Personal Objective for 2013? Not to Have SMART Objectives

Have you done your appraisal reviews and personal goal setting for 2013 yet? Got five SMART (five steps of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based) objectives for yourself and all your team? Well, don’t. For the evidence is mounting that the downsides of overprescriptive goal setting outweigh the potential benefits.

I, like many of you, spent hours in an already busy December reviewing the performance of my staff and, following the Aon Hewitt Global Performance System guidelines, to set SMART objectives for each of them and myself in 2013 (though our excellent HR department, wisely, allow this process to run over into January). And the process has spread out from its corporate roots into government, personal counseling and life coaching. Even my kids’ schools now set them “learning goals.”

But my underlying, nagging doubts about the value of this prescribed goal-setting process persist. Now there is academic evidence to support them.

When Wendy Hirsh and I wrote up our research findings on performance management in the U.K. journal People Management just over a year ago, it showed surprising levels of agreement, even in the HR community, with the withering critique of the process by Professor Keith Grint that “rarely in the history of management can a system have promised so much and delivered so little” (http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/08/performance-management-fine-intentions.htm).

Wendy and I charted the changes that a majority of HR functions were making to their appraisal process, particularly in starting to simplify the complex plethora of competency frameworks and talent and pay management–related paraphernalia that has grown up around it.

But we found nobody seriously questioning the whole foundation of the process in goal setting and the SMART methodology that most of us use to do it, whatever the practical problems in applying the model in ever-faster moving organizations, operating in ever-more unpredictable environments, with lower levels of management supervision and an ever-widening range of relevant performance metrics.

Yet Professor Max Bazerman, reporting on recent Harvard University research, records the negative effects of this process that many of us will have witnessed, including “a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation” (http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-083.pdf).

Personally I would add to that list of negatives. First, there is the problem of the rigid cascading of corporate objectives in these rapidly changing times in downsized organizations with wider management spans of control. Peter Drucker’s ideas on Management by Objectives applied to a process designed to operate in much more hierarchical and slower moving structures than the environment for most employers today.

My review of the appraisal system for more than 1 million nonmedical staff in the U.K National Health Service, and following the prescribed SMART guidance, found examples of managers trying to appraise more than 100 reporting employees, of 3- to 4-hour appraisal meetings and of junior staff receiving objectives late in the year as they waited for them to cascade down through their bosses.

Second is the problem of potentially missing the benefits of unplanned opportunism. My biggest successes in consulting have invariably involved taking immediate advantage of an emerging opportunity that nobody, including me, my boss and competitors, foresaw at the start of the year, and having the freedom to do that. Professor Peter Higgs at Edinburgh University hit on his concept of the Higgs boson particle that gives matter mass and that was finally discovered in 2012, not through pursuing his annually agreed SMART objectives but while out on a walk in the Cairngorms one weekend.

The Harvard researchers’ conclusion is that “rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal setting as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision.”

But what to do you do instead? Surely we all need to have targets to strive for? Of course, as a wealth of research from Gary Locke and others demonstrates, having agreed, personal objectives have many benefits. The problems have arisen from the unthinking, rigid application of a concept in a very different era to that in which it was developed.

In fact, it may even be a misapplication of the SMART concept. Mike Morrison points out that the first person to use the term, G. T. Doran, actually emphasized,

In certain situations it is not realistic to attempt quantification, particularly in middle management positions. Practicing managers and corporations can lose the benefit of a more abstract objective in order to gain quantification. (http://rapidbi.com/why-smart-objectives-dont-work/)

I would suggest a couple of ideas to help address the risks and problems and preserve the benefits of goal setting without the downsides. First, instead of the mechanistic cascading of corporate goals, talk to your staff, in groups as well as individually, about the mission of your organization. Get them to understand it and to identify with it and then to think about how they can further it.

It is no coincidence that Michael West’s study showing the benefits of performance management in saving lives in acute hospitals, which Wendy and I cited, occurred in such a setting. The NHS has such an obviously beneficial and vital mission, and in a setting where teamworking is so important and valued. But any organization can be imbued with purpose. Think of Jeff Bezoz’s philosophy at Amazon, to “work hard, have fun and make history” as the world’s first global online retailer.

Second, you and your staff should identify areas of interest and focus over the next year rather than narrow, target-constrained goals. In the ambitiously titled 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, Peter Bregman writes that while

a goal defines an outcome you want to achieve, an area of focus establishes activities you want to spend your time doing. A goal is a result; an area of focus is a path. A goal points to a future you intend to reach; an area of focus settles you into the present.

Play to the strengths of yourself and your people, talk about the things that interest and excite them that they would really like to do, to make them a success in a successful organization. As Bregman concludes,

An area of focus taps into your intrinsic motivation, offers no stimulus or incentive to cheat or take unnecessary risks, leaves every positive possibility and opportunity open, and encourages collaboration while reducing corrosive competition.

And then not only will you, in my experience, achieve as much as you would have done anyway, you’ll enjoy the process a lot more.

My local gym is suddenly packed with new members looking to get rid of that Christmas excess. But how many of them will stick it out beyond the initial burst of enthusiasm?

Researchers from Greece and London have been looking into people’s motivations to exercise. They found that those who exercised because it made them feel good were far more motivated and likely to continue over the long term than those who did it with a specific goal or target in mind, such as losing weight or impressing the opposite sex.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and enjoyable 2013.