Teams are the cornerstones of most public and nonprofit organizations. Successful team leaders understand what makes a team effective and what can lead to failure. To be a successful manager, you need to be able to plan and design the work of your team, delegate tasks effectively, monitor progress, and motivate your team to excel.

Setting goals and planning

Planning is a key skill for any manager and starts with having a good understanding of the organization’s objectives. It involves establishing a strategy for achieving those goals using the personnel available, and developing the means to integrate and coordinate necessary activities.

Knowing your goals

Planning is concerned with ends (what needs to be done) and means (how those ends are to be achieved). In order to create a plan, managers must first identify the organization’s goals—what it is trying to achieve.

Planning and monitoring

Goals are the foundation of all other
planning activities. They refer to the desired outcomes for the entire organization, for groups and teams within the organization, and for individuals. In the best organizations, employees and teams work closely with their managers to set their own goals and plan courses of action. Goals provide the direction for all management decisions and form the criteria against which actual accomplishments can be measured.

How to develop and implement a plan

Define your overall goals, by asking questions such as “Why do we exist?” and “What do we do?”

Thoroughly analyze your working environment, to identify opportunities you can exploit and threats you may encounter.

Use the results to set objectives that you want to meet. These will create a standard against which to measure your progress.

Formulate a plan to achieve those objectives—what needs to be done, by whom, and by when.

Implement the plan, clarifying roles and providing support.

Monitor your progress to make sure you are on the right track.

Setting your goals

There are five basic rules that can help you set effective goals. Always make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Reachable, and Time-bound.

Specific Goals are meaningful only when they are specific enough to be measured and verified.

Measurable Goals need to have a clear outcome that can be objectively assessed. They also need to have clear benchmarks that can be checked along the way.

Aligned Goals should contribute to the mission, vision, and strategic plan of the organization and be congruent with the values and objectives of the employee implementing them.

Reachable Goals should require you to stretch to reach them, but not be set unrealistically high.

Time-bound Open-ended goals can be neglected because there is no sense of urgency to complete them. Whenever possible, goals should include a time limit.

Tip

LOOK TO THE FUTURE Write down three SMART goals that you want your team to achieve in the next five years, and then plan how you will reach them.

Goals are the desired outcomes for the whole organization, for groups within it, and for individuals