SMART Incident Objectives

The National Incident Management System (the NIMS) identifies “Management by Objectives” as one of 14 “Management Characteristics” by which incidents must be managed. The NIMS defines objectives using the adjectives “specific,” “measurable” “achievable” and “realistic.” Contrary to widely held belief, the NIMS does NOT use the pneumonic “SMART” – that’s an invention of the ICS-300 training material.

Nevertheless, SMART objectives are essential to success. Since ICS-300 learners frequently struggle with the development of objectives, these explanations may be helpful.

First, it’s helpful to identify the stakeholders involved in your incident. I defined stakeholders in an earlier article “Incident Management – for Whom?” They are the people your objectives are intended to support. Your objectives, therefore, should make sense to your stakeholders.

It’s likely that not every objective will please every stakeholder. It’s even possible that some objectives might inconvenience some stakeholders, but that should only happen if that same objective brings much greater benefit to other stakeholders. (Consider how a wildland fire incident commander might have to allow a fire to burn through someone’s property to build a more defensible position to protect a greater amount of property.) But your incident objectives must make sense to the collective community of stakeholders, and be expressed in terms they can appreciate. So, make your objectives:

Specific: Identify WHO, WHAT, or WHERE the objectives are intended to serve. You want to feed people? Which people? You want to protect structures? Which structures? You want to remove debris from an area? Which area?

Measurable: How many, what percentage, or to what degree will the work be accomplished? Think about outcome measurements that make sense to the stakeholders, not input measurements. Nobody cares how many snowplows you put on the streets; they care if they can drive down the main roads safely. Sometimes, measurements are focused on “fewer than” numbers, as in “fewer than 1 injury per 1000 attendees” or “fewer than 1 auto accident per 10,000 attendees”. The bonus in focusing on injuries or accidents is that they are going to be measured as a normal course of operations. If you phrased your objective as “no more than two inches of snow on the roads at any time” you conceivably must task dozens of resources to measure and report the snow accumulations. That’s not likely to be the best use of those resources.

Action-Oriented: (This is NOT mentioned in the NIMS, but the course developers needed an A word. Some people use “achievable” as the A word, but that means the same as “realistic.”) Your objective needs to have a focus on action. Verbs like “consider,” “plan,” “study” are not action-oriented words. “Remove” as in snow, ice, debris; or “restore” as in utility services; or “feed” as in people in shelters, are all action-oriented verbs.

Realistic: Conduct a brief risk assessment on your objective. What might prevent you from achieving it? You might want to add a phrase like “unless the wind exceeds 20 miles per hour” or “assuming the expected resources arrive in time” because it’s not realistic for your team to achieve the objective in spite of Armageddon. If your objective has many possibilities for failure, you may need to rethink your specific or measurable aspects – you may be reaching too far.

Time-sensitive: By when, or for how long, should this objective be met? By default, the “due date” is the end of the operational period. If you can’t reasonably get it done by then, scale back your objective (or lengthen the operational period).

If you think the risk assessment or reality check “R” should come after you determine the “when,” I agree with you, but SMATR doesn’t roll off the tongue like SMART does, so make the mental adjustment in your mind.

Fellow ICS instructors: how do you teach SMART objectives?

Incident Commanders: how do you formulate SMART objectives?

ICS students: how else can we help you learn these concepts?