SMART objectives — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound — have been the standard goal-setting framework in organisations for over forty years. They have a lot to recommend them. A well-written SMART goal is infinitely better than a vague aspiration. But they have a significant limitation that becomes obvious when you look at why so many of them don’t produce meaningful change.

SMART goals tell you what you’re aiming for. They say very little about how you’re going to get there, who else is involved in that journey, or what you’ll do when the plan hits reality. And reality always complicates the plan.

The Missing Piece: Implementation Intention

One of the most robust findings in behavioural science is the power of implementation intentions — specific “if-then” plans that link a situation to a behaviour. “I will exercise more” is a goal. “When my alarm goes off on Monday morning, I will put on my running shoes before checking my phone” is an implementation intention. Studies consistently show that the latter is dramatically more effective at producing actual behaviour change. Applied to professional goal-setting, this means building the specific conditions, triggers, and habits that will make the goal achievable — not just defining the destination, but mapping the journey in enough detail that the first steps are automatic.

The Three Questions SMART Doesn’t Ask

1. What will get in the way? Effective goal-setting includes honest anticipation of the obstacles — internal and external — that will make the goal difficult. Not to catastrophise, but to pre-decide: “When this happens, I will do this.” Leaders who have thought about the foreseeable problems are far less derailed when those problems arrive.

2. Who else is this dependent on? Most leadership goals require the cooperation of others to achieve. Identifying those dependencies early — and having explicit conversations about them — prevents the all-too-common situation where a goal fails because a key stakeholder had a different understanding of their role.

3. How will we know it’s actually working? The measurable in SMART usually refers to the end state. More useful is having leading indicators — earlier signals that tell you whether you’re on track before you get to the end. If the goal is to improve team engagement in six months, what would you expect to see at one month, two months, three months if things are going in the right direction?

The Energy Question

One dimension that almost no goal-setting framework addresses is whether the goal is genuinely motivating to the person who’s supposed to achieve it. Goals set by others carry a fundamentally different energetic quality than goals that are genuinely owned. The most effective goal-setting processes involve real co-creation, not just consultation on predetermined objectives. Ask your team members: “What would make this goal genuinely exciting to you, rather than something you’re doing because it’s on your plan?” The answers are illuminating.

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