SMART Goals And Why All Criteria Need To Always Be Met

No First Amongst Equals

I was asked an interesting question this week by a student who wanted to know if in setting business objectives that were challenging, if it was OK to only be able to define those that meet only three or perhaps four of the five criteria.As I mentioned it's certainly an intriguing question and one that I have personally paid the price for from personal experience in my professional career when others have failed to set the objectives properly.

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If like me, you have been around long enough you know that there is certainly at times a proverbial, 'first amongst equals' but in the case of the globally renowned: SMART Goals model I can assure everyone there really isn't. Put simply these five criteria they live or die as a collective of five. You either meet all five criteria in full when you set your objectives or in the alternative, you suffer the inevitable consequences of not achieving your specified goal.
So let us begin the discussion with a look at the five criteria that make up S.M.A.R.T.

Specific

Specifically what is it that I want the organisation, department, team or individual to achieve and why.
For example the business will generate increasing sales of twenty percent in dollars his financial year compared to last financial year.

Measurable

Is the objective being formulated measurable under normal conditions or is it abstract and open to opinion and subjective interpretation? if so it has no place in a SMART goal. For the test example  above which attempts to raise the income being generated by the business the answer is most definitely yes and the funds are calculated at the time of each transaction and therefore this second criteria is met.

Achievable

My personal favourite because it is here most often that businesses create a cross to bear by making the objective not only not achievable but totally unrealistic and again doomed for failure. A commonsense tip here is to look at what the market is doing and also the performance of your own brand within that market and from those two key data sets, extrapolate an achievable target will motivate, challenge and unite people to achieve a common goal.

Relevant

Sometimes erroneously listed as 'Realistic', this forth criteria of relevance asks that the goal being considered is relevant to the big picture and is fundamental to the group achieving that important aim. For example that a sales representative spends at least 180 full days in the field seeing customers is certainly relevant in achieving any goal centered around the desired number of face to face calls. Where the representative will eat lunch each day whilst in the field is not.

 

Timely

And finally each goal should have a definitive time limit around it to ensure that the success of that goal can be properly assessed against this allocation of time.
So in looking again at the example provided earlier during the discussion of the 'specific' criteria, you see that it does in fact meet all five criteria and is is also therefore a good example of a corporate SMART goal.  So what does a bad example like like?

 A Not So SMART Goal

Some years ago whilst working in a sales role I found myself at a national planning meeting for a major pharmaceutical firm that was announcing its objectives to all its staff and in particular to its sales teams.
The goal in question related to a specific product that had grown in the previous year by 20% (in dollars) and in a market that had by 10%. Against this background, the then product manager calmly announced that our objective for the year was to:
" Grow Product X by 80 per cent over lasts years dollar sales within this calendar year.  Now does this example meet four of the five criteria in: Specificity, Measure-ability, Relevance and Timeliness? Yes it does. But is it also reasonable in terms of being achievable. Answer, certainly not.

So What Happened To That Objective

Now let me preempt that I genuinely believe in goals that are challenging and compel people to work together for the common good but that was not the case here. In this case the entire sales force knew instantly that the goal would not be achieved and lost interest immediately.  For the record I am proud that that year I was the number one performer nationally with a yearly growth of 40% which was double last years figure and four times that of the market rate. Despite this there were no bonuses, no pay  increases or congratulations. only incrimination and layoffs.

Key Take Out

 

 So in the final analysis this very real cautionary tale should act as a stark reminder to set all your goals carefully and reasonably so that all stakeholders involved can more fully find shared rewards for a job well done.

Further Training

 

Naturally should you require and marketing, sales, digital media or other business training, please feel free to contact is for a discussion at any stage to discuss how Roads Scholars Training full suite of training courses can further augment your organisations performance by clicking on:  http://www.roadscholarstraining.com


So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele Lima.