Goal-setting is the secret sauce that drives commercial success in any business – but for small business owners, there often isn’t enough time in the day to spend on brainstorming business objectives.
Thankfully, the ISO Standards were designed with this reality in mind, providing business leaders with a scalable framework for establishing, meeting, and updating business goals and core objectives. In fact, one of the main benefits of ISO Certification for small business owners, is that you can use ISO frameworks to maintain a systemic approach to goal-setting for your business, making setting and achieving goals more accessible and sustainable for small to medium-sized enterprises.
The most widely used framework for business goal-setting as per ISO guidelines is the SMART goal-setting method. This method for setting and meeting business objectives is outlined in some of the core ISO Certifications, including ISO 9001:2015 for Quality Management Systems.
Today, our ISO consultants at S&J Auditing & Consulting will be sharing their expert insights into SMART goal-setting as a framework, and how this systemic approach to setting and achieving business objectives can help elevate your enterprise over the long term.
What are SMART Goals?
SMART goal-setting is a framework for setting objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Ensuring that business goals possess all 5 of these key characteristics can help your organisation set objectives that are well-defined, easy to track, relevant to company success, and most importantly, are realistic and attainable for your team.
Let’s unpack each of the 5 characteristics that make SMART goals smart.
Specific
SMART goals should always be very specific and well-defined. You should be able to answer exactly what needs to be accomplished in order to meet the goal, as well as who is responsible for driving change/improvements, and what kind of change or improvements are needed.
Achievable (realistic with resources), Relevant (aligned with quality policy and business goals), and Time-bound (set clear deadlines).
Measurable
For a goal to be SMART, it needs to be measurable or in other words, have quantifiable metrics that can be tracked to determine whether the goal has been achieved. Some examples of metrics that could be tracked include customer retention rates, customer satisfaction rates, or even environmental metrics like waste production records.
For instance, if one of your SMART goals is to reduce the environmental impact of your ISO 14001 Environmental Management System by 10%, and your waste production, resource consumption and/or other recorded environmental metrics decrease to that combined rate, you can provide data-based evidence that you’ve reached this goal.
Achievable
Achievable goals are realistic goals, or goals that can actually be met using the resources that your organisation currently has available.
This isn’t to say that your goals can’t be challenging, just that they can’t be so challenging they veer on the edge of impossibility. By making sure your business objectives are within reach through strategic process improvements, for instance, you can better position your team to take the necessary, and clearly defined steps required to meet all your SMART goals.
Relevant
SMART goals should ideally always align with your organisation’s Quality Management Systems, alongside being relevant to customer needs and expectations, and your business’ overarching growth strategy.
To ensure your SMART goals stay relevant, we recommend evaluating all SMART goals alongside your Quality Management Systems and documentation. Conducting routine ISO audits and accompanying management reviews can also help to provide updated findings supporting the relevancy of your SMART goals. Routine audits and audit reporting will also aid in outlining the real-world impact that meeting those SMART goals holds for your organisation over the long term.
Time-bound
SMART goals should always maintain a specific deadline or timeframe. This ensures that your team maintains a motivation to meet goals by that deadline, and to keep all team members accountable for reaching that goal in a timely manner.
Deadlines can be arbitrary, or they can align with your ISO audit calendar, or be monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.
Key Tips for SMART Goal-Setting within your ISO 9001 QMS
How can you make sure your SMART goals integrate with your ISO Management Systems? The International Organization for Standardization already includes SMART goal-setting in ISO frameworks for all the core Management Systems. This includes:
- ISO 9001:2015 for Quality Management Systems
- ISO 14001:2015 for Environmental Management Systems
- ISO 45001:2018 for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems
As SMART goal-setting is a vital framework for all of these Management Systems Standards, SMART goals are effectively a key component of maintaining ISO compliance.
Below, we’ll be referring to SMART goal-setting within the context of an ISO 9001 Quality Management System as a universal reference, namely because ISO 9001:2015 is one of the most highly sought after ISO Certifications in Australia.
Here are some expert insights into how you can optimise your SMART goal-setting processes to support your Quality Management System.
Align your business goals with customer and client expectations
Improving customer experiences is a major priority for Quality Management Systems, as happy customers = greater customer retention – and more strong client testimonials also paves the way for improved customer acquisition. It’s the most positive of all positive feedback cycles.
With this in mind, you can benefit greatly from making sure your SMART goals align with the needs and wants of your customers. That way, you can better ensure meeting all your SMART goals results in immediate commercial benefits for your business, and that your organisation can enjoy a strong return on your investment into meeting those SMART goals.
Use non-conformance reporting to identify areas for improvement
With a future-oriented approach to maintaining ISO compliance, there really are no failures. Every non-conformance is an opportunity for improvement, and Quality Management Systems are powered by continuous process improvements.
This is why one of the most impactful tips we can give you is to use your non-conformance reporting to help create your SMART goals. Transform your corrective actions into stronger processes and procedures that deliver ongoing results.
Monitor your progress using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
ISO audits and record-keeping provides plenty of data, which means you can typically have your pick of KPIs, depending on what criteria is most relevant to your SMART goals. Again, keeping your SMART goals as relevant to end users (i.e. customers/clients) as possible, can help maintain profitability – however, if you’re more concerned with operational improvements, you can also look at internal metrics for prospective KPIs. This includes metrics like machine downtime to gauge plant productivity, or even employee satisfaction levels recorded through routine polls/surveys.
Invest in robust record-keeping processes for tracking performance
Even if you’re using quantifiable metrics, SMART goals can’t be trackable if you’re not actually tracking historical data. Invest in your record-keeping processes to maintain optimal visibility over all of your KPIs over the long term. This will allow you to better monitor the overall impact of meeting your SMART goals (i.e. by comparing historical performance prior to meeting goals, with performance metrics following meeting those goals).
More supporting evidence that your SMART goal-setting is effective will also translate into more stakeholder and top leader support for SMART goal-setting and other ISO frameworks supporting systemic continuous improvements.
Engage your team in adopting the SMART goal-setting framework
Drawing on from our last point, improved stakeholder engagement and top leader support naturally goes a long way in supporting ISO initiatives. But in much the same way that your team maintains a collective responsibility to upholding your Quality Management System, so too is meeting SMART goals a collective task.
You can improve your SMART goal-setting by encouraging your team to not only get involved in developing and meeting company objectives, but also by practicing SMART goal-setting in their individual workflows and daily activities. Practicing SMART goal-setting on a granular level will naturally support collective motivation towards meeting overarching business objectives.
Bolster your Business Goal-Setting with Support from our ISO 9001 Consultants
Whether you’re still researching how to get ISO 9001 Certification, or you’re looking to expand your basic ISO systems into a dynamic HSEQ Management System that combines OH&S, environmental management, and quality management, our ISO consultants can help you establish the right SMART goals and growth strategies to get you where you need to go.
If you have any questions about applying SMART goal-setting for your organisation or would like to discuss the best strategy for starting your Certification journey and enjoying the long-term benefits of SMART and other ISO frameworks, then get in touch with our team at S&J Auditing & Consulting to speak directly with one of our ISO consultants.
