Don't Get SMART

Words: 662 Reading time: 2 minutes 12 seconds

Read anything on setting goals these days and, sooner or later, you’ll be told that all goals need to be “SMART”. If not, then there is no hope for you. The goal is not well set and you have little chance of achieving it.

Here, at random, are some of those promoting that view:

‘Setting goals…means creating a written plan that includes reasonable and measurable long-term and short-term objectives. It means setting SMART goals.’ Annette Richmond

‘The SMART acronym is used to describe what experts consider to be "good" goal statements’ Rodger Constandse

‘A key determinant of an individual's success or failure in meeting a goal can be summed up with one small word (or, more accurately, acronym): S.M.A.R.T.’ Christina Morfeld

Baloney!

A big problem with being SMART is finding any agreement on what the acronym stands for. Here are a handful of alternatives for each letter:

S - specific, significant, stretching, systematic, synergistic, simple, self-owned

M - measurable, meaningful, motivational, methodical, memorable, maintainable

A - agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented, ambitious

R - realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented, resonating, responsible, reliable, remarkable

T - time-based, timely, tangible, trackable, thoughtful

If my maths is correct that gives 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 3,125 possible combinations. Good luck!

I will look at each of these pompous precepts in a series of later blogs, but for now, let’s look at one example where SMART – whatever its constituent parts – offers no help at all. Indeed, it’ll probably get in the way.

Nic Rixon tells the story of a restaurant owner who was shot twice in the course of a robbery. As he enters A&E the restaurateur can see in the eyes of the staff that they don’t think he will make it. He is asked, over and over again by the medical team, if he is allergic to anything. But he can’t speak due to the trauma. As they wheel him into the Operating Theatre they ask him one last time and he gathers all his strength and yells, “Bullets!!!”

At that point everyone looks round and immediately everything speeds up. In that moment everyone’s belief changed from “he’s gonna die” to “we have a fighter”. The man survived.

Now that man had a goal. His whole existence turned on that one outcome. He did not have to get SMART about it – the goal was too important for that. He had neither the time, nor the inclination to work it all out, write it all down, set milestones and measure progress. Had he done so, he would probably be dead.

None of that was necessary. And, outside of sheer physical and surgical limitations, there was no doubt about the desired outcome.

For me that says a lot about goals, whether we have any hope of achieving them and what that may take.

When nothing else matters in the world other than your goal, then SMART is irrelevant. SMART is unnecessary. SMART may even delay you and make the goal less likely, rather than more likely.

The secret of reaching your goal is picking one that really matters that much to you.

More time would be better spent on finding a goal that, for you, is an all-consuming passion, instead of figuring out how to make some second-rate, minor league, lesser goal come about by using a version of being SMART.

The people who come to mind as being both memorable and remarkable do so because they devoted their life and their spirit towards achieving what we now regard as exceptional. And often, they are only inspirational looking back. At the time they did not plan and did not expect to arrive where they did. They were not SMART.

Some examples include Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa, the Beatles and Beethoven, Alexander the Great and Boudicca, Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci, Dante and Darwin.

It's the weight of our feelings that lets us know how important something is. We just have to be smart enough to recognize them.

People buy from people? Give me a break.

Words: 654 Reading time: 2 minutes 11 seconds

You may feel the same as me. When I find the tired, foot-sore and weary still being dragged from the back of some damped, dark cupboard, dusted off and pressed yet again into unconsidered service I have one of two reactions. Either I feel resigned (not again), or I feel exasperated (good grief).

As my previous posting was on the tired, foot-sore and weary idea of people staying in their comfort zones this posting will look at the equally drained, drawn and discredited idea that “people buy from people”.

Do they? Do they really? What, all the time? Every time? I don’t think so.

Let’s look at an entirely fictional, yet believable week for you and me.

On a Monday morning we leap out of bed at the first peep of the alarm clock ready and raring to go. Freeze frame…

That bed; do you know the people that constructed it? And your alarm clock; that was your local watchmaker, wasn’t it? What about the building you’re standing in; any idea who…?

Moving on, after your shower using the water provided by that nice man from the local reservoir, you tuck into your breakfast. Of course, you’re not really sure who made the bread for your toast and the cereal in your bowl, but hey, you’re only eating them after all; there’s nothing really important about buying from people here.

Then you get dressed (your personal tailor at M&S is so good) and head off safely in your car at 70 m.p.h. (built by Joe, the guy at the motor works on the corner) using the road constructed by the boys you always hang out with in the bar of The Pick & Shovel. You may smell the flowers in your front garden as you pass, the seeds all lovingly harvested and grown by Betty at the nursery in the next village.

At the office it’s lucky Mr Dell has already delivered your computer, together with a little note offering to meet you for coffee, because you can’t wait to log onto the internet provided for you by…well, you can’t quite remember them all. There were so many at the Christmas party last year; but nice people.

Are they nicer than the people who made the pen in your hand, or the paper you’re about to write on? You can’t quite decide as you take an aspirin, a drug made by people in Malaya who you have never met, are never likely to meet, and a drug the strength and constituent parts of which you haven’t checked and don’t know who might have done so on your behalf.

Let’s stop. It isn’t even ten o’clock on a Monday; how many people have you bought from that you actually know?

People buy from people? Give me a break.

People buy from supermarkets, from Amazon and EBay, from slot machines and petrol station forecourts, from serve-yourself tills and McDonald’s. Most people buy anonymously. They buy as much as they can, as often as they can, without having to interact with anybody. People scare them. A soap on the TV is about as close to real people as they want to be.

So, what is it people are buying, if it isn’t from other people?

People are buying minimum inconvenience and as much certainty as they can with as little precious cash as they can spare.

Now as a person you can supply some of that certainty by building empathy and giving reassurance. If you can convince the other party that you are a nice person, that you want to help them and are not trying to rip them off, then you might make some progress.

People only buy from people when they actually help to increase certainty. Thinking that people buy from people is like being fooled by a three-card trick. You’ve missed the essence of the transaction by concentrating too closely on the players involved.

Giving Up Our Comfort Zones

I was listening to James Knight yesterday. He was giving a brief talk on colour styles - an entertaining variation on personality types - and he mentioned comfort zones. That is a familiar concept, but how well does it represent what is going on?

The idea is that where we are now is comfortable; where we want to move to involves effort; so we tend to stay where we are, rather than go through that struggle. Effort = distress.

Well, that's not right.

If we have habits we enjoy, that's great. If we have habits we barely notice, they are not a problem. But if we have habits we actively want to change - that's your discomfort zone (DZ). At that point the habit you wish to acquire represents your new comfort zone (CZ). And the hurdle of effort between where you are and where you want to be is your effort zone (EZ).

To represent the desired state as somehow scary seems wide of the mark. That is where we want to be, for goodness sake!

Moreover, telling someone they are in their "comfort zone" with a habit they are struggling to break will certainly detract from the effort needed to move away from it. The old "comfort zone" concept is no help at all! Little wonder that those fed such a disabling mental diet are often sabotaged by the very ideas that are supposed to help them.

Even the suggestion that effort equals distress is not a universal truth. Some folks enjoy the process of change - like the person that soaks up knowledge like a sponge on their journey to academic excellence, or in the process of acquiring a particular skill.

For some people in some situations effort is distress. They stay in their Discomfort Zone when the distress in making the effort exceeds the discomfort of staying where they are - the dog laying on a nail syndrome. They reach their Comfort Zone when the distress of the Effort Zone is less than the discomfort of staying where they are.

Thanks James, your talk got me thinking.

So, shall we tip the old notion of comfort zones on its head? Or shall we preserve some of our current income stream and leave our clients struggling to make the changes they want?

All Change

You may have come across the phrase “if you always do what you have always done, you’ll always get what you have always got.” Notable speakers who have used it in the past include Penny Phang, Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Chris Widener and Zig Ziglar.

I have even used it myself.

Newsflash from my banking clients: that’s (another) coaching myth.

In the past this little mantra has been used to challenge those clients who were stuck in a rut of working hard in a particular way with little success, but unable to come up with another approach.

In those circumstances pointing out the illogicality of continuing in a fruitless pursuit made sense.

But what of those whose strategy has a history of success, but who face more recent set-backs? Wouldn’t they want to keep doing what they have been doing in order to duplicate previous favourable results?

Certainly they will. However, circumstances have changed. Now they need to change too, in order to match the changed situation.

Once the environment shifts, then so must the approach you use. Doing what you once did will not give the previous outcome.

That much is obvious, so what’s the problem?

Every moment of every day every one of us has to make three choices, whether we are aware of it, or not:

1. We have to choose where to direct our attention;
2. We have to choose how to interpret the event or object that has our attention, and
3. We have to choose what action to take as a result of choices 1 and 2.

The peculiar thing is that many people (not you, of course) do not consciously make those choices, because they do not even realise there is a choice to be made.

The consequence is that such people, instead of consciously selecting an action, merely react instead.

They take no responsibility for what goes on in their heads and the subsequent outcomes. “Other people” are being difficult and “the world” is against them. Their behaviour is entirely derived from habit, conditioning and untested suppositions.

Increasingly, as the world moves on, those habits, that conditioning and their suppositions are no longer appropriate. It follows that the results such people achieve become less and less satisfactory.

The results we get depend on the choices we make we make, either consciously from applied thought, or unthinkingly from the subconscious.

It pays to remain aware of our choices; it maximises our chances of selecting an appropriate action that matches the present circumstances.

At the height of the banking boom a highly successful broker drove his brand new, top the range Ferrari down Wall Street and pulled into the kerb to show it off to his friends. As he opened the door to get out the door was suddenly and completely ripped off by a passing truck.

The broker was outraged. He cursed the trucker. He screamed about the cost of the car. He yelled that the body repairers would never get it to look as good as it did new. He wailed about all the expensive extras that he had had fitted.

A New York cop pulled in behind the Ferrari with his strobe lights flashing. He told the broker to calm down. The car was no more than an expensive toy. And did the broker even realise that the truck had torn off half his arm when it passed? At that moment he was bleeding profusely over the sidewalk.

“My God!” the broker shrieked, “My Rolex!”