Evaluation for Women’s Success
As women, we are in charge of developing the tools to understand where we are in relation to the goals we’ve set.
For example, a business owner may define success for her company as: building a client base, building infrastructure, and creating tools and packages that can be sold. The ultimate goal is positive cash flow and the opportunity to found and grow an organization that can be bought out or taken public within seven to ten years.
Working backwards, the owner spend time developing a client base (branding, marketing, sales, customer care) and developing tools, documents, and processes (internal research and development) to achieve those goals. Thinking from a quantitative level, the owner would then assign metrics on top of each of these, so for example an owner may project 40% growth every year as the tools in development come online and become marketable to larger audiences.
How do you define success?
How do you measure success?
What tools/resources/staff/programs do you put into place to achieve your outcomes?
Do you have benchmarks listed and a timeline do achieve those?
At the end of six months or the year, evaluate!
Evaluation is a major key in our ability to understand and possibly change course towards a positive direction. In a typical evaluation, you and your team will develop an overall “framework” that includes your overall mission, vision, and goals, and then breaks down those pieces into specific objectives, outcomes, and metrics. In a service business, this might be people served or # of customer issues. In a product business, this might be units sold or new products coming online.
Periodic checking in is useful to fine-tune and adjust overall plans and goals so that they’re SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. (I’ve seen the SMART acronym used different ways, but these are the ones that work for me). Make those goals SUPERSMART and now we’re talking.
If your goal is to get more healthy, you may break it down into components:
+ Specific: lose 10 pounds this year, eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day, exercise three times a week
+ Measurable: keep a chart organized by week, month, and year that clearly marks if you reach my short-term goals
+ Achievable: I can definitely reach any or all of these goals: it’s good to know that if you fall short with one, you can do the other
+ Realistic: Can you walk to the post office or the bank three times a week? Can you incorporate something else into your routine? This breaks down a larger goal into realistic chunks that you may take on.
+ Timely: If you set the goal to be reached by 2007, then there’s a specific deadline: now you can break it down into day, week, month and year
As part of a multi-year planning process, evaluators get a much better sense of the current situation in relation to previous years. You usually get closer to your goal as time passes, but if you don’t have a goal, you probably don’t have any sense of movement in any direction!
What about you? Where are you know, where have you been, and where do you plan to go?
Take a moment and figure out exactly where you are right now with:
- Relationships
- Family
- Friends
- Education
- Career
- Community
- Finances
- Housing
- Hobbies
- Spiritual Development
or any other area of your life.
Where you are now is a bridge between your past and your future: use this time wisely and set your specific 1-year, 5-year, 10-year, 20-year, 30-year, and 40-year goals.
Here’s to your success!
Sincerely,
Monica Flores
Principal, 10K Group LLC
www.10kgroup.com
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