'We will implement a new customer system in Q3' is noted down as SMART in the plan of approach, complete with date, budget and owner. Six months after delivery, the system handles not a single customer query any faster than before, because nobody had specified what was supposed to get better. Almost every plan of approach claims to have SMART goals. Almost none actually do. That is not cynicism, it is a research finding — and the reason so many well-intentioned projects still deliver the wrong thing.
The promise of specific goals
That goals matter is one of the best-supported findings in organisational psychology. Locke and Latham built their goal-setting theory on some thousand studies, with effect sizes ranging from d≈0.42 to 0.80: specific and challenging goals demonstrably lead to better performance than vague "do your best" goals.
But there is an important condition attached. The effect is moderated by commitment, feedback, task complexity, ability and situational constraints: resources and time. An ambitious goal without matching resources loses its power. A goal, then, can never be separated from the question of whether it is achievable with what is available.
SMART is rarely truly SMART
Here it gets uncomfortable. In 2017 Ogbeiwi examined seventeen published "SMART examples": including Doran's original example from 1981, the man who coined the term. Not a single one of those seventeen examples contained all four core components of a well-formulated goal.
What was missing most often? The outcome: the intended result. It was present in only 24 percent of the examples. In other words: the vast majority of what is called "SMART goals" describes an activity and not a result.
The difference is not academic. Compare:
- Activity: "We will implement a new customer system in Q3."
- Outcome: "By Q4, 80 percent of customer queries are resolved within 24 hours, up from 60 percent now."
The first is done the moment the system is running: even if no one is better off. The second is done only when reality has actually changed. Projects that steer by the first type of goal can be delivered "on time and within budget" and still be utterly useless.
The OITT test: one sentence, four parts
Ogbeiwi offers a usable alternative: the OITT test. A good goal contains four elements in a single sentence:
| Element | Question | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Outcome | What changes? | Faster resolution of customer queries |
| Indicator | How do you measure it? | Percentage resolved within 24 hours |
| Target | How much? | 80 percent |
| Timeframe | When? | End of Q4 |
If your goal does not meet all four, it is missing something fundamental. The absence of the outcome in particular is treacherous, because the plan still looks complete without it.
The Dutch standard: SMART-C
The Netherlands Court of Audit sets the bar a notch higher. In its analyses of projects it applies SMART-C goals: specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, time-bound: and consistent. Without such goals and a business justification, the Court of Audit calls a project "organisationally and technically unrealistic".
That extra C is not bureaucracy. Consistency means that the goals do not clash with one another and that they align with the wider organisational interest. A project pursuing three goals that get in each other's way forces those carrying it out to silently choose priorities that no one has explicitly approved.
The Advisory Board on IT Assessment also puts this first: its first assessment aspect is "a clear rationale, problem statement and objective". Not whether a goal is stated, but whether the rationale is factually supported and the goal is clear.
What this means for you
Take the main goal from your plan and test it against the OITT four: are outcome, indicator, target and timeframe all explicit in one sentence? If the outcome is missing, rewrite the goal now — before the project runs on an activity nobody ever checks.
Whoever fails to name the result up front can always claim afterwards that it succeeded.
Sources
- Locke, E.A. & Latham, G.P. (2002), Building a practically useful theory of goal setting, American Psychologist.
- Ogbeiwi, O. (2017), British Journal of Healthcare Management.
- Algemene Rekenkamer — SMART-C-toets voor projectdoelstellingen en zakelijke rechtvaardiging.
- Adviescollege ICT-toetsing, Toetskader (eerste toetsaspect: "een duidelijke aanleiding, probleemstelling en doelstelling").