• Select goals from your prioritized list of options
• Recommend selected goals to review committee or upper management, if appropriate
• Obtain authority to move forward, if necessary

Next, select goals for your green fleet plan from your prioritized list of options.  These goals will be the benchmarks against which you will be measured down the road.  They will also be an indication of what you and your organization consider most important when it comes to considering what makes a green fleet.  In the next step you will develop plans to meet your goals including roles, responsibilities, budgets and progress reviews.  For now you are just selecting the goals on which you want to work.

Section 5 gave you some examples of things you might use as goals. Don’t limit yourself to the list, though; be creative.  While you have a lot of flexibility with goals, there are some useful guidelines. If at all possible, make goals quantitative and include a due date.  Notice that most of the examples in Section 5 include a percentage and a time period within which the percentage must be met.  Sometimes including a percentage is not practical as with the last three examples.  These examples do not include a specific number goal but they do include due dates.  Another thing this list demonstrate is that goals may be the first step toward future goals.  For example, the pilot idle reduction campaign may give rise to a fleet-wide idle reduction goal.  It may also inform subsequent, quantitative goals for emissions reductions or fuel savings from idle reduction.

Another way to approach goals is to set some near-term, definitive goals and some longer-term, exploratory goals.  For example, you might have one goal that says you will reduce fuel use by 10% by 2012.  You might set another goal that says you will monitor the development of plug-in hybrid vehicles and introduce them into the fleet as soon as practical.  The first goal is very definitive – it has a percent reduction and a date.  The second goal is more nebulous.  It depends on market developments outside of the agency’s control, but it shows that you are on staying top of this technology and poised to take advantage of it as the opportunity arises.

Another thing you need to decide as you set goals is how ambitious you want to be.  First and foremost, you should focus your first round of goals on any low-hanging fruit you identified when listing and evaluating your options.  These should be quick and easy and will build momentum to help work on bigger and more challenging goals.  In addition, achievable goals allow organizations and employees time to adapt to new policies and procedures.  Being ambitious with goals has its advantages as well, though.  Doing so can be inspiring and lead to significant environmental benefits and positive attention for your agency.  Be aware, though, that setting all your goals so high that you miss them may be discouraging.  Use your understanding of your organization and its staff to strike the right balance.  A possible approach is to start with what you consider to be a reasonable goal then stretch it a little further. For example, if you think that increasing fleet fuel efficiency by 10% in 5 years is reasonable, consider a goal of 15% in 5 years. When in doubt, be aggressive; you can always revise your goal if you get started and realize you set the bar too high (or too low).

Consider the implications of each goal on all parts of your agency. There may be certain groups that have a difficult, or even impossible, time contributing toward meeting your goal. This could put increased pressure on other parts of your agency since they would have to do even more to ensure the overall goal is met. It may be necessary to exclude certain parts of your agency, e.g., emergency response, from a goal in advance; but this should only be used when absolutely necessary because you run the risk of ending up with goals that ultimately do not mean anything.

If it is appropriate for your organization, present your recommended goals to a review committee or upper management.  Have this group approve your selected goals so that everyone in your organization can be sure that everyone in the organization should consider the goals important and take them seriously.  If necessary, also have this group give you the authority to develop and implement plans to work toward the goals.