In 2018, researchers challenged a group of young doctors with a kind of a medical puzzle.
They were introduced to a series of actors, and were tasked with figuring out whether they were displaying symptoms of a heart attack, a stroke, or other deadly ailment.
Before the exercise began, one group of doctors went through a SMART exercise. They sat down and mapped out a series of learning objectives, and thought through — in detail — how they were going to achieve them. The other cohort went through their regular, unstructured goal-setting process.
The groups ultimately had very different outcomes, according to a study later published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. The cohort who used SMART goal setting — a staple of business schools and boardrooms for decades — completed almost fifty percent more “educational actions” than the comparison group, ultimately maximizing their experience.
“The process of creating SMART learning goals served as a subconscious primer for the execution of goals,” the study authors concluded.
It was a real-life test of the famous SMART goal system. SMART is a term coined in 1981 by George Doran, based on concepts developed by Peter Drucker, sometimes called the father of modern management.
The concept has been familiar in management circles for decades, but its value is often misunderstood. The SMART approach has also come in for criticism in recent years for what critics say is its rigidity and inapplicability in dynamic, fast-moving fields.
To learn why SMART goal setting may yet be useful for your organization — and to understand some of its limitations — read on for a comprehensive look at the topic.
A generation of business students has wondered: what does SMART goals stand for? SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
SMART goal setting provides a strategy for breaking down large tasks into manageable parts. It also provides a mechanism for accountability.
Each stage of the SMART methodology offers opportunities to refine and shape the goals you have in your sights. In that way, it’s not only a system for achieving organizational goals, but an exploratory tool that can help determine which goals are worth pursuing.
One way to manage your team’s goals in one place is by using Spreadsheet.com’s Team Objectives and Tasks template.
A SMART goal begins with a clearly defined objective. This could be a specific sales target, the launch of a product, or obtaining a given number of user sign-ups for your software.
A goal pursued with the SMART methodology needs to be quantifiable. Determine a metric that can help you evaluate progress toward your goal. These first two stages are closely related, and should be developed in tandem for the system to work properly.
Goals pursued with the SMART system must be attainable and realistic. Although the ultimate objective may push the limits of your team’s capability, it can’t be outside the realm of possibility.
SMART goal setting should be used for goals that, if achieved, will provide an articulable benefit to your organization. Your goal should contribute to success via increased revenue, better market penetration, or some other materially positive outcome.
A SMART goal needs to be linked to a defined time frame, but this portion of the system is less straightforward than it appears at first glance.
The idea is not just to set a deadline, but to set the right deadline, one that accounts for both your capabilities and your ambition. Setting an unrealistic, aspirational deadline that can’t be met isn’t helpful, and that’s what time-bound means. Your timeframe must be “bound” — constrained — on both sides.
Each stage of the SMART goal system offers a chance to adjust and calibrate the task at hand. In that sense, it can be as valuable for thinking through a problem as it is for actually achieving the objective.
In the study mentioned at the beginning of this article, researchers didn’t find a significant difference in learning among the early-career doctors who used the SMART system as compared with their peers. They didn’t end up with higher test scores, for example, or a better understanding of heart arrhythmias.
What the students who used the SMART system did excel at was setting more goals, and identifying better metrics to track their own progress. Their learning objectives became more ambitious, they were more engaged in their work, and they pursued concepts their counterparts didn’t. In other words, the process itself provided the benefit.
When used properly, SMART goals take the guesswork out of management. They allow organizations to measure their progress in ways that can be clearly communicated to the personnel involved, and they can help hold teams accountable when objectives aren’t met.
Each principle in the system addresses a common problem in organizations large and small. Oftentimes, businesses pursue broad objectives without thinking in detail about what concrete actions will help achieve those broader aims.
Likewise, many organizations proceed without smart metrics that can help measure success, or waste time and energy on goals that aren’t obtainable or are actually a distraction from core purposes. A recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that only 28 percent of mid-level managers in their sample group could identify their company’s top strategic priorities.
Below are a few specific examples of how the SMART methodology might be applied to real-world objectives. These goals are written from a first-person perspective, a technique that can be useful for envisioning the intended outcome.
S: Secure 2,000 new sales leads in the next quarter.
M: I will need about 166 new leads per week to meet my goal this quarter.
A: I have access to qualified email inquiries, so this goal is attainable
R: More leads will reliably generate more revenue, so this is relevant.
T: This is a weekly task that must be performed by EOD on Friday.
These sales goals can be easily managed with a Simple CRM template, like this one:
S: I want to be up-to-date on our competitors, and especially their new product offerings.
M: Each month, I will review one competitor’s newest product lines and pricing, adding new information to a spreadsheet.
A: This information is accessible and can be compiled in a reasonable amount of time.
R: Knowing what my competitors are doing will help me improve my own work.
T: This is a long-term goal, and each monthly review is a step toward that goal.
S: I want to help my direct reports improve their workflows.
M: Each week, I’ll ask direct reports to identify an inefficiency and develop a plan to improve it.
A: My employees know where inefficiencies are, and can easily add this to their workloads.
R: Working more efficiently will let our team get more done in the time we have.
T: Improving workflow is a broad goal, but linking improvements to a weekly review makes this a time-bound goal.
Depending on the field you work in, project managers may find almost endless uses for the SMART goal methodology. Motivating team members or even increasing team cohesion with social and after-work events are goals that could be pursued with the SMART system.
There are SMART goals templates available online, but they will likely be too basic for most project managers' uses. Project management software can provide a myriad of tools that can help quantify and visualize elements of a SMART goal that can be hard to express.
The most common SMART goal mistakes occur when the system isn’t adhered to closely. Oftentimes, what appears to be a “specific” goal is actually too general, or the identified metrics are poorly defined and don’t accurately measure progress.
But the SMART goal methodology has its limitations, even when its principles are followed carefully. In recent years, the SMART methodology has been criticized for being too inflexible in a modern business landscape that is undergoing constant, rapid change.
Management consultants Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller, with Boston Consulting Group, have argued that SMART goal methodology can actually limit a company’s potential when applied in the wrong context.
In cases when a company needs to innovate in a new or emerging market space, the narrow goal setting of the SMART methodology can be stifling, actually preventing new ideas from emerging.
“This is the case when we want to play, explore, and innovate — bypassing constraints rather than being guided by them,” they argue, according to an article in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Business Review. Paradoxically, if a company is in need of new ideas, “the best tool for the job may be no goal at all,” they write.
The SMART goal methodology is primarily designed for narrow and easily-defined goals. But what about longer-term aspirations?
The PACT methodology is another approach to goal-setting that may be better suited to over-the-horizon ambitions, those that are not easily tied to data or other granular metrics.
Maybe your goal is to become a more innovative thinker or cultivate better client relationships. These are the kinds of objectives that may be hard to outline through the SMART methodology, but can fit well within the PACT framework.
The PACT acronym describes goals that are:
Purposeful: A goal that aligns with your deeply held values or career ambitions.
Actionable: Can be pursued through meaningful action, not one that happens by chance.
Continuous: Can be achieved through the development of an ongoing habit.
Trackable: Can be monitored with a simple yes/no daily or weekly status update.
Businesses use a variety of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to quantify their successes and identify where they’ve fallen short. A KPI provides a benchmark that signifies something meaningful about the health or success of an organization.
A KPI might be a percentage of a firm’s overall market share, its gross profit margin, or its average monthly user base. A KPI is a defined metric, usually one that can be expressed with data. In the SMART methodology, a KPI can be an important tool for fulfilling the “Measurable” element of a well-designed SMART goal.
An Objective and Key Results (OKR) formula is a way of expressing a goal and its most relevant indicators. If your company’s objective is to sign up a steady stream of new users on your platform, the key results needed to achieve that goal need to be quantified.
It may be that securing 1,000 new users per week would qualify as a healthy growth rate. The OKR formula offers a way to define a broad objective and make it a “Measurable” element of a SMART goal.
The SMART methodology has persisted in a variety of fields because it’s flexible and versatile, but it isn’t a perfect fit for every application.
For broader or longer-term goals, the PACT system may be a superior approach. When innovation is the highest priority, both PACT and SMART goals may have their downsides: as Reeves and Fuller argue, “no goal” may be the right goal.
Regardless of how you choose to use — or not use — the SMART methodology, this guide should help you determine the approach that is right for you.
