Look behind the scenes at any great accomplishment and I guarantee you won’t find a realistic and achievable SMART goal. Above and beyond greatness is the result of challenging goals that try and test people’s beliefs about what’s possible. The kind of challenges that get folks so excited that they’re willing to push past their fears and preconceived limitations to meet, or even surpass, what’s asked of them.
Need an example? Consider General Motors and Toyota. GM played it safe. They wrote nice achievable plans and created the new Camaro, due out in 2010, which would be great if it weren’t years behind other muscle cars like the Mustang and Charger. Meanwhile, Toyota, which set incredibly lofty goals, released the Prius way back in 2001, forever changing the auto industry. Which company would you rather be?
Often in my leadership training I conduct an exercise where I ask folks to think back to a time in their lives when a leader (maybe a boss, teacher, mentor or even a stranger in a one-time encounter) inspired them to achieve something significant— where they rode the incredible high of having accomplished what they never thought they could do.
I’ve gotten responses ranging from the crusty old high school football coach giving a locker room pep talk to one-on-one encounters with Bill Gates himself. They’re all good stories, and in every case there are two common threads at work:
- A leader who pushed that person past his or her doubts and limitations.
- A takeaway sense of pride that even decades of time can’t dull.
And every story is punctuated with phrases like, “I never worked so hard in my life” and “I never thought I’d pull it off.”
Think back to the time or times in your life when an exceptional leader pushed you to go above and beyond the realistic and achievable. Remember those experiences that filled you with a sense of ongoing and glowing pride. Now, imagine if you could infuse your employees with that same kind of feeling on a daily basis; set them on fire with an incredible sense of ownership of a job, an impossible job, well done.
Then take a look at your SMART goals and ask yourself, “Do these goals set a challenge that will make my people feel that way?” If the answer is no, it may be time to start turning your SMART goals into HARD goals.
A new study from Leadership IQ reveals that SMART Goals can be pretty dumb. We studied 4,182 workers from 397 organizations to see what kind of goal-setting processes actually help employees achieve great things. (After all, isn’t that the whole point of having goals?)
