set intermediate values, each period will correspond to the steps to achieve your goal, and then track whether you are investing in the schedule. There must also be a deadline by which you must reach your goal.

So, we looked at five criteria for setting a goal using the SMART methodology. All five criteria have the same meaning, it is by adhering to all five points that you will be able to correctly formulate the objective.

This methodology is suitable for various fields of activity. Let’s look at it on the example of marketing.

SMART Marketing

The company XXX has designed a development strategy, according to which the management would like to see a strong and recognizable brand. To do this, it is proposed to prepare a plan of marketing activities that will be aimed at achieving strategic goals. For each event, an objective must be set in accordance with the SMART methodology. For example, increase the company’s brand awareness by 10% among subscribers of print industry media in Western Europe through advertising by the beginning of Q4 2021.

This objective matches the five criteria, it is clearly defined and understood, measurable (10%), achievable (we chose the real figure and the real deadline), corresponds to the strategic goals, and has a specific deadline (by the beginning of Q4 2021).

SMART helps you set a goal correctly, and when you have a distinct objective, it will be much easier for you to reach it.

https://www.marketing-psycho.com/