Setting up your performance management system is a complex process that requires a huge amount of time and effort, and the involvement of multiple functions to ensure that your system is comprehensive and covers all required aspects of performance, including financial, people and processes.
The process involves many steps from setting high level company goals, to cascading them, to linking them horizontally and vertically, until reaching the bottom most node in your organizational hierarchy; your employees.
The most important factor to be taken into consideration all the way through this process, is to ensure that your goals are always SMART. Overlooking this factor will result in a weak framework that leaves a huge space for subjectivity, conflicts and vague results.
However, in certain circumstances, no matter how hard you try setting up SMART goals, you may end up unable to, due to many reasons. Those may include your inability to specify what exactly you want to measure, the absence of clear targets or measurement tools, or the non-clarity of the surrounding conditions which leave you helpless to define the required timelines for measuring your goal.
Before exploring this issue further, let us have a quick overview on what SMART goals are, and how to set them. To learn more about SMART goals, check my other post: SMART Goals in a Nutshell
SMART is an acronym that you can use as a guide for setting your goals the right way. SMART goals create clarity and focus around the required goal. They are easy to understand by anyone with minimal explanation. SMART goals also help in reaching the required goals because they inform what, which, how, when and how much you need to achieve.
Defining your goals to be SMART means to make them:
Reading this headline, you might think that the coming part of the post is to defeat or discuss disadvantages of SMART goals. Well, that’s not right. In most of the cases, SMART goals are a must, and you should spend enough time and go in rounds and rounds of thought and brainstorming until you are able to define them.
However, there may be certain circumstances where SMART goals are impossible to set. In other words, no matter how hard you try, you will find one of the above above mentioned S, M, A, R or T criteria missing.
Above are just samples of many scenarios when results are not very clear and cannot be defined at the beginning of the process. So, what to do in such cases?
When the final result is not clearly defined, you must think of transitional (intermediate) results that will move you step by step until you reach your final destination.
Imagine yourself on a mission to climb a 140-miles-high mountain, let’s say, within 7 days. Since its your first-time hiking, you are not sure if you can achieve this target within the specified timeline. Looking at the goal, it is Specific (you have to climb), Measurable (140 miles), Relevant (reaching the top means mission is complete), and Time-bound (7 days). However, you are not sure if the goal is Achievable since you didn’t try this before.
In this case, you need to create a plan based on breaking down your full trip into stages with milestones, say, 20 miles a day. This way, you define your transitional results. As you can see, each transitional result is a SMART sub-goal on its own. The missing element in your main goal; “Achievable” is covered in this sub-goal, since it is a smaller one that you know you can achieve. Sub-goals will also provide you with temporary milestones to evaluate your progress and adjust your plan if needed.
Results can be broadly divided into lag and lead measures. A lag measure is the ultimate goal you are trying to accomplish. However, it is always in the past. Considering our example, your lag measure is reaching the top of the mountain within 7 days. It is your final destination and it is very important, however, once you have reached the top, the time has already passed. If it took you more than 7 days, you cannot do anything to change it. You may try better next time, but for this time, nothing can be done.
Lead measures on the other hand, are predictive and influenceable; predictive in the sense that they predict or lead to the achievement of the lag measures, and influenceable because you have some control or influence over them.
Going back to our example, moving in steps of 20 miles each is a lead measure. It is both predictive and influenceable. It is predictive because moving 20 miles a day will sum up to the final aimed result; 140 miles a week. It is influenceable because you have control over it. If you feel you are not able to hike the 20 miles every day you may revise your plan, by re-dividing the distance based on the terrain, getting rid of some of your back-pack load, or alter your hiking shifts between day and night, and so on.
The idea is, no need to wait for the final result of success or failure. Lead measures will allow you to know where exactly you stand from your final goal and will give you the chance to act accordingly before it is too late.
Lean management is an approach the supports continuous improvement, by focusing on achieving small incremental changes in processes to improve quality, efficiency and performance. Following this approach helps a lot when the final result is not completely clear. It supports the previously-mentioned points of moving incrementally (transitionally) and focusing on the lead results (allowing changes and revision of plans based on current state and emerging circumstances).
Competencies, readiness and capabilities are important factors in achieving results. Unless an employee is well-equipped with the necessary tools, has the required skills and knowledge and holds enough capabilities to allow her doing the job, she won’t succeed.
However, in the ideal scenarios where the final results are clear, readiness shouldn’t be considered a measurable result, or at least, not a major one. I am not saying it is not important, rather, it shouldn’t indicate good or poor performance unless we are unable to define clearer results. Otherwise, we are falling in the trap of measuring efforts rather than results and focusing on the less important.
Considering readiness as a measurable result in our example above works fine, because we don’t have a clear final result. Readiness measures in this case may be to ensure that the necessary tools are prepared, that the hiker is physically fit and ready to go on this trip, that he has enough food supplies for the full duration of the trip, and so on.
To sum up, whenever you are unable to define SMART goals, break them down into sub-goals, consider efforts, move incrementally, evaluate more frequently and refine and update when needed.
Following the above (4) steps will help you measure performance where results are not clear. Gradually, you will get more visibility and will be able to establish your benchmarks, so you set you next SMART goal easily.
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