smarter than the average goals

[tim_maroney]

Today I read keith418's pieces on SMART goals for the OTO. The SMART formula seems workable enough, although I am always wary of smarmy, over-marketed planning models. We might ask why we should concentrate on goals and strategy rather than on requirements, whether a matrix organization or a traditional hierarchy would better fit the organizational goals,

Comments

[tim_maroney]

A Google search will turn up plenty of men in bad suits trying to sell you something with SMART. As I discuss above with Joe, I don't think it's bad as a basic sanity check goals in applicable domains. It overdresses a simpler method in which the actual effectiveness lies, which is having measurable goals and discussing them. It's good to do that but it's sad to see that so many organizations actually need to be told something that basic.

A lot of management and process consultancy consists of this kind of song and dance. I like to ask them questions about ordinary occurrences that don't fit into their simplistic formula and watch them twitch, especially if they've got some software product to sell that plainly can't be customized to an organization's own workflows. No need to tell someone they're a snake oil salesman if their own incapacity makes it painfully obvious.

Rant mode aside, there is a lot of good work on process in various fields, among which I would include as bearing on the OTO's domain Masonic manuals on decorum and jurisprudence, just as we now see Robert's Rules of Order bringing welcome relief to difficult meetings. I've also seen some work done using my favorite software process model, the CMM or Capability Maturity Model, which like any of these tools, requires adaptation to our own requirements, but still may have a lot to give us. I don't think there's anything wrong with SMART goals being included in the toolset, as long as they're applied well. Again, I think Joe has some good points on how to do that, and how they're not applied well in this case.