Goals: SMART and meaningful
Why this matters
Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," the Cat answers. Alice says she doesn't much care. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," says the Cat. Goals are the way you stop being Alice. Covey's Habit 2 puts it as a rule: begin with the end in mind.
"Read more books" isn't a goal; it's a feeling about books. "Read one Masonic monitor a quarter, finishing each by the last day of the quarter, sharing one page of notes with my mentor" is a goal. The first won't survive a busy week. The second will, because it tells you exactly when it's failing. Doran's 1981 SMART checklist named the five tests; forty years of replication says they still work. The Craft's expectation is the same: the rough ashlar gets a shape, on a timeline, judged by a measure.
What this chapter is
A goal without a definition is a wish. The SMART framework, coined by George T. Doran in a 1981 issue of Management Review, is the published shorthand for what a goal actually is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Paired with role-based goal-setting from Covey, SMART keeps each role's goals honest and prevents one role's success from costing another's failure. Drucker added the test that puts the SMART acronym to work: "What gets measured gets managed."
How to practise it
A lesson walks the same seven steps every time. Read the intro, study the material, then drill it through Quick Fire, Matchup, Sequence, Flashcards, and the Mix capstone. Each step opens to the next; no choices to make in the middle of the work.
What if · take it further ▸
Sit with this
- Take a goal you've been carrying around in your head. Run it through the five SMART letters out loud. Which letter is it failing on? Rewrite the goal so it passes all five.
- Look at the goal you wrote. Which role does it serve? Which value does it advance? If you can't answer either question in one sentence, the goal probably isn't yours yet.
Connect to
- Values: the lens you plan through
Values. SMART checks for Relevance by asking which value the goal serves.
- Mission Statement: the eight-step craft
Mission Statement. Goals get their direction from the mission; without it, SMART is well-built and pointed at nothing.
- Roles: the hats you wear
Roles. The role-based weekly plan is how SMART scales beyond a single goal.
- First Things First: the planned and the unplanned
First Things First. Once goals exist, the Planned/Unplanned matrix decides which to do this hour.
- Tasks: the daily practice
Tasks. Goals get traction once you've broken them into the daily and weekly tasks that move them.