Is SMART Still Worth Bothering About?  

Most of my clients want their objectives to be 'SMART'. They are really keen for me to make sure this is the case with all their objectives. I often get emails from people asking me to help them get their objectives to be SMART.

So I thought, in case you are one of those people who would like to ask that question I'd give you my thoughts on SMART and what I think of it now.

Let's start with a typical client who has emailed me and asked me to help him. We'll call him Alan. Alan emailed me from a US government department in a panic because he had to have SMART objectives for the end of the week.

He sent me some of them through, and I think one thing you and I can agree on (well, you could if you could see them) was that they weren't SMART. As one famous physicist once put it (when describing some paper his colleague had submitted; 'It's not right, it's not even wrong...')

So first, what is SMART?

Usually it's an acronym for how your objectives should be along these lines:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic/Relevant
Time-Bounded

I'm going to disagree with some of that. You see, I could have gone through Alan's objectives and made them SMART. These days, having written literally thousands of objectives for hundreds of organisations, I can usually work out what someone really means and turn the objectives into something SMART.

But over the years I've learned that being SMART is not the most important thing about objectives. Yes, you did read that right.

What is most important about objectives

Before you go anywhere near SMART, you have to make sure that the objectives are talking about the right things. This goes back to what objectives are really there for. Not many people know this.

Objectives are there so that you know what you personally have to achieve in order for your organisation to achieve its goals.

That's it.

Now let's look at each component of SMART.

Specific
Yes, I agree completely. Vague objectives are the enemy of achievement and of any effective organisation. They are the camouflage behind which poorly skilled managers hide. They imagine people won't know they aren't achieving because no one can really understand what they are supposed to be doing.

Measurable
Absolutely. But you don't really need a separate measure. Many organisations have this separate measures column in their performance planning/appraisals documentation. In my view that encourages people to write sloppy objectives. A well-written objective needs no separate measure.

Get to Ealing by 8pm on Sunday evening. That's my objective as I write this eZine. What separate measure do I need? If I did it as a separate measure I might end up putting things like:
Travel on the train for 2 hours.
Drive my car to the station.

There's no need if the objective is written properly.

Achievable
No, No, No. It is not the job of objectives to be achievable. It's our job to work out how to achieve them. I remember a conversation between two old colleagues when I worked at Mars.

Ray said: "That might be impossible." To which Alan responded:
"Well, if it's impossible, we won't do it."

The thing is, if we go back to what objectives are really there for, it's no good whining and saying you can't achieve it because that means the organisation isn't going to achieve its goals. You have to find a way to get it done or go back to your manager, and find another way to achieve the same thing. It may be as simple as putting a few more people on the task. But that's what objectives are there for; to tell you what needs to be achieved.

If you've ever seen the film Apollo 13 you'll remember that the crew was going to be poisoned by carbon dioxide. A team was given the objective of finding a way to get rid of it with the materials the crew had to hand. They didn't moan about the objective not being 'achievable'. They got on and found a way.

Realistic
Rubbish. Who put that in there? I imagine it was just there to make up the word 'SMART'. Sometimes unrealistic things are what need to be achieved. So you have to work out how to do them.

The other option - which I prefer:
Relevant.
This isn't a very good way of putting it but if by 'relevant' we mean 'aligned' then that's fine. In my view it's the most important part of an objective, that it is aligned with the top goals of the organisation.

That's why I couldn't really help Alan. I didn't know what the top goals of his organisation were or his immediate manger (nor did he). So I didn't know what his objectives should be. Everyone should know and understand the goals of their organisation and their responsibilities in achieving those goals. How else can you work out what your objectives are?

Time-Bounded
Yes. Absolutely. I once worked with a project team implementing a business-critical project. Not one of them knew what the deadline was. They each had completely different understandings of the date by which the new procedures had to be in place. As you can imagine, that made planning a bit fraught.

So there we have it. SMART is not dead, but you need to be careful not to focus too strongly on just making your objectives SMART. You need to make sure that you know exactly what you need to achieve before you start talking about SMART.

If you would like to know more about the whole process and improve your skill, join me on my workshop How to Make Performance Management Work for You.

 

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