When SMART goals are Dumb
I wonder if SMART goals are dumb when working to change your life. Goal setting requires history.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound. Last year you went to the gym zero times.
It’s not smart to set a yearlong goal for something you’ve never done.
SMART goals and experience:
Experience informs goal setting. When you don’t have experience, long-term personal goals are a shot in the dark. If you don’t read books, forget about reading a book a month. Read one book and see how it goes.
Over the years I’ve worked with leaders at inflection points. They say they want to work less and spend more time with family. I challenge them to define “less” and “more”. How many hours a week do you want to work? How much time do you aspire to have with family? Be specific.
Set short-term goals and see how it goes. Reflect and set another short-term goal.
Targets create clarity and define the win. Goals enable you to track progress. Give yourself grace when you’re doing things you’ve never done. Get some experience. It’s dumb when smart goals defeat you.
SMART goals – when changing your life – should be short-term. Try things and learn. Learn and adapt.
Life changes in iterations, not giant leaps. SMART goals reflect reality and aspiration.
You think you know what you want, but you can’t know until after you’ve done it.
I still plan to press leaders to be SMART when setting goals. I also plan to include large doses of learning and flexibility in the short term when people step into uncharted waters.
How can people avoid being dumb when setting goals?
What are some important practices when making life change?
Still curious:
Why Goals are Dangerous and How to Make them Work
SMART: an Acronym for Success (indeed.com)
I have applied SMART goals in both employee performance management and leadership coaching with clients. To illustrate goal setting, I often use the analogy of Mapquest. – Mapquest provides specific steps to reach a destination from a starting point. While you may know your final destination, it is also important to establish checkpoints to stop and refuel. Just as Mapquest allows you to add additional stops along the journey, setting incremental goals and checkpoints helps measure progress. Similar to stopping for gas or encountering traffic on a journey, it is important to be flexible and adjust course when necessary. It’s also important to offer grace when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Love the illustration of Mapquest, BW. Those checkpoints are so useful.
Or, how about just doing the thing? I’d also propose that SMART goals (and goals in general) are dumb when that’s all you do. I could set goals – short, medium, long, SMART, Six Sigma , Agile, whatever – about going to the gym. But what really matters is just going to the gym. And the likelihood that you’ll go again, once you just go, goes up! Back to that NIKE slogan, “JUST DO IT!”
Clear and simple, IM. A long-term targe helps us set a general direction. Near-term action makes everything real. Just go try stuff that aligns with your long-term goals or vision.
I read about one NFL coach who set one goal for his team. “Win one game.” When they accomplished that goal, his next goal was “Win two games in a row.”
So start small with one goal and make it specific and include a deadline.
“Win one game.” Bingo. Setting a goal to win the championship feels presumptuous. No one knows the future. I suppose you could say, the way we win chapionships is by winning the next game.
Share your goals publicly and often. It’s much harder to skip the gym when you know your coworkers are going to ask you how the workout was. Even if it is a short term goal, be sure people know what you are working on. Goal is to read a book? Tell people something interesting from the book. Not a summary of the whole thing, just something from the chapter you just read.
We need friends. We need an audience. We need challenge and encouragement. Love your suggestion, Jennifer. Cheers
This statement spoke to me:
Give yourself grace when working to change your life.
This applies to goal setting. If you set your goal, and miss the mark, you must give yourself grace and allow yourself to regroup, reset, and continue to move forward. Without grace, many will just stop in their tracks and give up.
Thanks, Wendy. It’s hard to move forward while beating yourself down.
How about Realistic in the Acronym instead of Relevant?