Plan the path that will lead you toward success most effectively
It’s also important to understand that circumstances change. A target that’s not achievable today,
can be practically within your grasp if the necessary skills and tools are acquired. When defining
goals that are practically achievable, it is also useful to understand how you can push your
boundaries and make the impossible possible.
Examples
Non-achievable
goal
We must prevent all IT outages on our servers.
Achievable goal
We must migrate our mission-critical workloads to a reliable
private cloud service that guarantees 99.999% service uptime at
comparable Total Cost of Ownership of the OpEx model.
R = Relevant
When resources are limited, you must focus on goals that are most impactful and require immediate
attention—both in the short- and long term. It is always possible to achieve many targets, but all
targets consume resources and deliver a different outcome. Progressive organizations identify the
targets that are most relevant to their vision, strategy, and long-term business growth.
In order to determine whether a goal is relevant, consider the following decision criteria for a goal:
Is it required? What’s the priority?
Is it the right time?
What’s the short and long-term impact of pursuing this goal?
What are the risks involved and how are circumstances expected to evolve over time?
Examples
Irrelevant goal
We should double our marketing budget to advertise the
stability and performance of our app in the market.
Relevant goal
We must reduce data leaks, network infringement and IT
outage incidents by 50% with an additional IT security budget of
$5 million per annum.
T = Time-Bound
Many goals are achievable if allocated enough time. However, the results may not be impactful if
not reached in appropriate time. Adding the constraint of a time duration allows you to prioritize
tasks in your periodic routine. Daily tasks should not affect long-term goals. Similarly, ignoring
routine tasks can add to the backlog that can impact your schedule plan in the future.
Time-oriented goals also make the progress trackable over the duration of assignment. Progress
relative to time spent or time remaining delivers insightful information on past progress and how
future plans should be changed in response to the current pace.
Examples