#10 Is S.M.A.R.T. goal setting really dead?
While googling for BRM (Benefits Realization Management) I came across a Belgium-based company Qollabi, creating software for exactly that, BRM, and it made me curious. The difference however was that the acronym meant Business Relationship Management. After exploring their website a bit, I came across a provocative blog post, which claimed that S.M.A.R.T. goal setting is dead.
The blog post says that the goals are usually copied from previous years with slight modifications and the objective setting is done in a top-down approach. Another issue that the author sees is that such objectives are not suitable for long-term focus.
I believe that the blog author had a bad personal experience in working with the S.M.A.R.T. goals and generalizes his own conclusions. Any method of goal-setting can be used carelessly and thus produce questionable results.
Modern tech companies more often use Objectives and Key Results (OKR) for their goal setting. Though OKRs provides an extra level of context and possibility to see the objectives in a hierarchical way across the organization, there are still places in organizations where S.M.A.R.T. goals make sense.
Firstly, OKR’s key results share many of the characteristics of S.M.A.R.T. goals: they are measurable, specific, and realistic. Secondly, the S.M.A.R.T. framework is applicable to setting personal development plans. The goals written in such a way are well-though and give ideas of how they may be achieved. Such goals become more tangible and easier to work towards.
That being said, the S.M.A.R.T. framework is still being used at different levels of organizations and is helpful when used in a smart way.