What Was Your Message?

Words: 1,374 Reading time: 4 minutes 35 seconds

When Lee, the Operations Director, announced the pending plant closures she had been working on it for weeks. The problems with the firm had been clear for a while, but answers had been elusive. This was her solution.

When Simon, the Warehouse Foreman, heard the proposals he wondered what had taken them so long. He would have told them what needed to be done months ago, only they never asked.

In organizations, when things don’t go as planned, or as hoped, or as well as we would have liked, there is one culprit certain to be nominated – lack of communication.

Common Culprit
Rey in her book “Secrets of the Body Broker” says that in her consulting practice, communication—or lack of it—is the leading cause of workplace dissatisfaction, and that the problem encompasses communication between employee and boss, between departments and between senior management and management staff.

So, not only does communication feature in the roll call of why things went wrong, it also stands in the dock when the charge is lack of satisfaction. Communication is conceived as being something not only outside of the individual, but also beyond their scope. It is a darkness, always there and into which no light of our own can shine. All of us await the harsh magnesium luminosity of some rescuer’s flare before we can steer our way to knowing.

Apparently, leaders, managers and workers are each shipwrecked on their own desert island of ignorance, playing their eight records and waiting for the fates to send them a ship.

We may not wish to admit it, but it doesn’t actually happen like this.

* Some of us are ignorant because we choose to be; it’s less of a problem that way.
* Some of us think we know it all anyway; anything else would be inconsequential.
* Some of don’t know what we don’t know; we are within the realms of what’s possible.
* Some of us don’t care what we don’t know; that’s somebody else’s problem.
* And some of us don’t want others to know; it’s just none of their business.


If we knew more, we’d do better
Organizational theory has it that communication in the workplace will provide employees with a clear understanding of what is demanded from them and give them knowledge of what to do and what to expect. It is said that communication creates effective performance by the staff, and, consequently, increases customer loyalty and profit.

The reverse of the coin says that lack of communication may lead to:

§ Misunderstandings
§ Lack of information
§ Decrease in employees’ performance
§ Decrease in company’s turnover

In this model the inability of leaders and managers to clearly express their thoughts, ideas and demands leads to employees' inability to work well.

This strikes me as way too simplistic and naïve.

Few companies, if any, run a single agenda and some items on the agenda are usually unstated. There are always conflicting demands between agenda items and which gets precedence can change rapidly, or be different in different parts of the organization at the same time. On top of that, each employee has their own agenda which – amazingly – is highly unlikely to be the same as that of the company.

What emerges from any company is the result of a complex of agenda trade-offs at every level. More and indiscriminate communication between those levels is likely to lead to greater confusion, not less; to reduced rather than improved results.

No news is good news
Some people believe they are managing by exception. This causes them to have their antennae tuned to hear only bad news. For those operating with such a mindset, no news is, indeed, good news.

However, there might be things, like political issues and conflicts of interest, which prevent others from bringing issues to surface. As a manager you will hear no news, but there will be hidden things that may go from bad to worse. Waiting until things get so awful that they can no longer be kept off your radar is a good way to be sure you will always be late to the scene of a fire and that fire will be out of control when you arrive.

If it’s an ‘internal’ customer not giving you feedback about a project you have completed, perhaps she’s not happy with it. If her preferred style is to avoid confrontation your future prospects may already be blighted, you just don’t know it yet. By the time you do it will be too late to repair the damage.

No news can also mean they didn’t hear what you thought you said, or they attach less weight to it than you do. Sometimes people just decided to put the issue on the back burner and let it simmer a while – if it’s that important, they expect you’ll mention it again – but they don't bother to let you know.

Mixed messages
If you continue to drive a large, expensive car while the firm is going through a rough patch, is that confidence or arrogance?

Critical non-essentials – like receiving flowers from the contractor after all your carpets have been cleaned – are a nice treat when everything else is fine, but something of an insult when the basics fail to come up to the mark. As a ‘thank you’ they are misplaced and as an apology they are inadequate.

If the functional area you manage is about to be downsized and you do not say anything to your staff, is that because you don’t know, or because you don’t want others to know, or because you can’t face it? In either case the end result could be an erosion of trust.

Even communication of success, the fact that things are going really well, can result in confusion. Is this reassurance that you are offering? Are you boasting just to look good? Or are the congratulations premature?


Leadership
Lack of communication is a lack of leadership. Leadership needs candour and honesty. Leadership is the communication of emotions. Lack of management experience is a primary reason why communication is such a problem in the workplace.

According to Rey, every day thousands of employees receive promotions into management positions for the first time, and the majority have little or no experience managing and motivating employees. She says it's no surprise they don't know how to effectively communicate to their staff what is expected of them. Exactly the same is true of businesses – of all sizes – hiring people.

However, if this is a lack, then it isn’t confined to business. Someone who is a good communicator does not suddenly cease to be so when she arrives at work. All of us communicate all of the time. However, the depth and breadth of communication, as well as the fact of communication itself, may be more critical where certain elements of business are concerned.

What we say and what is heard are not necessarily the same thing. What we want to say and what we ought to say can be different, both from our own perspective and that of the other person.

We Cannot Not Communicate
As Paul Watzlawick has made clear, and as some of the situations mentioned imply, you can not communicate, however you can always miscommunicate. Whether you say something, or not, others will interpret your words or your silence in their own way, structured by their own map of the world. Sometimes, by chance, the message sent and the message received are sufficiently similar to allow both parties to proceed along a common path. However, given that we are different people with different reality filters, there is every chance of some misunderstanding arising and our paths diverging.

Conclusion
In the annals of human tragedy Simon and Lee are just bit-part players in what amounts to a cast of thousands who are playing out similar disasters all the time. Simon and Lee are the Californian and the Titanic all over again; the Californian stops transmitting because its message isn’t being heard and the Titanic is transmitting when it really should be listening.

There is communication, it’s undeniable, but there’s no clarity of meaning.

Then, as now, we need to reach the Captain on the bridge, not the wireless operator in the radio room.

Knowing What You Want

Words: 1,061 Reading time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Kelly was like a lot of teenagers; poised on the threshold of her future, she couldn’t decide. With so many opportunities open to her, how was she to know which one was the right one? Some of her teachers advised her to seek out more information. It didn’t help her. It multiplied her options without suggesting what her direction might be. Where was she to go from here?

You might expect me to recommend using a coach at this point, but where Kelly was concerned, I hesitated. When it comes to goal-setting most coaches conduct a mental version of the three-card trick. And their sleight of hand starts with the very first words out of their mouths – decide on your goal.

They have used that “D” word - decide. Kelly could now wait with baited breathe for all to be revealed. Alas, she would wait in vain. Nothing more is ever said about deciding. That particular stumbling block is deftly avoided as they move on to explaining how the decision should be worded to best effect; securing necessary resources; identifying obstacles; systemizing effort and … whoa!

The Starting Point
Let’s go back. Tell us about the start. How do we decide? What is it that tells us when we know what we want? Isn’t this is the key to the whole exercise?

If what we decide is decided very well, then the rest is merely mechanism for the most part. If we can decide powerfully, then the force will be with us…to coin a phrase.

When we are asked to name what we want, given a few minutes, most of us can come up with a list. Some of the items will be banal, some wild, some wonderful, some small and personal, some immense and municipal. If given more time we could even extend the list. But, out of all the things listed, how do we decide?

The Should-y Life
Part of the difficulty we face may be because, if we think about it, we rarely ask for what we want. Instead we live a life based on “should” and the “should” is bequeathed to us by others – I should exercise more, I should get a qualification, I should own a bigger house, I should get a better job, I should work fewer hours.

Getting from our shoulds to our authentic wants can be a problem. Recognizing that to be happy, we must live the life that we truly want to live, and that we are the only one who can truly determine what is right, doesn’t really help. How do we know what that is?

Even with an extensive list we may still not know what we want. Perhaps we don’t know all the options and what implications each might hold. Selecting just one want may exclude the possibility of fulfilling some other want, since they could be mutually exclusive.

Like buses, our wants often come in fleets. A person having just a single want is rare. Such a person may not exist at all. So, if we end up with conflicting wants – as seems likely – the question of how we know which one to pick stays with us.

What About Values?
One hypothesis is that values have great strength in determining human goal direction. Through our values we perceive important truths about life. These ideals are then reinforced by our emotions and feelings, and those sentiments create a vital passion that we hope to realize in our lives.

Some great human values include things like tolerance, openness, respect for the individual, and teamwork, which derive in part from some of the higher spiritual values like love, beauty, and truth. At certain points, the human and spiritual values come together in concepts such as selflessness, self-givingness, and gratitude

S.H.Schwartz carried out some extensive research and extracted six “universal” moral values, trustworthiness; respect; responsibility; fairness; caring; and citizenship.

However, I am not convinced that this helps people like Kelly a great deal.

A number of our wants may serve the same value – so how do we choose between them?

And any one of our wants may serve one or more of our values – so how does that help us know what we really want?

And should our wants cause some universal values to compete, how are we to rank them?

Hedonism
Steve Pavlina, often a source of inspiration, advises, “Treat goal-setting as a way to enhance your present reality, not as a way to control the future. Stay in the present and consider how this goal can improve the quality of your life right now. Not a year from now. Not five years from now. Not even tomorrow. Right now this very minute. Does it give you hope? Does it inspire you? Does it promise solutions to some current problems?”

As seductive as this might sound at first glance, all Steve has done is shift the timeframe. The questions raised earlier about mutually exclusive wants, conflicting wants and competing wants still remain.

Confession Time
Kelly is a person much like the rest of us. Most of us don’t know what we want. We only know what we don’t want, so we spend all our time moving away. And not knowing which path best fits our appetites, abilities, skills and personality doesn’t matter, because away is in any direction from the point of departure.

Once we are in motion, regardless of the drive, our perspectives will change. Whatever we start out wanting, or not wanting, may appear more or less attractive depending on where our journey has taken us.

Not knowing is OK. Pushing yourself to decide more quickly, more rationally, more firmly will result in beating yourself up to no good purpose.

In our task- and success-driven world, much is written about what people need to do and think, but very little about how they ought to be. To be truly fulfilled Kelly first needs to understand herself. Only when she does will she be able to follow Georgia Anne Geyer advice which is, “Follow what you love. Don’t deign to ask what “they” are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love…”

And even when you are sure you know what you want, you will still have no idea of what to cook for dinner.

Who else is feeling isolated?

Words: 762 Reading time: 2 minutes 32 seconds

Are you feeling isolated? It’s a common emotion. It’s even more common among those of us who take responsibility, or have responsibility thrust upon us.

What is it?
Isolation: it’s a sense of being marooned, of having nobody else you can turn to. The origin of the word – island – gives that same sense of being surrounded by a cold, uncaring and vast expanse of sea.

That’s not to say that we only feel isolated when we are alone; far from it. Feeling isolated on some issues in an otherwise close marriage will be familiar to some of my readers. The same sorts of feelings can arise among the partners or directors in a business. In such situations there’s a strong, shared bond while at the same, at some deeper level, there’s a ‘but’. The ‘but’ is not about the whole relationship, just one particular issue, or one particular area of concern.

If we can feel like this in a close relationship, how much more likely are such feelings when the relationships are not so close – such as a small businessman with a few employees, or a sole practitioner?

Feeling Isolated Is Not Feeling Lonely
Anyone familiar with these feelings will recognize that feeling isolated and feeling lonely are two different things. Feeling lonely is much more generalized. It’s a feeling that spreads through all the areas of our life. Being isolated, in contrast, is confined to one specific aspect, topic or area. To be isolated – by this definition – is not to be universally lonely, although it can be a part of that wider feeling.

What does it feel like?
People who feel isolated will sometimes describe a high wall, built by them, which they cannot see over. It surrounds their area of isolation. There’s a door. Only they can go through. When they feel isolated it means they have gone through, closed it behind them and are left sitting, helpless, surrounded by a featureless plain.

At other times isolation is just a small room, again, it’s featureless. It’s just us and our feelings of nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution.

That nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution is certainly part of feeling isolated, so too is privacy. When going through the wall, or into the room, we close the door. Nobody else can come in – obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be isolation.

Even when we hold the feeling of isolation internally, we have an empty space within. None of the other areas where we have capacity (ability to do things) can come in. Being isolated is something we guard very closely.

Isolation has sole ownership, an exclusivity. Whatever issue or situation the isolation is built around, the individual feels sole responsibility. Others may be aware of the matter; they may even be addressing it. There could even be a whole team of folk involved. Yet isolated people feel that only they are affected in some special way and the solution – or at least the key part – must come from them.

If I’m Feeling Isolated, Can You Tell?
Spotting the people who are feeling isolated is never easy. There may be signs of strain around the eyes, or at the corners of the mouth, or in a phrase or a gesture. But such faint indicators may have other causes. And until the individual feels ready any question touching on that area is likely to be denied. The privacy condition will kick in, along with the conviction that “it’s up to me; no-one else can help.”

At best theses feelings erode self-confidence and our willingness to decide and our persistence is carrying things through. At worst such feelings can degenerate into depression. As with most things, just recognizing and acknowledging that such feelings exist is half the battle. Knowing that such feelings are so common also makes it much easier to say “me too!”

What Role Can Coaches Play?
Of course, for me to be involved with a client who tells me that they feel isolated will mean I have been invited through their door, or into their room. Already there are cracks appearing in those painfully constructed and lovingly maintained walls. The barriers are already crumbling. Even so, there’s often much work to be done by the client, although their isolated feelings are dissipating already.

Engaging with a Coach, or an NLP Practitioner, who is sensitive to these issues will help immensely, because the Coach is familiar with similar conditions, is not party to the issues and leaves you in charge of the final resolution – which is just what you wanted all along.

Lessons from the Life of Plants

Words: 830. Reading time 2 minutes 46 seconds

At this time of year most of the plants in my garden are working hard to produce the seeds of future flowers. Nature has them all focused on just one thing – reproduction: leaving enough of themselves to ensure that future generations survive.

And to us thinking, sentient human beings nature appears to be profligate.

The humble dandelion produces between 54 and 172 seeds per head and a single dandelion can produce more than 2000 seeds. Some estimates suggest that annually dandelions produce more than 240 million seeds per acre.

A typical sunflower will have between 260 and 800 seeds per flower head, depending on the growing conditions and a typical geranium will have about 5 seeds per flower and between 40 and 100 flowers per plant.

So, how come we are not knee-deep in dandelions, sunflowers and geraniums? Because seeds are like our ideas, efforts, experiments, trials and initiatives – some are successful; many are not.

If you are not seeing failure, you are not trying hard enough
Obviously a certain proportion of the seeds will not survive the journey from parent plant to place of germination. Many will be broken, burnt, waterlogged, eaten, aged or decayed along the way.

Some seeds may not even be viable (have life in them) to begin with. This is why many plants invest a lot of energy into seed production - to produce many, so multiplying the chances for the few.

And we would do well to recognize that success to failure ratio in Mother Nature and be aware that we could do a lot worse than imitate some of her ways.

Just because we plan, develop a strategy, set SMART goals and visualize our outcomes does not mean that we will always succeed all of the time. As Dwight Eisenhower pointed out: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Nature's manual for maximizing outcomes

Nature adopts a variety of strategies to improve the chances of successful germination. How many of these could we adapt to foster our own dreams and desires?

1. Plants have evolved -in most cases- methods of dispersing their seeds. This means transporting them to a place away from their parent, ensuring that some of them will find suitable conditions for growth elsewhere, where there is less chance of competing with their siblings for space (finding new markets).

2. Some seeds and seed-like fruits are carried by ocean currents. Such seeds are of the kind that can float for a long period without absorbing sea water and establish themselves finally in tidal mud or on beaches (waiting for favourable economic conditions to materialize).

3. Animals and birds disperse seeds, too. We often see them in late summer and early autumn with numerous seed-like fruits adhering to their hides or feathers (using a surrogate sales force and word-of-mouth marketing).

4. A variable proportion of seeds of many kinds of plants resist prompt germination. One example is the uneven ripening and shedding of the fruits of some grasses, such as the giant foxtail (test new ideas in series, rather than in parallel).

5. Many legumes, such as the clovers, produce a variable proportion of seeds with impermeable seed coats, which may resist germination for long periods (give ideas time to mature and develop, rather than getting carried away, releasing them before they are fully worked out).

6. Some species produce pods in which one segment remains indehiscent—closed—and the seed within it remains dormant for a long time, as in cocklebur (Xanthium), for example (where an idea has scope for variations and enhancements, start with the basic model instead of diluting the market and, possibly, increasing start-up costs).

Gardeners and nurserymen also give nature a hand by selecting for certain characteristics and using only seeds from plants that are seen to be disease and virus free. They also save only from straight varieties, in other words not from any hybrid varieties that have been crossed with other material.

The initiates we elect to trial should be similarly selected.

The story of Brython the Bean

The great thing about cultivating your own seed (ideas) is that you can actually improve your selection with a little bit of thought to what you are doing. The late Brython Stenner from Glamorgan, South Wales, even though only a keen amateur, quickly became a legend in his own life time. His thinking was that you should select only the strongest, healthiest plants, those that consistently produced the longest and most filled pods along the row. Does that sound obvious? It does now.

Because of one amateur’s dedication, the 'Stenner Strain’ bean is the only bean that is consistently winning on the show benches today. They not only look good, they taste good as well.

So, even with careful preparation and nurturing, be prepared for less than 100% germination with all your schemes.

Do not be hugely surprised if some things take longer to come to fruition than others.

And, as Robert Louis Stevenson remarked, “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

How are you choosing to travel?

Words: 588 Reading time: 1 minute 58 seconds

I watched as a pedal cyclist rode along the pavement, used a Pedestrian Crossing and then swung right, resuming his journey as part of the road traffic. I put my car into gear and drove on, reflecting on the transition the cyclist had just made.

Using the same vehicle he had moved from being a hazard to pedestrians to take his place as one more risk that drivers have to negotiate. That’s the sort of transition we often make in life.

Changing our transport
On any given day some of us will commute from being a forceful manager in the workplace to being the more regretful half of a failing marriage; a move from being a relatively fast-moving, potentially threatening person to being a much more vulnerable individual.

Our pedal cyclist decided to stay on his bike as he moved from the pedestrian environment into the traffic. In business and in life there are different choices, although equally significant.

As an employee, what kind and what size of company do we aim to work for, and in what position? As a business owner / director do we stay in our comfortable little puddle, or go out and compete against the big boys?

In our relationships, what kind of vehicle are we? Are we a caring parent, or an over-protective pain? Do we own our own problems, or expect somebody else to take care of us? Are we an old-fashioned romantic, or just a semi-permanent fixture?

Our Mode of Transport
And what kind of vehicle would we be if we decided to consciously manage our relationships, make them the best they could be and take care to promote the common good?

A bus: everybody on board and heading in the same direction, with frequent opportunities for people to either join or leave the vehicle.

A plane: a fast, efficient, self-contained vehicle that can get you to your destination by the shortest route possible, but needing lots of infrastructure to support it and somewhat ignorant of the lives of those not on board.

An ambulance: a simple rescue vehicle, always on call, but only for those already in serious trouble, only for the few and only having one destination in mind.

A dust-cart: a highly useful vehicle specially designed to clear away the damage and detritus from everyday living, but offering no real solutions. They’ll be round again next week.

Or a muck-spreader: smelly, often despised, but essential for providing a rich and fertile soil in which other things can grow and flourish, given that other environmental conditions are right. Used too much it can “burn” the plants it’s supposed to be helping.

And I wonder if the Inland Revenue is the Combined Harvester of life? All-encompassing, mechanistic, and unable to distinguish wheat from rye, it waits until someone else has put in all the hard work and grown a worthwhile crop. It then comes along and strips the field bare, leaving little or nothing for the rest of society. Consequently gleaning, after the crop is gathered in, is never seen today.

And who are the tractors – slowing everyone down to a crawl and getting in the way, but ultimately necessary? Is this health and safety?

Harnessing the horsepower
What sort of vehicle do you need to be to realise your life’s ambitions?

And what sort of vehicle do you need me to be, and when?

The pedal cyclist that started all this is now gone. But you can see what disturbance even one may cause, not just to fellow road users, but also to trains – of thought.

Who cares if you're stressed?

Words: 708 Reading time: 2 minutes 22 seconds

The Health & Safety Executive have published figures showing that 6.7 million working days are lost each year due to the effects of stress. The cost to society is estimated to be in the region of £3.8 billion.

Stress is believed to be responsible for up to 40 per cent of all absences from work and can reduce employee performance by up to 70 per cent.

Now we have more labour-saving devices than at any time since the world began, why is it that?

When I ask ‘What is stress?’ I get different answers.

One set of answers is a list of symptoms, some of which are emotional, such as feeling irritable, frustration at having to wait for something, barely suppressed anger, generally feeling upset, lack of sense of humour, etc.

Other symptoms listed are physical, such as muscle tension, neck or shoulder pain, stomach upsets, 'pounding' or 'racing' heart, sweaty palms, 'butterflies', insomnia or excessive sleep, shortness of breath, etc.

Another set of answers list what people see as possible causes, such as job insecurity, heavy workload, infrequent rest breaks, poor communication in the organization, crowding, noise, insufficient leisure time, etc.

A third set of answers merely uses synonyms for stress, such as anxiety, hassle, pressure, strain, tension, worry.

But none of these actually tells me what stress is.

Aching joints and a runny nose might tell me I have influenza, but it is not influenza itself. Getting soaked in a downpour might make me susceptible to influenza, but it does not cause influenza. As we all now know, the true cause is viral.

So, what single root cause covers all of the above factors and manifestations of stress? What is the equivalent of the viral or bacterial agent where stress is concerned?

My suggestion is that stress only occurs when the situation, as we perceive it, demands more resources than we believe we have available at present to resolve it

Situation > Resources

As far as I can see that definition covers all cases and it helps by providing four different avenues of escape:

The situation can be avoid, vacated or mitigated.

Our perception of the situation can be revised, or reframed.

The resources required can be augmented, assembled, bought or borrowed.

Our beliefs about our resources can be challenged, replaced or adapted.

The other important point about this definition is that underlines the part played by perceptions and beliefs in the whole subject of stress. That is not to dismiss or denigrate the trauma reported by those experiencing stress, it merely points up the fact that we cannot isolate this stuff called stress and hold it in our hands. We cannot isolate it from the person directly concerned and measure it separately.

Because stress is not an objective reality, it is not equally experienced. Two individuals can be seated side by side in the same work environment, doing the same tasks and with the same demands place on them, in the same way, yet one individual will experience greater stress than the other.

This tells us that one other precondition is needed for someone to experience stress – the person concerned must actually care about the outcome. This is crucial, because unless you really care there will be no anxiety on your part about what may or may not transpire.

At the end of the football season, as various teams face demotion from one league to another, some fans become genuinely anguished. However, for those who do not follow football in general, or that team in particular, there is no concern one way or the other. Indeed, the whole organizational structure surrounding the sport could collapse and non-fans would be totally unaffected.

Stress is an internal phenomenon. We manufacture it ourselves. Sometimes we manufacture it inappropriately by caring about inconsequentials, or by caring too much about the wrong things. So when we are stress it is extremely useful to ask ourselves what is it that we care about so much, and is that sensible.

Who cares if you’re stressed?

You do!

As a parting thought, is it therefore nonsensical to blame employers for causing stress? And if stress arises because people care, how wise is it to work on increasing employee engagement? Isn’t this ultimately self-defeating?

Being SMART - S is for...

Words: 1,000 Reading time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

The SMART acronym is past its sell-by date and highly ineffective, but still heavily in use by unthinking project managers, unimaginative trainers and uninspiring coaches.

Acronyms and abbreviations are supposed to add colour and texture to the written and spoken word and to life in general. Their purpose is to assist in memory retention and learning.

They lose all of that whenever they become trite, confusing or uncertain. SMART has managed all three.

Those that are still trotting out this tired old carthorse claim that the goal, task or project must meet these criteria to be effective. But just what are the criteria?

There is zero agreement on what SMART is supposed to stand for. That’s why it’s such a useless tool. Just take the ‘S’ of SMART. A very quick search on the internet yields us the following alternatives for use in formulating our objectives:

Self-controlled; self-managed; self-owned; sensible; significant; simple; specific; strategic; stretching; straightforward; succinct; synergistic; systematic

This list is by no means exhaustive, but how helpful are even these few candidates as possible progenitors of ‘S’?

Self-controlled and self-managed are very close in meaning. Neither adds very much to the process of formulating the goal. If the path to the objective is not in our control, then it’s likely to be someone else’s objective rather than ours. It’s the same with self-owned. As possible roots for our ‘S’ they are little better than tautological.

Sensible? Some of the most awesome and inspiring goals were and are anything but sensible: climbing Everest; deep-sea exploration; curing AIDS; world peace.

Significant or strategic might seem acceptable after that last list, but many goals we set ourselves are neither of these in the great scheme of things. Will every single one of our goals be really significant or strategic – even to us? They may well be worthy, useful and desirable; but hugely significant and / or strategically imperative? I think not.

To be effective our goal must be simple or straightforward. Really? So a goal that is not simple or straightforward is not effective? Well, that’s it for mankind, isn’t it?

Actually, no. Many of the goals we set ourselves are complex, yet we follow them and achieve them despite the doomsayers of SMART. The Large Hadron Collider was built under the Swiss countryside. I have no idea what it does, how it does it or why anyone who does know might want to, but that highly complex objective was achieved.

Specific is a favourite candidate for the ‘S’. The case is that the goal needs to be concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result.

Lovely, but I can think of many huge goals, all achieved, that had none of those characteristics. Churchill’s stated objective in 1940 was to win the war. It was as vague as that. He had no idea exactly how that could be done, when it would be achieved, or what form the victory might take. The rest is history.

When John Kennedy committed the USA to putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely back again there were neither vehicles to do it, nor the guidance systems to get them there. Less than 10 years later I watched it all on TV and cheered with relief.

So much for being specific.

Stretching goals are those that promote some form of discernable personal growth. Yet there are serious, important goals that do not necessarily deliver on that front at all.

Getting our frail and ageing parent into a good social care environment might occupy all our efforts for a considerable period, although it is unlikely that we will feel we are better people at the end of it. Often, we will feel worse because of lingering guilt. Nevertheless it is clearly identifiable as a goal.

Succinct: if we are going to tick all those boxes – being concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result – is succinct even possible?

If it is, then is it necessary? Sometimes a longer, fuller description paints a more colourful, seductive picture making it easier for us to visualize the outcome, to commit ourselves to its pursuit and helps us keep the whole project vibrant and alive.

If all our goals had to be synergistic (2+2=5) then there would far fewer goals. Of course, single-point goals will usually have spin-offs, but those are by-products or unintended consequences. Imposing genuine intended synergy as the prerequisite of good goal-setting sounds like severely over-egging all puddings. Nice if we can do it, but hardly necessary.

Finally, finally, systematic: I suspect this one came with one foot in the project manager’s camp. Again, it’s not an absolute, indispensable requirement for our common or garden goals. Someone like Benjamin Franklin was highly systematic and got great results. But goals are often reached despite the system used to search for them, rather than because of it.

The biggest problem with penicillin was producing enough of it. Florey and another researcher travelled from Britain to the U.S. to talk to chemical manufacturers. Corn (maize) was tried as the nutrient base and it yielded almost 500 times as much as it had before. That helped, but more vigorous and productive strains of the mould were also needed, and one of the best came from a rotting cantaloupe in the market at Peoria, Illinois.

Systematic (the maize) helped, but serendipity (the cantaloupe) was also necessary.

Serendipity helps more often than SMART protagonists care to admit. The amazing story of post-it notes are another case in point.

There are other, possibly undiscovered, ‘S’s:

How about saleable – so that we can get others on board?

How about seaworthy – so we know that the goal will float?

How about sanguineous – so that we’re always full-bloodied about our objectives?

With so many stars to steer our ship by, how on earth is the ‘S’ from SMART going to help us?

SMART and its ‘S’ are touted as necessary and sufficient for all goals. Clearly, they are not.