12 Apr Goal Planning

Posted at 11:36h in 5. eLeadership Academy, Strategy & Innovation by

Planning is essential to ensuring you achieve your goals. Completing tasks that enable you to reach your goal is crucial, and hence planning these tasks must be done first.

A good plan identifies causes and effects in achievable stages and all good plans must begin with a clear aim. The level of detail and accuracy of timescales will be determined by the features of the task itself, for example, a plan to change the culture within an organisation over time requires less detail than changing a production method. The level of detail is also dependent on an individual’s preferences.

Whatever the aim, all good plans tend to include:

  1. A clearly defined aim.
  2. Linked steps or stages or elements – resources, actions, knowledge, etc – the factors of cause and effect.
  3. Relevant and achievable proportions and timings (for steps, stages, elements)

SMART Planning is one of the most commonly used methods for planning. You can also access a useful goal planning tool here. http://www.businessballs.com/freepdfmaterials/goal_planner.pdf