Last month I touched upon SMART Objectives in the context of Goals Versus Objectives – words that are often interchangeable, but mean something quite different. We defined Objectives as realistic targets towards attaining the Goal. I recently ran a workshop on SMART objectives, and gave some specific examples of each of the SMART components, so I thought it would be useful to follow up the previous post with those examples to make sure the concepts are crystal clear. Plus, there are a couple of slight variations of the SMART acronym so I thought I’d mention that too. The following blog post is written from a transcript of the workshop:
I want to dominate the world!
Very often, we’re good at setting ourselves goals. Objectives, however are more realistic targets – perhaps towards attaining that world domination!
When you actually write objectives down, they tend to use a more active tense, stronger verbs, perhaps more specific.
We have a model we can use to help us shape our objectives, called SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Ambitious (or Achievable)
- Realistic (or Relevant)
- Time-bound
Specific
So what does specific mean? Well, what do I want to accomplish? What is the the purpose? What are the benefits? Who else might be involved? Where is this taking place? Let’s say, I told you that my objective was to run the London Marathon. How could I make that more specific? Well, I could set myself a time, say I want achieve less than five hours. So, what sort of training will be necessary? Who else might I need to help me? It’s literally just asking a few more questions about that particular goal to make it more and more specific.
Some goals are hard to break down into a series of objectives. A common one might be “I want to learn to say no”. Was is the objective? It could be simply be to make me feel good. But, how are you going to know how you feel good? An easy tool is score it from 1 to 10. How do you feel now? If 10 is, “I feel completely comfortable saying no”, and 1 is, “I hate saying no so I rarely do”. The question you need to ask your self is “Where are you now?”. Perhaps you’re a 4, but you’d rather be a six (you don’t want to become the other extreme!). That is how you can start putting some very specific parameters around things that are slightly fluffy.
Measurable
This takes it further. How much? “How many? “How will I know when it’s done? Going with the London Marathon example, I could give myself a target of under five hours. The next question is “how many do I want to run”? Maybe I want to run one every year, or maybe I just want to do one? As it turned out, I only did one, but it went quite well – it wasn’t under five hours though! How will you know when it’s done? Well, you’re going to know, right? You’re going to get a medal or you’re not going to get a medal.
Achievable
A can be Ambitious or Achievable. The best way of working out whether something is achievable is to start being very specific about the activities to get there. If it was, “I want to be a confident presenter”, then what is it that is going to make me a confident presenter?. Perhaps I should get some training or coaching. Then I could set myself a target of arranging four or five instances in the year where I have to present to more than five people in a group. Is that achievable in my workplace? Is the budget there for that to happen? What will I need to do to put all those things in place to get there?
Relevant
R can be Realistic or Relevant. Let me give you an example for Relevant. “Is there a real benefit?”. This is the thing – is it worth doing? Is the time right for this? I wanted to run the London Marathon, but my goodness, I’m 53! Is this a good idea even?! You start thinking about whether this moment is the right moment to do what you’re suggesting you should be doing, or the people on your team should be doing? Does it align with the vision that the company has, or that your team has, or that you have for other people? Are you actually the right person to be doing presentation skills training, or running a marathon? Maybe someone else on your team should be doing it, because they do do amateur dramatics, or they’re physically fit! Who is the most likely to excel at it? Perhaps that would be better for the team.
Time-Bound
Very simply, what are the immediate targets? Short-term, medium-term, long-term? What do you want to achieve by next month? What do you want to achieve in three months? What do you want to achieve in six months? This is where your 1 to 10’s might come into play. “I want to be a 5 by October and by January, I’m going to be telling people where to go and feeling great about it. I’ll be a 10 at saying no. So, very simple moments in time in terms of how you evaluate an objective, but very often ignored.
I hope it was useful to put some flesh on the bones of that previous post. Obviously, there is a lot more to the subject, perhaps this will whet your appetite to work with Sun and Moon!
David Solomon
Managing Director, Sun and Moon Training
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