SETTING SMARTER GOALS IN 7 EASY STEPS ~
By Duncan Haughey
The concepts of SMART and SMARTER provide an
excellent way to make sure your project goals and
objectives are trackable, relevant, that there are enough
resources to achieve them, and there is a definite
delivery deadline.
Try these seven steps to help you set SMARTER goals
for your projects:
1. Specific
Exactly what is it you want to achieve in your business
or personal life? A good goal statement explains the
what, why, who, where and when of a goal. If your goal
statement is vague, you will find it hard to achieve
because it will be difficult to define success.
2. Measurable
You must be able to track progress and measure the
result of your goal. A good goal statement answers the
question, how much or how many. How will I know
when I have achieved my goal?
3. Agreed
Your goal must be relevant to your stakeholders and
agreed with them. Examples of people to agree your goal
with are your line manager, employees and customers.
4. Realistic
Your goal should be stretching, but realistic and relevant
to you and your company. Make sure the actions you
need to take to achieve your goal are things within your
control. Is your goal achievable?
5. Time-Bound
Goals must have a deadline. A good goal statement will
answer the question, when will I achieve my goal?
Without time limits, it's easy to put goals off and leave
them to die. As well as a deadline, it's a good idea to set
some short-term milestones along the way to help you
measure progress.
6. Ethical
Goals must sit comfortably within your moral compass.
Most people resist acting unethically. Set goals that meet
a high ethical standard.
7. Recorded
Always write down your goal before you start working
towards it. Written goals are visible and have a greater
chance of success. The recording is necessary for the
planning, monitoring and reviewing of progress. Is your
goal written down?
William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, Scottish physicist
(1824-1907)
Specific: the goal must be explicitly defined, without any ambiguity.
It cannot be subject to individual interpretation but must explain
specifically what has to be achieved and the type of outcome
expected.
Measurable: the completion criteria and related quantitative or
qualitative measurement method must be clearly described. In other
words, you must be able to answer the question: “How will I know
that the objective is attained and which evidences are required to
confirm it?”
Attainable: this criterion emphasizes the importance of setting an
objectives that is challenging for your team but nonetheless reachable
against the existing constraints. It also requests you to assess whether
the objective is realistic taking into account the other objectives that
you have already set for the same employee. If the target is out of
reach, your objective will become meaningless. This criteria also
poses the question of the resource, authority and means needed to
accomplish the objective: confirm how the goal can be reached
(specific skills to be acquired, training available, human or financial
resources, level of authority…). An objective cannot be reached “by
all means” but through method and means aligned with your
company ethic and values.
Relevant: the goal must be tied to your organization priorities and to
the employee maturity in his role. Goals that align to your company
strategy, the team mission and the employee development and that do
not conflict with other objectives are relevant. It also requires to
check whether the timing for the objective is appropriate.
Time-bound: this criterion stresses the importance to specify an
appropriate time frame for your goal: when is it supposed to start and
to end? What are the steps and critical milestones to accomplish it?
What are the intermediate outcomes expected and by when?
Answering those questions contributes to define a sense of priority
for your staff and helps them to organize their tasks around their
various objectives.
Evaluated: as a manager, it is your responsibility to set challenging
goals for you team but also to support your staff in reaching their
targets by assessing the progress on a regular basis and by providing
some recommendations or coaching session to overcome eventual
obstacles. Define some specific checkpoints (at a predefined
frequency or at critical milestones) and the related expected
deliverables. Do not wait for the objective to reach its time-limit to
deliver your feedbacks: this is counter-productive because it does not
support the development of your collaborator and may even create
frustration if the target is missed. The final evaluation result of the
objective completion should not come as a surprise to your employee
but should be the reflect of the intermediate reviews plus the
evaluation of the last mile and its final output.
Recognized/Rewarded or Revisited: when reaching the end of the
time frame defined for the goal execution, run the final evaluation to
assess the success or failure in achieving the objectives. Ask your
employee for the lessons learned while executing the objective. What
would they do differently next time? Why? What could they manage
easily? What were the main obstacles? How have they been able to
overcome them? What have they learned? If the objective is reached,
explain the type of reward that the employee can expect (impact of
the evaluation on possible promotion or mobility, extended
responsibilities and autonomy on similar activities at the next
opportunity, monetary compensation…) and in any case recognize
the accomplishment. It is important to praise the employee for his
performance, especially when outstanding. On the other hand, if the
outcomes are below expectation, it is crucial to run a full review with
your employee to understand what went wrong and why. Ask
penetrating questionsto get to the essence of the issue and share ideas
on what could have been done differently. This discussion allows you
to revisit the objective in order to draw the appropriate
conclusions and should become the basis for defining new goals that
will help your employee to improve his weak areas.
Paul J. Meyer describes the characteristics of S.M.A.R.T. goals in his
book Attitude is Everything (2003). This S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goal is a variation of
the S.M.A.R.T. goals. In this section we have outlined how to create
S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goals.
Specific
The first term stresses the need for a specific goal over and against a more
general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous; without vagaries
and platitudes. To make goals specific, they must tell a team exactly what is
expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and
which attributes are important.
A specific goal will usually answer the five "W" questions:
 What: What do I want to accomplish?
 Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the
goal.
 Who: Who is involved?
 Where: Identify a location.
 Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
Measurable
The second term stresses the need for concrete criteria for measuring progress
toward the attainment of the goal. The thought behind this is that if a goal is
not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress
toward successful completion. Measuring progress is supposed to help a team
stay on track, reach its target dates, and experience the exhilaration of
achievement that spurs it on to continued effort required to reach the ultimate
goal.
A measurable goal will usually answer questions such as:
 How much?
 How many?
 How will I know when it is accomplished?
Attainable
The third term stresses the importance of goals that are realistic and attainable.
While an attainable goal may stretch a team in order to achieve it, the goal is
not extreme. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard
performance, as these may be considered meaningless. When you identify
goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can
make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial
capacity to reach them. The theory states that an attainable goal may cause
goal-setters to identify previously overlooked opportunities to bring
themselves closer to the achievement of their goals.
An attainable goal will usually answer the question:
 How: How can the goal be accomplished?
Relevant
The fourth term stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter. A
Bank Manager's goal to "Make 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by
2:00pm." may be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Time-Specific, but
lacks Relevance. Many times you will need support to accomplish a goal:
resources, a champion voice, someone to knock down obstacles. Goals that
are relevant to your boss, your team, your organization will receive that
needed support.
Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization
forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals would be
considered a relevant goal.
A relevant goal can answer yes to these questions:
 Does this seem worthwhile?
 Is this the right time?
 Does this match our other efforts/needs?
 Are you the right person?
Time-specific
The fifth term stresses the importance of grounding goals within a time frame,
giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus
their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of
the S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being
overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization. A
time-specific goal is intended to establish a sense of urgency.
A time-specific goal will usually answer the question:
 When?
 What can I do 6 months from now?
 What can I do 6 weeks from now?
 What can I do today?
Evaluate
The sixth term stresses the importance of always evaluating how your goal is
progressing (or has progressed). It is important to understand that this step is
conducted throughout the entire goal process, as well as after the goal is met.
The idea is to create a progress report to see if you are where you want to be
in your goal. This is a crucial step before the seventh and last step.
Revise
The seventh and last step brings everything back in full circle. It stresses the
importance of always being able to adapt to your environment and the
challenges that arise. Revise enables you to be able to change your goals (by
increasing or decreasing them) depending on the results of your evaluation
step.