We all face goal setting. For our teams, our subordinates, ourselves… Goals are required so that they can be planned, followed-up, sometimes revised, and hopefully aligned when several have to work in conjunction to achieve a bigger Goal.

Goal setting has also its requirements. Most of them must be SMART, as SMART seems to be the accepted standard since 1981 in that matter, even so SMART is not without weaknesses and is now challenged by FAST (we’ll see if FAST trumps SMART..!).

Just in case you don’t know what SMART means, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic (or Relevant), and Time-bound.

Now be SMART!

Once this is said, that Goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic (or Relevant), and Time-bound, not everyone is immediately at ease with those requirements. Even after diving deeper in the meaning of each SMART word.

Considering myself smart enough to be at ease and making a living helping others stating their Goals, mission, vision and objectives, I never paid too much attention to how others cope with the SMART statements.

I was struck by how simple it can be reading a post by Davie Thomson on Linkedin who proposed a kind of magic sentence to help. It goes, with my 10 cents included:

[action] [more precisely what] from [baseline or current situation] to [target value or desired future state] by [finish date].

You may read Davie’s article and the original “magic sentence” here: ttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/goal-setting-dreams-wishes-being-smart-davie-thomson/

With the magic sentence as a template, 

• Replace [action] by the appropriate verb, like improve, enhance, grow, reduce…
• Replace [more precisely what] by the targeted field, item, discipline, process…
• Replace [baseline] by the relevant value or KPI, which is the starting point, hence baseline.
• Evaluate the achievable [target value] using the same metric or évaluation means as for baseline.
• Commit to the [finish date]
• Make it happen

Simple, pragmatic, actionable.