SMART targets
Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 | Thoughts
People often talk about SMART targets. Inevitably people talk about how achievable and realistic are basically the same thing. The reason is that this is actually a common misconception about the acronym.
To understand it, we need to put it on context. SMART targets were originally developed for business and therefore that is the background that they are placed in the context of.
There are a number of alternatives for SMART and I will go through them below.
Assignable
Rather than achievable (because we already have realistic), you can have assignable. Who will do it? Can we give it someone and have them take ownership of it?
Agreed
How about agreed instead? This is useful for when setting performance goals in a business environment. A target is not SMART if either the manager or the employee is unhappy with it – it has to be agreed.
Relevant
We can also leave A as achievable and change the R from realistic to something else. How about relevant? Again, very useful in a business context and probably very relevant for your personal goals too. Why is this target is important? What is the motivation for doing it?
Conclusion
Those are just a few of the alternatives to SMART. Wikipedia has done a good job of cataloging all the alternatives. Personally I like relevant for setting personal goals.
People often talk about SMART targets. Inevitably people talk about how achievable and realistic are basically the same thing. The reason is that this is actually a common misconception about the acronym.
To understand it, we need to put it on context. SMART targets were originally developed for business and therefore that is the background that they are placed in the context of.
There are a number of alternatives for SMART and I will go through them below.
Assignable
Rather than achievable (because we already have realistic), you can have assignable. Who will do it? Can we give it someone and have them take ownership of it?
Agreed
How about agreed instead? This is useful for when setting performance goals in a business environment. A target is not SMART if either the manager or the employee is unhappy with it – it has to be agreed.
Relevant
We can also leave A as achievable and change the R from realistic to something else. How about relevant? Again, very useful in a business context and probably very relevant for your personal goals too. Why is this target is important? What is the motivation for doing it?
Conclusion
Those are just a few of the alternatives to SMART. Wikipedia has done a good job of cataloging all the alternatives. Personally I like relevant for setting personal goals.