Is an unvetted strategy making your SMART goal dumb?

A great goal can be easily sabotaged by an embedded strategy.

THINK ON IT: Is an unvetted strategy making your SMART goal dumb?

CEOs are right to focus on creating SMART goals — those that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Without it, many business goals can be obfuscated enigmas. What do they mean? And how do we know when we've achieved them? Can we actually achieve them? 

In the pursuit of the perfectly crafted goal, however, leaders may inadvertently pollute it. For instance, they may create a goal to increase next year's revenue by 20% by creating two new distribution partners. It seems sensible enough and may satisfy the SMART criteria, but it also may have presupposed a strategy that may not be fully vetted.

The aforementioned goal specifies the desired outcome — the what — 20% more revenue. Yet, it also contains the strategy — the how — creating two new distribution partners. Because our minds naturally give preference to the how, rather than the what, the focus of the team pursuing this goal would be on setting up the distributors. Yet, is that the best option? Is it the only one? Or are there other options which have yet to be examined?

You may have goals that marry strategy to them as well. And it may be appropriate to do so when the strategy is well-vetted. But it's far too easy to create goals without sufficient latitude for a change in strategy. To know if you may have polluted a goal with an unvetted strategy, ask yourself which would be a better indicator of success: achieving your goal, or achieving your strategy? 

“Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem to characterize our age."

— Albert Einstein 

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