One of the unsubstantiated certainties that comes experience and advancing years1 is that professionals are good at what they do (as opposed to enthusiastic amateurs) because they do it every day. They can see the patterns, they know which tools to use, and they can deliver quickly.
The masters of a profession know how to do a thing multiple different ways, with multiple different tools. If you dropped them in an empty field they’d know how to build the tools they needed.
That doesn’t mean they use a pair of pliers for a hammer. Unless, perhaps, it was in the service of building a hammer. Because they’re professionals, and they have pride in their work, and they get paid for doing it well. They same is true of project management, performance management and other goal-setting ‘leadership’ type work.
SMART Goals aren’t the right tool in every situation. Just sometimes. When there’s ambiguity or rapidly changing situations (like during Agile development, creative projects), or motivation is a factor (like for stretch goals), other tools are needed for setting personal goals.
https://practicalmanagers.com/2026/04/11/smart-goals-what-are-they-good-for/
SMART Goals are also not very good at all in providing vision and motivation, coordination, estimates, forecasts, systems integration, resource allocation across systems or risk management for complex, complicated or at-scale projects. That’s where tools like work breakdown structures, schedules, earned value and their parents project management and system engineering come in.
https://practicalmanagers.com/2025/02/18/why-work-breakdowns-matter/
In keeping with my promise to not bullshit the following goal setting frameworks come with three caveats.
The first one is: I haven’t personally used HARD, CLEAR, or OKRs. The ideas are interesting, you should know they exist, but you’re not going to walk away from this post knowing how to use them. I will give you a starting point to learn more about each one.
And, as for most individual and team goal-setting tools, including SMART goals:
- set the goal with the person or team who is going to do the work (those who plan the fight don’t fight the plan), and
- don’t use them for work that needs coordination, is large-scale or is complex
HARD Goals
Mark Murphy is the founder of Leadership IQ, a leadership training consultancy. His research studied nearly 5,000 workers across many fields and found that people who set HARD goals are up to 75% more fulfilled than people with ‘easy’ goals2.
He based his goal-setting framework on on intrinsic values and motivation. Then clearly visualizing the result, setting a deadline, and making the goal challenging enough but not too difficult.
These are all reasonable and proven strategies for goal-setting and motivation: values, visualization, deadlines, challenge. Or in the HARD parlance, Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Deadline).3 I have a ‘visualization exercise’ from 40 years ago that I still keep with me, about how I wanted to be a writer and speaker. It still motivates me to this day, despite the detours I’ve made along the way. That’s the power of setting goals based on values and vision.
https://practicalmanagers.com/2026/04/11/smart-goals-what-are-they-good-for/#power-of-visualization
The HARD framework is well-suited for mid-term goals in the 1–3 year range. It can also function as a framework for setting the “Objective” within the Objective Key Results (OKR) framework.
Application
HARD goals tend to work best in situations where motivation and commitment are a challenge. Where SMART emphasizes specificity and measurability (execution),4 HARD emphasizes emotional engagement, ambition, motivation and commitment. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Many practitioners combine both.
HARD goals are best used in situations of
- personal transformation (career changes, major lifestyle shifts, recovering from setbacks),
- leadership and team performance (a product launch, a turnaround, a market expansion),
- entrepreneurship and creative work (starting a business,
- building something from nothing, shipping a creative project),
- breaking out of a plateau, or
- long-range personal goals (health transformations, financial independence, skill mastery).
It’s less suited for routine operational tasks, short-term project milestones, or anything where the main need is coordination and tracking rather than motivation.
Use HARD to define what you’re reaching for and why it matters, then use SMART/OKR to structure the specific steps getting there.
Learn More
Murphy, Mark. Hard Goals: The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. McGraw-Hill, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-07-175346-3
Next Time
Getting CLEAR
- “There are two kinds of fools: one says, ‘This is old, therefore it is good’; the other says, ‘This is new, therefore it is better.’” William Ralph Inge, 1931.
I first encountered a version of this quote in the 1975 sci-fi novel The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. I’m pretty sure I still have the paperback on my shelf somewhere. ↩︎ - Okay, fulfilled sounds good, but a CEO or business owner should also ask “…and how successful were they?” Also, I’m not sure if ‘easy’ goals aren’t merely defined as ‘not HARD goals’. ↩︎
- I have yet to meet a consultant, even the ones who do original research and add to the conversation, who will pass up the opportunity to contort good English into a trademarked acronym. ↩︎
- Perhaps in an attempt to get to the visualization of goal setting? ↩︎
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