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SMART goals or START NOW

Published: 27 June 2007 by CA

I am "CA" Atreya (PMP, MBA), the author of this blog. I help businesses in Atlantic Canada achieve their BHAG successfully. You may subscribe to this blog using a feed reader (RSS).

We have all been introduced at some point to have SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. If it works for you - great. If not then you might want to consider START NOW framework. This framework was developed by Sandy Piderit. Sandy is a professor (any surprise?) with expertise in workplace flexibility, organizational and social change, partnerships and managerial skill development.

START NOW - Support, Temerity, Awareness, Reflection, Trying Again, Notes, Options and Wise Action. You might want to read A different take on setting and achieving goals - especially entrepreneurs and small business owners.

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4 Comments »

  • Nadim Razvi said:

    I really like the idea of STARTNOW. It is a really pragmatic approach to get certain jobs done.
    However, I do not think that it replaces the SMART paradigm. It is rather a complement. While SMART helps you define goals and measures the right way, STARTNOW rather helps to achieve the goals.
    So SMART is the first step, START NOW the second.

    What I experience very often is, that many organizations struggle already with the first step. They simply do not define good measures (KPIs). Or even if they do so, they might be defined completely different in other organizations, hence they are not benchmarkable. Therefore we have started a project to define a common language for KPIs. Please feel free to have a look and participate:
    https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/wiki?path=/display/BPX/Business+KPIs

    I recommend the video in particular.
    Regards,
    Nadim

    # 23 August 2007 at 8:45 am
  • CA said:

    Thanks for your valuable comments Nadim.

    The reason why I like the START NOW concept is that it is part of the “strategy execution”. You will find the world littered with consulting businesses who formulate strategy - but it is the rare business/individual who sees the strategy through to implementation. I have always believed that it is the execution of the strategy that will make or break a business - and not just crafting it.

    I think the financial benchmarks are more or less standardized. I mean, how many different ways are there to calculate cost of goods sold? But standardizing the other areas might prove tricky.

    Let me give you a call-center example. An employee’s productivity is measured by Call Closure Time. This is in use by many call centers. However, if performance based incentives were to heavily weighted on this KPI, then I wonder how many customers will actually have their problems resolved!

    Therein lies the problems not only with this KPI - but KPIs in general. They tend to divert attention from the primary objective of the business if not identified correctly. This issue is even more pronounced in manufacturing firms, where each division has their own KPI. They then tend to look at what I call “silo KPI” rather than look at the “organizational KPI” as a whole.

    Also a KPI is so because the organization wants to use it to measure its performance. Another organization might not want to use the KPI in question. So how then would you compare performances between two organizations?

    # 23 August 2007 at 1:53 pm
  • Nadim Razvi said:

    Thanks for the quick answer.

    You pointed at some important issues of KPI standardization and I am well aware of them. There will never be a 100% standardization. However, I can clearly see the rising demand for benchmarking. Precondition for benchmarking is KPI standardization and even if it cannot be fully acchieved, we are trying to get there, as close as possible. Besides the financial KPIs there are also standards in other areas, e.g. in the Supply Chain (SCM) area, where the non-profit organization Supply Chain Council (SCC) has edited the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR). It includes standard KPIs for SCM. We really aim at a company-wide framework. Let’s see how far we can get. Any contributions are welcome.
    Regards,
    Nadim

    # 24 August 2007 at 3:16 am
  • CA said:

    Nadim, I do apologize for the delay in replying. I agree with you with the benchmarking demand. It raises some new thoughts in my mind - not yet crystallized - but I will write a post on it soon. I am going to follow the discussion on KPI standardization - and will surely contribute where I can.

    # 26 August 2007 at 1:40 am

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