SMART Goals Decoded: George Doran's 1981 Original and Its Fitness Flaw

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The SMART acronym was introduced in November 1981 by George T. Doran in Management Review, at a time when Peter Drucker's management by objectives left middle managers struggling to turn corporate vision into daily work. Doran's original letters were not the ones most people use today. His S was specific, M measurable, A assignable, meaning a named person responsible for the work, R realistic and T time-related. He also warned that not every objective should be quantified and that a sound plan mixes measurable targets with qualitative goals. Over the following decades the acronym spread into education, personal finance and coaching, and the letters shifted to suit each user.

A became achievable, attainable, aggressive or ambitious, and R became relevant, reasonable or results-based, which the episode reads as a clash between managers who want guaranteed early wins and those who want stretch goals. For careers, the evidence is strong: in a Michigan State University Extension study, people who wrote down goals, listed action steps and sent weekly progress updates to a friend achieved a 76 percent success rate, against 43 percent for those who only thought about their goals. For exercise, work by Swann and colleagues in Health Psychology Review found that rigid, specific targets can backfire, while open-ended goals such as seeing how far you can run today kept people engaged longer. Alternatives followed, including SMARTER, SMARTIE, iSMART, FAST, CPQQRT and the unfortunately named STD goals.

• Doran's assignable letter targeted the problem of goals with no owner, likened in the episode to a pop fly nobody catches.
• Goals describe the broad outcome, while objectives describe the specific steps toward it, and SMART can apply to both.
• A missed specific fitness target, such as one mile run instead of three, registers as a failure and can lead people to skip the run entirely.
• FAST stands for frequently discussed, ambitious, specific and transparent, pulling goals out of isolation.
• CPQQRT stands for context, purpose, quantity, quality, resources and timing.