The S.M.A.R.T Acronym is Your Key to Meeting Your Business Goals This Year!
How solid are you with your resolutions and business goals for the new year? If you are not confident that you can achieve them, the problem you are having could be baked into the resolutions themselves. Smart class based business owners use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym to radically raise the likelihood that they will achieve their goals for the year.
The S.M.A.R.T. method of planning business goals or individual goals is popular among leading businesses globally, and there’s no reason not to capitalize on this goal setting method for your own school and even your personal life planning.
Businesses often use the word COMMITMENTS, rather than RESOLUTIONS, but it’s essentially the same thing; commitments or resolutions are what you (as an individual or as a business) resolve to do to achieve certain standards or improvements in your life or work.
What getting S.M.A.R.T. means
Each letter of S.M.A.R.T. is the key to planning goals and actions that you’ll actually get done. Here’s how.
S is for Specific
Define specific results you expect as an outcome for the commitment. Example: “Losing 10 pounds” and “Add at least 50 new students” are specific. “Be uplifting” and “Be a better coach” are not specific. Making the goals specific like this will help you identify objectively if you have even achieved them.
M is for Measurable
Ensure that your actions can be measured as you progress toward completing your commitment. Can you measure the quantity and/or quality concretely? Example: “Increase attendance rate to 90%” and “Improve customer service feedback scores from Good to Very Good” are measurable; you can measurably check your progress quarterly or monthly to ensure that you’re on target. “Be the best dance studio in town” on the other hand is not easily measurable and highly subjective.
A is for Achievable
Create commitments that are challenging, sure, yet achievable. If your commitments are too lofty — “Grow my swim school revenues fourfold in 2016” or “Expand my gymnastics school to 5 more locations by June” — you’ll only get frustrated or unhappy when it becomes evident that it’s not realistic.
R is for Results-oriented
Measure success on the results you achieve, not just on the steps you take.
For example, “Reduce my body fat from 25% to 23%” is about results, while “Eat healthfully every day” is more about the daily process than it is about the results or outcome. Eating healthfully daily may help you to achieve that reduced body fat goal by the end of the year, but it doesn’t make as successful a New Year’s resolution as does measuring the desired outcome of that daily process (reducing the body fat to a specific degree).
T is for Time-specific
With each commitment you make, be sure to establish milestones, checkpoints, and a completion date. If you want to add 80 new students by year’s end, then you can schedule quarterly review assessments to see if you are one quarter of the way — 20 new students — toward meeting that goal.
How to be S.M.A.R.T. in goal planning and achieving Your goals!
To stoke the fires of your personal or business success this year:
- Set no more than 5 to 7 commitments. That number is enough to make a measurable difference by the end of the year, but not so many that the commitments are competing with each other for your time. (See Achievable above)
- Make sure your individual work commitments align to your overall business vision and that, likewise, your personal commitments align to your vision of who you want to be. For example, a goal to run your first marathon can be good if it’s what YOU want, but not a good goal if you’re only doing it because your friend wants you to do it with her.
The SMART method works!
Keep in mind that many of the business management tools and features within ClassJuggler’s school management software can help you achieve your business commitments.
If you’re not yet using ClassJuggler for your school-based business, learn more here:
- Dance ClassJuggler for dance studio management
- Cheer ClassJuggler for gymnastics schools and cheer camps
- ClassJuggler Dojo for helping you manage your martial arts school
- Swim ClassJuggler for swim school management
- ClassJuggler Fitness for tennis camps, fitness studios, and more
- ClassJuggler K12 for academic schools
- Music ClassJuggler for, you guessed it, music schools
- ClassJuggler for Franchises to help franchisees and franchisers manage their business
Any questions? Contact us!
