Setting objectives

Once you’ve started the process of planning your work, you need to work out what exactly you’re trying to achieve.  When you got your group together you might have established some broad objectives, like improving the existing paths in your area or creating new paths.  As you work towards delivering things on the ground, you’ll need to decide on some more specific objectives.  Whilst it’s tempting to continue with very general objectives, if you’re more specific it’ll be easier to see if you’re being successful.  The clearer your objectives, the easier it will be to explain to others exactly what you are trying to achieve.

You may have come across "SMART" objectives and this is a good way to summarise how to develop your objectives:

• SPECIFIC: what is going to be the outcome of your action?
• MEASURABLE: how much are you going to achieve?
• ACHIEVABLE: are you being realistic?
• RELEVANT: does anyone else want this to happen?
• TIMEBOUNDED: when will you get things done?

Use this format to think about what you want to achieve and come up with some SMART objectives for your group.

To help you, here’s an example of a SMART objective:

Objective:  Upgrade 400m of the Fairy Woods path for all-year-round use by Dec 2013

How is the objective SMART? 

• Specific – the outcome will be that users can walk the path throughout the year
• Measurable – 400m of the path will be improved for use all year – this can be measured on the ground.
• Achievable – is it realistic – yes, the path is half a mile long and all the landowners agree to the work
• Relevant – all the dog walkers and many other residents in the village want this to happen, as shown in the community consultation undertaken last year
• Time-bounded – work will be completed by the end of 2013

And here’s an objective that isn’t SMART

Group: Anywhere Paths Group

Objective: Improve paths in Anywhere

Why is the objective not SMART?

• Specific – there’s no clear outcome – is it improving one path, eight paths or a hundred paths?  What does improve mean – make them longer, wider, better drained, better signed or something else?
• Measurable – because there’s no clear outcome you can’t measure whether it’s been achieved.  How do you decide if the paths have improved or not?
• Achievable – you can’t tell if it’s realistic or not because you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve
• Relevant – it probably is relevant, but there’s no way of knowing that unless you’ve checked some specific actions with people
• Time-bounded – there’s no time limit set so you don’t know when you’re trying to complete the work.