Is It Wise To Be Smart?

This article was originally published in Effective Consulting magazine in August 2002

For many years, managers have been urged to set "SMART" targets for their staff, where the SMART acronym stands for some variant of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. This seems like common sense advice; and yet most organisations still find it difficult to make this common sense work!

Perhaps it is time to ask if the use of SMART targets to manage performance is wise, in a complex, uncertain and rapidly changing world?

Increasingly, organisations must act with only partial knowledge (and sometimes total ignorance) of the likely shape and direction of future events. Very little takes place in the "known with certainty" zone. Even where circumstances appear fixed, and events predictable in the immediate term, it is likely that small disturbances in the external environment or internal dynamics of the organisation will conspire to confound "the best laid plans . . ." etc.

In over thirty years of working in organisations, I have yet to experience a situation in which actual events have turned out in the ways foreseen in detailed plans and budgets. Yet SMART targets imply that the future can be predicted and the required actions determined with certainty for significant periods ahead. Even where the overall goal is unambiguous (and expressible broadly in SMART terms), it is likely that many course corrections will be needed along the way.

And these will necessarily require many of the original 'micro' plans and targets to be abandoned, if the 'macro' goal is to be achieved successfully. Some individuals or groups may need to move 'backwards' in relation to their original goals, if the organisation as a whole is to move forward.