Frame Your Goal Setting Plans

To be successful, your goal setting plans need to be framed by the context of your organisation. To frame is to make sense of a situation. A plan that may have succeeded elsewhere may not necessarily work in a different context. In this article we discuss the importance of relevance in business goal setting, especially if you need to persuade in order to implement.....

Goal Setting in the Workplace is the third in our series on Business Goal Setting: Using the "F-Plan". It reminds us of Robert Updegraff's Five Tests of Obviousness, and how to put them to good use!

The F-plan series provides a structured process to help improve business planning and goal setting. It consists of:

1. Future: Company Goal Setting: Two Kinds of Future.
2. Filter: Goal Setting in the Workplace: Filter to Make the Right Choices.
3. Frame: Frame Your Goal Setting Plans.
4. Focus: Goal Setting Strategies are Underpinned by Focus.
5. Fast: Goal Setting Exercise - Are You Fast Enough?
6. Faith: Goal Setting Facts Need Faith.

Frame Your Goal Setting Plans

Good plans should always be placed in a context. You frame something when you take the idea you've analysed and filtered, then adapt it to your context. A good way to consider this context is to ask some key questions. Have you got the right people, with the right qualifications, attitudes, abilities? Have you got the technology and other equipment? What does the idea mean in the context of your business environment? How can the idea work in your organisation? Have you taken into account the changing nature of any of these filter aspects, especially in relation to the future.

Answering these questions begins to identify what you may need in a plan, both to make it happen and to make it succeed. Of course, whilst it's important, it's not enough for good plans to demonstrate that they are well founded and developed. They need to be properly implemented.

The best way to do this is to ensure they are persuasive. When you have your ideas, why not apply the 5 tests of obviousness, described in detail in our article: What Great Managers Know: It's Obvious! These five tests are an excellent way to clarify and reality-check your ideas.

The five tests of obviousness are:

1. The idea when formed will be simple - complicated plans run the risk of not only being hard to explain, but also that the complications hide a lack of clarity in what you have planned to do. Simple is not the same as easy, real simplicity takes a lot of thinking and planning.



2. Does it check with human nature - this is the common sense test. Do the plans you're proposing make sense? Can those working at the grass roots of the organisation, those who will be implementing the plans, see the sense in them? Can you communicate this verbally with your colleagues? Can you talk a good plan?



3. Put it on paper - One important step is to be able to talk a good plan, but a second test is can you write down your plan in a clear concise and persuasive manner? Both skills of verbal communication and written communication are vital to develop your goal setting plans.



4. Does it explode in people's minds? A simple idea that is communicated effectively though is not enough; you need to ask if the idea captures the imagination of your colleagues and customers.



5. Is the time ripe? The final test is to maintain the discipline of asking if the idea is timely, timing and timeliness are crucial to the success of a plan.

Ask the above questions, and pass the five tests, and see how the viability of your goal setting plans become more obvious. Not just in your own mind, but in the minds of others! Following our Happy Manager F-plan, to help get your goal setting into shape? Then your next step is to think about how your Goal Setting Strategies are underpinned by focus.




Go to Site Map from Your Goal Setting Plans

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