Written by Marie-Claude Turcotte
Image by Kanenori de Pixabay
Those who know me are aware that I am constantly in training; I have this visceral need to learn. I recently realized that a recommendation kept recurring in many trainings, regardless of the subject studied: objectives. In a LinkedIn training with Mathieu Laferrière a few years ago, he recommended that we set objectives for our publications. In the reference document of the Quebec Quality Movement on strategic planning, it is written to set strategic objectives. In my black belt training with Yves Lebrasseur, he said that we must have an objective for improvement activities. But why is it so important to set an objective?
The purpose of a goal is to determine where we want to be, but I may not be objective.
For my part, without a clear goal, I tend to wander a bit. I keep moving forward, because that's my nature, but I don't always know where I'll end up. It's a bit like when I go for a motorcycle ride on a beautiful summer day. If I don't know where I'm going, I end up coming back home after twenty minutes and I haven't really enjoyed the ride. Ultimately, when you have nowhere to go, you always get there. That's why setting a goal increases the likelihood of achieving it.
To set a good goal, I recommend that it be SMART, which stands for Simple, Measurable, Attainable (or Ambitious), Realistic, and Time-bound. A little research will help you learn more about this method if you are not already familiar with it. But before setting this goal, I recommend that you first fully understand the current situation and the challenge you are facing. Your goal allows you to achieve your vision, but that vision should not be clouded. Your goal may not be the same if you want to reduce errors during production as if you want to increase customer satisfaction, even though the two issues may seem related. Reducing order errors will certainly increase customer satisfaction, but perhaps simplifying the ordering process will increase it even more. In any case, it is a proper analysis of the problem that will guide you to the right solution, but that is a topic for another article.
Thus, to achieve objectives, they must first be defined, they must be SMART, and they must also match the context. Objectives are like a lighthouse in the darkness; during the stormy crossing, the clearer they are, the more likely we are to reach them.