Goal Setting
Goal Setting Information: achieve your personal and business goals
Welcome to our goal setting information to help you make happier work and life choices.
Achieve personal and business goals … be SMART and SHARP

The Happy Manager contains a growing collection of pages to help you plan, set and achieve your personal and business goals. This section contains some excellent goal setting resources – from thought-provoking articles to practical tips and tools (see below).
For your convenience we have also brought together a range of goal setting activities in our comprehensive GOAL SETTING information resource to help.
Our Goal Setting bundle has some of our most interesting guides included in the series with original models, thought provoking ideas and packed with tip and tools many of which you won’t find elsewhere. What’s more the complete series is available for half price, which is a great offer. Why not take a look at what the series has to offer before scrolling down to read any further? You’ll find a great introduction to the Goal Setting bundle in our article: Goal Setting Activities for SMART Goals and SHARP Action.
So if you want to refresh your thinking on goal setting, and improve your goal setting processes straight away, just click on the image below to download you copies now.

Below are our free resources, why not start with the featured articles then perhaps ask yourself some crucial goal setting questions. You’ll find a wide range of goal setting tips, questions, plans, activities, quotes, and lessons. These will help you to think about the goals you really want to achieve.
Whether modest or ambitious, at work or at home, the importance of goal setting is inestimable. What better way to express this value, than in the wisdom of these two quotes:
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” Andrew Carnegie
“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstance they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” George Bernard Shaw.
Ideas
Personal Goal Setting: Ask Questions of Yourself Why is goal setting important? There are some very powerful reasons why goal setting matters. Here we discuss three...
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Being Both SMART and SHARP! Just how smart are smart goals? Well it really depends on what acronym you use for SMART. Here we discuss the...
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Ask Questions of Yourself For managers, personal goal setting is just as important as setting organisational goals, but how many of us give it the time...
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…by Getting the Right Things Done. Would you characterise your actions as sharp or blunt? “Improving Management Skills” is the sixth article in our series on improving motivation...
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This elementary goal setting tip is based on David Allen’s approach to getting things done (GTD). Allen refers to “Make It Up and Make It Happen,” his problem...
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When we think of goal setting facts we tend to think of systematic approaches to planning. Accepted goal setting techniques may include the need to analyse, choose, justify,...
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Here’s a goal setting exercise to get you thinking about the importance of timeliness in business planning. One potential problem with goal setting is that you can spend...
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Central to all goal setting strategies is the need to focus. In this article we consider the two main schools of strategic thought and assess the impact of...
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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...
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Goal setting in the workplace requires making choices about how best to use limited resources. Having thought about the future you’ll quite probably have too many ideas. These...
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Company goal setting is about planning for an organisation’s future, but which future? As Peter Drucker pointed out: “we only know two things about the future: It cannot...
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Goal Setting Tip: Do What You Love How to be happy? If we could offer one, single, goal setting tip it would be: “do what you love”. Some...
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Do It Now! When it comes to getting things done (GTD), what would you say is the key success factor? Better planning? Clarifying objectives? Prioritising? Having a system...
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What is strategy? Students, managers and leaders alike can often struggle with this question. Of course, it’s a very important question to struggle with! This is evidenced by...
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Stick At It! Want a counter-intuitive lesson on goal setting? How about: not setting goals! Well, perhaps allowing goal-free time, to be more precise. Most advice on goal...
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… Put Their Legacies First! What separates goal setting leaders from the crowd? In any given situation, true leaders are inclined to look at the bigger picture. True,...
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The Business Industry Environment: Know the Business You’re In How well do you know your business industry environment? One of the fundamentals of good management is understanding the...
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A successful business goal setting strategy comes from looking to the future, but the future is notoriously difficult to predict. As Peter Drucker points out “we only know...
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Goal setting activity: 5 steps to self-development at work Possibly the most effective goal setting activity is the that contributes to your self-development. Attending to your personal growth...
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Take it step by step! Curiously, one of the biggest barriers to goal setting can be too much focus on the bigger picture. It’s one thing to set...
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Try the Road Less Travelled Ever thought about where you’re going? Is your destination success? This article combines a classic motivational poem with the priceless advice of best-selling...
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Try to make enthusiasm central to your career goal setting Often those around us catch that sense of passion, causing a multiplying and magnifying effect. Of course whilst...
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Goal Setting Definition: Success Factors Developing a goal setting definition can be as a simple as deciding what you want to achieve and planning to do it. As...
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Tips & Tools
SMART objectives are those which use a well-known acronym to help us succeed in achieving...
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What’s the best way to develop your work life effectiveness? Well, perhaps it’s to apply...
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Here’s a selection of goal setting quotes which express the value and wisdom of setting...
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Defining meaningful results Team goal setting enables a team to clarify what constitutes meaningful results...
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Achieving Goals That Really Matter Here are 8 goal setting questions to help you: Discover...
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What are the benefits of goal setting? Well, perhaps you are someone who already carefully...
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Discover 8 steps in goal setting in just one minute! What’s the most important goal...
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PESTLE Analysis What is a PESTLE analysis? Organisations don’t exist in a vacuum. They are...
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Asking Good Questions: In a Minute? We think asking good questions is the one of...
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