Why SMART goals miss half the point
Want to change the world, or just yours? SMART goals provide a great framework but are only a part of ensuring success.
This year I had to do one of the hardest things. As a creative agency, we spent a lot of time assisting our clients across various industries with internal branding projects. We’re talking straight-forward refreshers on values, mission, and vision through to something near unthinkable: implementing change when things are going great! A market leader with a business model that’s delivered 20 years of success. That’s a hard sell.
Spelling it out
Throughout all of this change management, we’ve learned a lot of lessons and I kept drawing parallels to my personal and business goal setting. In particular that management training and -seminar favourite: SMART goals. Just typing it I can nearly hear my PowerPoint fire up. (Keynote for the win though!)
If you’re not familiar with SMART goals; it’s a framework of goal setting that first appeared in a 1981 paper by George T. Doran published in Management Review. It’s a mnemonic device (and acronym) that outlines the requirements for developing and setting goals or objectives:
Specific
Measurable
Assignable (or more commonly, Achievable)
Relevant
Time-bound (also Timely)
Much praised, criticised or built upon, it’s been an undeniably popular doctrine in modern management practices and personal growth speak.
But wait, there’s more!
As we drove project after project to success I realised from our learnings and the parallels to goal setting, that there were a few additional elements that are crucial to success. All the planning in the world will fall flat without developing these steps.
Let’s call this expanded framework SMARTCUB goals or objectives.
Yes okay, smarty-pants, I know that’s not the world’s catchiest catch-phrase. But let’s roll with it for now. Suggestions are welcomed though!
So CUB. It brings into the fold three additional and key parts:
Communicated
Understood
Believed-in
Crucially linked together
Although part of the broader framework, these three goals are also intimately interdependent upon each other. The best laid out plans mean nothing if it’s not communicated to your team, market, partners, suppliers, stakeholders or any other party which plays a role in ensuring a successful outcome. And this is not just relevant in a business context. If you’ve set a personal goal, whether it’s to complete your first triathlon, to stop smoking or to get that promotion at work, you need to identify all the stakeholders at play and communicate your goals and outline the steps to achieve them. Even those dig-deep individualistic efforts of triumph often have a direct or indirect community of sorts contributing to that success.
So you’ve communicated your goals and your team gets it. Great! Except they probably don’t. Different things to different people are often interpreted in as many ways. Stating your goals and outlines are one part. Planning and facilitating the necessary forums, follow-ups, and discussions between parties to really understand them is crucial. It is here that mutual understanding is born.
Want to shoot the lights out? Come as close as one can to practically guarantee success? Ensure your goals are believed in. A fundamental aspect that will drive determination, grit, fortitude, creativity, and duty. Again, equally relevant for both the individual and the organisation. And while it caps our freshly minted acronym, it is by no measure an afterthought. To ensure your ideas are carried about with passion and vigour you need to ensure participation, transparency, and collaboration across as many elements of the SMART framework as possible. Get this right and you’ll have an unstoppable force.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be a SMARTCUB and do some goal setting for next year. Hey, don’t blame me for trying to make it a thing! ;)
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