I hate vague work instruction, it is confusing and not at all conducive to getting the job done (and rallying the team). If you’ve ever had a leader that is vague with their goals and direction you’ll know exactly what I mean.

It’s time we all got more Specific in setting goals and leading teams.

In our initial post we summarized “The Art of SMART”. Checkout this post for background information.

Our first term stresses the need for setting specific goals vs. a more general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous; without vagaries and platitudes.

To make goals specific, they must tell your team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important. A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal.

To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:

• Who:      Who is involved?
• What:     What do I want to accomplish?
• Where:    Identify a location.
• When:     Establish a time frame.
• Which:    Identify requirements and constraints.
• Why:      Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

For example, a general goal would be, “increase resident census.” But a specific goal would say, “improve resident census by 10%.”

How are you going to be more specific today? We challenge you to take a few extra moments to think about getting specific with goals, improving clarity, and making things happen!