From the course: Turning Data into Strategies

Requirements of data-driven goals

From the course: Turning Data into Strategies

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Requirements of data-driven goals

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In a world packed with information, one superpower can help you stand out from the crowd, the ability to harness and interpret data. In this lesson, you'll learn how to develop well-defined, data-driven goals so you can become the go-to person in your organization for any questions or tasks related to turning data into strategies. To do so, I'm going to walk you through what I call SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. First, be specific. Specific goals provide logical direction. Define your objectives with clarity, leaving no room for interpretation. For example, a specific goal would be to boost website visits by 20% in the next quarter by focusing on new leads. Specificity enables you and your team to align efforts with a shared understanding of the end goal and how it fits within the larger business context. Second, make your goal measurable. The core of any data-driven strategy is measuring results. If you don't have well-defined metrics, you risk making wrong recommendations. Whether your data consists of sales figures, social media content, or website traffic, ensure that you have the right metrics in place and, if possible, benchmarks as well. Third, make your goals achievable. You might be ambitious. You might want to set high targets for yourself and for your team, but ultimately, your goals need to be achievable. If, for example, client satisfaction scores are at four out of ten, it might not be realistic to turn them into a 10 in 4 weeks. Rather than setting unachievable goals, work in smaller increments, such as increasing client satisfaction scores to seven within the next six months and to ten within a year by taking specific steps that are likely to pay off. Fourth, make your goals relevant. Your data-driven goals have to be relevant to your business needs. Take the time to understand these business needs and ask yourself questions such as, "How do these data points help move the business forward?" A relevant goal should drive meaningful outcomes and not just generate reports for the sake of creating an output. Finally, ensure your goals are time bound. The best goals have a specific deadline based on your organization's overarching needs and priorities. Such goals provide a sense of urgency and focus. For example, increase sales by 10% by the end of Q1 by tapping into new customers is the goal that sets a tangible deadline and could align with your organization's needs and priorities. Mastering the skills to create SMART data-driven goals will make you invaluable to your organization and allows you to bridge the gap between technical skills and business use cases. Ultimately, you can increase your organization's chances of success by setting SMART data-driven goals.

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