Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Objective (goal) -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

A goal or objective consists of a projected state of affairs which a person or a system plans or intends to achieve or bring about — a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development. Many people endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines.

A desire or an intention becomes a goal if and only if^{citation needed} one activates an action for achieving it (see goal-oriented).

It is roughly similar to purpose or aim, the anticipated result which guides action, or an end, which is an object, either a physical object or an abstract object, that has intrinsic value.

Contents 1 Goal and types of goals 2 Short-term goals 3 Project goals 4 Personal goals 4.1 Achieving personal goals 5 Goal-management in organizations 6 References 7 See also

Goal and types of goals

Main article: Goal setting

Goal-setting ideally^{citation needed} involves establishing specific, measurable and time-targeted objectives. Work on the theory of goal-setting suggests that it can serve as an effective tool for making progress by ensuring that participants have a clear awareness of what they must do to achieve of help achieve an objective.^{citation needed} On a personal level, the process of setting goals allows people to specify and then work towards their own objectives — most commonly^{citation needed} financial or career-based goals. Goal-setting comprises a major component of personal-development literature.

Short-term goals

Short-term goals expect accomplishment in a short period of time, such as trying to get a bill paid in the next few days. The definition of a short-term goal need not relate to any specific length of time. In other words, one may achieve (or fail to achieve) a short-term goal in a day, week, month, year, etc. The time-frame for a short-term goal relates to its context in the overall timeline that it is being applied to. For instance, one could measure a short-term goal for a month-long project in days; whereas one might measure a short-term goal for someone’s life in months or in years. Planners usually^{citation needed} define short-term goals in relation to a long-term goal or goals.

Project goals

Goal-setters may make goals/objectives more explicit by following the guidelines associated with the SMART^[1] acronym:

• Specific: one should precisely define objectives or goals rather than tolerating diffuseness or nebulousness
• Measurable: one should define a method of measuring the objectives/goals
• Agreed-To/Achievable: all parties need to agree to the objectives/goals, and to their achievability
• Realistic/Rewarding/Relevant: one must define realistic objectives/goals, the accomplishment of which must make sense
• Time-bound: completion must occur within an agreed time-scale

Personal goals

Individuals can have personal goals. A student may set a goal of a high mark in an exam. An athlete might walk five miles a day. A traveler might try to reach a destination-city within three hours.

Managing goals can give returns in all areas of personal life.^{citation needed} Knowing precisely what one wants to achieve makes clear what to concentrate and improve on.

Goal setting and planning ("goalwork") promotes long-term vision^{citation needed} and short-term motivation^{citation needed}. It focuses acquisition of knowledge and helps to organize resources.

Efficient goalwork includes recognizing and resolving any guilt, inner conflict or limiting belief that might cause one to sabotage one's efforts. By setting clearly-defined goals, one can subsequently measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. One can see progress in what might have seemed a long grind.

Cultural attitudes to the desirability and efficacy of personal goals may differ. For example, the idea of personal goals may clash with the trend of eliminating/transcending the personal self in some forms of Buddhist thought.

Achieving personal goals

Achieving complex and difficult goals requires focus, long-term diligence and effort.^{citation needed} Success in any field will require^{citation needed} foregoing blaming, excuses and justifications for poor performance or lack of adequate planning; in short, success requires^{citation needed} emotional maturity. The measure of belief that people in their ability to achieve a personal goal also affects that achievement.^[2]

Long term achievements rely on short-term achievements.^{citation needed} Emotional control over the small moments of the single day makes a big difference in the long term.^{citation needed}

By accepting a degree of realism within one's own goals, one allows oneself not to change reality to match one's own dreams by one's own efforts alone, but to accept how it is until a certain degree.^{original research?} This degree of "laziness" can prevent one from falling into unhappiness by losing too much control of life by trying to specialize in a very small area and to become a top leader in that field.^{citation needed} No matter what level of a layerered society one may identify with, it is very likely that one will keep the above and below scheme.^{citation needed}

On the other side, to put up personal goals does not necessarily mean merely to put up goals for one's own best. One does not need to put personal and non-personal in a binary opposition as in egoistic/altruistic, body/mind, cultural/natural etc. One^who? may say that there are elements in the making and realising personal goals that necessarily are transpersonal. In the interzone of the personal and transpersonal, the personal but also culturally dependent judgements of tastes and values will be challenged, and probably changed. In such personal processes, that might be termed "crisis", which often occurs in the processes of achieving personal goals, the hierarchised up-and-down, better-or-worse scheme can be altered.^{citation needed}

One formula for achievement reads A=IM^{citation needed} where A = achievement, I = intelligence, and M = motivation. When motivation equals zero, achievement will always equal zero, no matter the degree of intelligence. Similarly for intelligence: if intelligence equals zero, achievement will always equal zero. The higher the combination of both intelligence and the motivation, the higher the achievement.

Goal-management in organizations

Organizationally, goal management consists of the process of recognizing or inferring goals of individual team-members, abandoning no longer relevant goals, identifying and resolving conflicts among goals, and prioritizing goals consistently for optimal team-collaboration and effective operations.

For any successful commercial system, it means deriving profits by making the best quality of goods or the best quality of services available to the end-user (customer) at the best possible cost. Goal-management includes:

• assessment and dissolution of non-rational blocks to success
• time-management
• frequent reconsideration (consistency checks)
• feasibility checks
• adjusting milestones and main-goal targets

Morten Lind and J.Rasmussen^{citation needed} distinguish three fundamental categories of goals related to technological system management:

1. production goal
2. safety goal
3. economy goal

An organizational goal-management solution ensures that individual employee goals and objectives align with the vision and strategic goals of the entire organization. Goal-management provides organizations with a mechanism to effectively communicate corporate goals and strategic objectives to each person across the entire organization. The key consists of having it all emanate from a pivotal source^{citation needed} and providing each person with a clear, consistent organizational-goal message. With goal-management, every employee will understand how his or her efforts contribute to the success of an enterprise.

An example of goal types in business management:

• consumer goals: this refers to supplying a product or service that the market/consumer wants
• product goals: this refers to supplying a product outstanding compared to other products^{citation needed} — perhaps due to the likes of quality, design, reliability and novelty
• operational goals: this refers to running the organization in such a way as to make the best use of management-skills^{citation needed}, technology and resources.
• secondary goals: this refers to goals which an organization does not regard as priorities

References

• Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. ISBN 0-88427-061-0

See also

• Big Hairy Audacious Goal
• Direction of fit
• Goal Programming as part of Operations Research
• Goal-Setting Theory
• Goal Theory
• Management by objectives
• Strategic management
• Strategic planning
• SWOT Analysis
• The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can (book)

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 28 August 2008, at 16:34.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Objective (goal)".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Objective_(goal)

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.