Research supports that typically shorter targets are better (think a few weeks to a few months) versus having personal targets that are longer, such as a year. However, that will ultimately be something you figure out with your team and supervisor as far as what seems to work the best for you!
Recommendations
Another way to think about how long targets should be, can be based on target type… We’d recommend the following as general guidelines:
- Personal growth & professional development - We’ve found these to be the shortest and are often 2 weeks/1 month long
- Realignment - Work closely with your HR team, most HR departments already have a process for assigning personal improvement plans (PIPs) and that some process can be mirrored using a realignment target. Typically these can be between 1-3 months long
- Job & competency - A lot of companies have found 3 months (aka a quarter) to be a good cadence for job targets and also give enough time to see upskilling on larger competencies as well
- Department - Consider making department targets for ~6 months
- Company - We found in that in general these large initiatives usually require the most time. Consider making company targets for 1-3 years
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