Why written objectives need to be really SMART

Abstract

There is general agreement that plans without well-formulated goals lack rationale, strategies lack relevance, actions lack direction, projects lack accountability, and organisations lack purpose ( Mullins, 1999 ; Beardshaw and Palfreman, 1990 ; Bratton, et al, 2007 ). Moreover, goals need to be properly constructed to serve as credible and usable benchmarks by which the results can be monitored and evaluated via immediate outputs, intermediate outcomes over the short term or terminal impacts in the long term ( Greenbank, 2001 ; Fitsimmons, 2008 ; Bipp and Kleingeld, 2011 ). Thus, it is a basic requirement of effective goal setting that objective statements are formulated using a clear and logical structure or framework. This article analyses examples of objective statements drawn from the literature and concludes that none of these can be truly described as SMART 1 , posing the risk that organisations using them as guide will fail to attain their goals.