Nonspecific goal:

Process a satisfactory number of forms per day.

Specific goal:

Process a minimum of 85 expense forms per day, with fewer than 4
being returned to reprocess, and include typed comments.

The specific numbers, the quality standards, and the expectation of
comments in the second example spell out what the manager expects. The employee will know exactly what is expected of her and will have a benchmark for her performance.

Measurable goals
Designing measurable goals is challenging for some professions. What
if the employee is in a sales organization that closes only one or two
major sales per year? The employee still needs incremental goals. A
measurable goal for such a sales professional could be to make five
phone calls daily to potential new customers, make three follow-up calls to existing customers, and send five emails introducing new products. Weekly, the sales professional could be required to send one proposal and five sales letters. Having measurable goals allows the employee to be evaluated on his performance in more ways than just revenue brought in. A manager who uses measurable goals can more quickly identify employees who are having problems that are interfering with performance. In the case of this sales professional, the manager would not need to wait until the end of the year to discern that the employee was not going to make any money for himself or for the company. By comparing performance to measurable goals, the manager could see much earlier that the employee was heading for trouble. 201 Ways to Turn Any Employee into a Star Performer offers interventions that can be implemented as soon as the manager realizes that performance is not measuring up to goals.

10.Taken From: 201 Ways to Turn Any Employee Into a STAR Performer