SMART objectives, SMART goals and SMART outcomes - A Controversial View

 

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Are your objectives and goals SMART? Is that what you should be worrying about? Objectives can be SMART without being right. Before I go through a definition of SMART, here's a typical example of the problem.

 

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 are SMART objecitves?

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.

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.

Objectives are there to tell you what you need to achieve.

Let’s imagine you need a life-saving operation. Your surgeon has the objective:
Ensure 80% of my patients survive the operation.

He or she has this because it’s achievable. No one expects every patient to survive. The surgeon operates on 100 people every year. All have survived so far. And you are number 81.

So it doesn’t matter if you don’t survive. The surgeon’s objectives will still be achieved.

The thing is, you still want the surgeon to have the objective that you survive the operation, no matter how bad the odds are.

The real problem here is when companies penalise people for failing to achieve tough objectives. Which surgeon do you want, the one who achieved 80% (with just 80 survivals) or the one who failed to achieve 100% (with 98 survivals)?

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.

 

More Help with Objectives

If you would like to know more about the whole process and improve your skill, you can get a recording of my teleseminar on this subject. It includes al the materials and a complete transcript.

 

Objectives Teleseminar Recording and Materials

Here are the specific topics you will hear in this teleseminar:

• Coaching one of the participants through setting some very difficult objectives
• Setting objectives for production test people.
• Measuring individual’s performance in terms of productivity.
• Measuring performance and the effectiveness of what people are doing
• Objectives for improvement
• Stretch objectives
• Objectives like ‘getting papers published’
• Cascading objectives
• How objectives link with values
• The difference between goals and objectives
• What performance indicators are
• Dealing with objectives that you don’t have control over
• How to check you have got your objectives right
• Exceeding objectives
• Exceeding expectations
• Should you include ‘Business as usual’ in your objectives?

What you get:
 

• The recording of the teleseminar
• Materials to download
• A complete transcript of the teleseminar

To get your recording, just use this link Objectives Teleseminar Recording and Materials