I don’t dislike SMART goals, I just detest how people use them.
For those unfamiliar, SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. This framework was first defined by, or at least widely attributed to, George T. Doran.
It’s likely that George copped the idea from Peter Drucker1, who in turn borrowed/rewrote/added from someone else’s work before him. That often happens in the consulting world. I imagine all the way back to the Pharaoh’s advisors. Take an existing idea, re-brand it as your own, publish a book or article about it, and then start signing up workshop clients (or giving advice to the Pharaoh, whatever).
To be clear, I am not disparaging those who do original, actionable research, or the original pyramid project managers. They did solid word.
https://www.leadershipchallenge.com/five-practices/books
But to all the consultants out there who retread others’ work without adding anything to the conversation: you’re not fooling anyone.
The SMART goal framework could be a case study in this phenomenon. It often gets (mis)applied where it has no business, such as complex or large-scale projects. Some even pile on metrics and key performance indicators, thoughtlessly, and it becomes a bit of a mess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument
Not that metrics or SMART goals don’t have a place, just not with everything, everywhere, all the time. So let’s take a look at where they can be helpful.
When Should They Be Used?
Doran’s original framework was directed at corporate officers, managers and supervisors. He suggested that each corporate, department and section objective should have some rigour and consistency in goal setting across the entire organization. It’s useful in corporate environments, teams and departments where clear ownership is most important.
The “A” in this SMART stood for “Assignable”, defining who (person, team, section or department) would do the work. The shift to “Attainable” or “Achievable” came later when it was adapted to personal / HR use.
The original framework was (is) useful when setting project objectives, to scope deliverables or set milestones. It’s not so good in Agile environments (too rigid), complex/large-scale programs (lacks coordination), or stretch goals (that undermine the “realistic/achievable” criteria).
Corporate / HR Standard SMART
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound
Good in corporate environments for performance management where strategic alignment (relevance) is most important. The assignable bit is presumable the person who is setting the goal, because it’s used mostly as an HR tool. This is the most common variation used today.
Academic / Educational SMART
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-Oriented, Time-Bound
Good for training and instructional design where clarity of outcomes (results) is important.
Strategic / Execution-Focused
Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Realistic, Time-Bound
Good for operations and execution planning, because it’s focused on next steps and immediate execution (action).
Long-Term Goals: SMARTER
SMART + Evaluated, Reviewed (sometimes “Revised”)
Why would you set goals and not review them? You wouldn’t, but if the thing to be done more than “one and done”, you may have to review and adjust multiple times. This is good for personal productivity, coaching, habit tracking and other long-term projects with feedback loops where there’s a risk of stagnation or drift.
Beyond SMART
Here my bias comes in: for every “goal”, no matter what framework is being used, I want to be able to touch or see the outcome. The result has to be real, either as an artifact, product or service being produced. This result can be the end-product or used input to a subsequent goal, work package, process step, or analysis. Or there is some action being performed – pick up the phone and make a call, launch a rocket, write code….
It probably goes back to an early career workshop I attended, put on by IBM when they were still in the consulting/training business. The main idea was that any description of work should have a verb/noun pair. For example “Call client” or “Write code” or “Launch rocket”. A little simplistic, perhaps, and not always very descriptive, but…
If you can imagine the action or the thing that goal describes, you’re probably on the right track. The things we set as goals for should have an effect in the real world.
Still, after forty years, I’m still not sure what the different between achievable, attainable and realistic is. If you know, pop it in the comments?
Beyond this, there are other goal setting frame-works (OKRs, CLEAR goals and HARD goals)2 that have there own applications, or fill in where SMART goals fall short. Then there are the true “project/program/mission management” frameworks (PMBOK, Systems Engineering, CMMI)3, which you can think of as a set of tools, or integrated tool-sets.
More on that later. :-)
Next time: other goal setting tools and when to use them.
- Doran probably added to Drucker’s Management by Objectives (1954), whose big idea was getting buy-in for the work by collaborating on the definition of the work with those who were doing the work. Drucker truly was an innovative thinker and the godfather of modern management practices, but even he stood on the shoulders (borrowed, consolidated, integrated) of those who came before him. In my humble opinion a vast majority of what followed was derivative of his work or was inspired by it. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to map Drucker’s definition of a ‘good goal’ (clear, included performance tracking, with responsibility and feasibility defined) to Doran’s SMART goals. ↩︎
- OKR: Objectives and Key Results
CLEAR: Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable
HARD: Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Difficult ↩︎ - PMBOK: Project Management Body of Knowledge
CMMI: Capability Maturity Model Integration
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