SMART Goals really smart enough to measure you ?

When the old fiscal year closes and when the new fiscal year starts that’s when the time comes to open up your old facts sheets to measure your performance. Your boss man will be behind to decipher you. That’s when you will try to groan silently. In the entire years of all my career each organization have been asking me to prepare the SMART goals to measure my performance. I ponder each time while updating these SMART goals set up. They say,SMART means, goals should be specific, measurable, accepted, realistic, and time-bounded. Specific means that the goal is unambiguously defined and as narrowly defined as is possible for the task.Measurable means that one should know what to do and what good work looks like. If you can’t measure it, how will be your boss man know he or she is done and what well done means? Accepted means that the one should accepts or commits to achieve the objective.  Realistic goals are those with a reasonable expectation of accomplishment. Time is the last goal requirement. This can be deadline or milestone.They preach you the lessons and theories on how to set up these goals that align to your work and routines.

Individual goals vs Organizational goals:

Organizational goals are the goals that I have always been forced to be included into my list. Some organizations are very rigid enough to make any changes to this. My boss man forces this into my objectives. Some of them linear enough to make any adjustments to these coercive lists. For my individual SMART goals, as a IT person I always try to prepare these goals that can lead me into at least few of them below at the end.

• Commitment/time,
• Design thinking,
• Proactive,
• Relations,
• Trust of senior management,
• Innovative system solution with utmost quality,
• Rising star,
• Big-picture guy, and
• Team builder.
• Advocacy
• Organizational belonging

SMART Measurement:

If I do a retrospect, of all these years I come across very few times that I have had a candid measurement. Many times your measurement might link to your pay hike or a promotion or giving feedback to your management. It’s crucial for your growth. Your measurement ostensibly talks about yourself when you are not there. Both you and your boss man and his or her boss man should take immense responsibility for a SMART measurement.Many managers that I saw before used to adopt a routine of beginning performance discussions with positive comments, switching to negative feedback, and concluding with glowing words of appreciation. This Positive, Negative, Positive approach startle me sometimes while in retrospect. Message won’t be clear always.

So, I think  effective measurements should be simple, self-administered, comparative, and dynamic. Simple measurements are unambiguous and easy to understand. Self-administered means that individual must have knowledge of their progress and can keep track. If you can’t keep track, cannot exercise self-control. Comparative measures mean that, whenever possible, a standard is established so a comparison can be made between current performance, past personal performance, and a standard. The standard may be based on industry practice, the department’s past practice of what is needed to achieve the organization’s productivity goals. Finally, measurements should be dynamic. To the extent possible, the measurement should allow the individual to gauge progress as they are working, not just at the end of the task. This whole process gives you a SMART measurement within and outside.

SMART measurements lead you for an effective feed back which is well timed, most useful and appropriate enough to attain one of your individual goals.So, it’s the responsibility of the organization as well as on the individual to do a fair and SMART measurement.

In today’s rapid, dynamic & changing IT world, it’s becoming a burden and building more responsibilities on my shoulder after adding year on year into my career. The goals that I add them to prove myself sometimes makes me insane. Insatiable demands from the people  and their expectations subdued me many times. Let me hope that SMART goals and SMART measurements conduce me for an ideal & balanced evaluation.