Some assume that only management needs to worry about SMART objectives because it is responsible for setting goals, but in reality, everyone sets goals, regardless of his rank in the organisation, and has to achieve them. Making sure the objectives are achievable is not only top management's or a project manager's responsibility, but it is also that of team members, as they have to commit themselves to achieving these goals. If goals are not smart then the chances of meeting them are less, which is an unfavourable situation for management and employees alike.
For objectives to be achieved, they need to be SMART, which is short for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. There are of course variations on what each letter stands for, but all of them evolve around the same concept of improving the chances of achieving objectives.
Specific means that they are not left at a high level. For example, when we say we want to succeed at our project, this is not a specific goal. Success is not clearly defined, and different people will have different opinions about how successful a project is, and whether a project is successful at all. For objectives to be specific, we have to define the objective more precisely, by defining what we mean by success, in this case. For example, a manager may agree with one of his project managers, working on a client project, to identify different levels of success. For example, at a minimum, for the project to be successful, the project manager must deliver the service based on defined scope; the client must formally accept it, pay for the services, and be satisfied with the service provided. This becomes a specific and clear threshold of the objective of the project.
Measurable means the objective can be measured while in progress and when completed. For a salesperson, measurable may mean measuring progress towards the set target. If this is a sales volume target, it can be easily measured and monitored every month. However, other things are harder to measure, like customer satisfaction. Although it is harder to measure, it is not an impossible task. Upon completion of the job, a customer satisfaction survey may give indication to the degree of customer satisfaction. During work, the implementation of processes that usually lead to higher customer satisfaction can be used as a way to measure progress towards customer satisfaction. Also, measuring the quantity and criticality of client related issues can give a sign to the level of customer satisfaction to be expected. The ability to respond proactively to issues and managing them properly can also be measured. Measurement is an important element of SMART that is achievable even though it may be more difficult with some objectives than others.
A stands for attainable, according to one account. Attainable means that the objective is doable, not impossible. Objectives should not be set beyond what is reasonable. If a machine is designed to produce 100 pieces per hour, at maximum capacity, then attainable goals for production from that machine must not exceed 100 pieces.
Realistic is close to attainable and they are almost synonyms. To me, there is a slight difference. Attainable means what is feasibly possible, and any goal beyond what is attainable is impossible to achieve. Realistic, on the other hand, means that one takes into consideration current environmental factors like culture, existing levels of skills and knowledge, and current levels of productivity when setting a goal. For example, if the current project success rate at an organisation is 20 per cent, it is not realistic to set a goal to improve that to, say, 80 per cent without eliminating the cause behind the low success rate.
Finally, the T stands for timely. Objectives need to be set against time; otherwise they will lose their meaning. For example, saying that we need to improve the profit margin by 10 per cent does not mean much without setting a time by which the objective is to be met.
Telling a team member that you want "better" reports from him is meaningless if one does not use SMART to define what is better. Instead of just saying better, make it SMART and tell him that you want him to submit reports with less than one grammatical or spelling mistake for every one hundred words over a three month period. This is a clear and specific goal. It is measurable as the end result can be measured with the report that the employee turns in at the end of the three months. Every week, the manager can measure the progress by monitoring reduction in the grammatical mistakes made in the report to ensure the writing has improved. If not, the manager and the team member can agree on corrective actions to ensure that the final target is met.
By Ammar W. Mango
© Jordan Times 2006
