SMART Goals
Definition
SMART goals force a vague campaign ambition (‘change policy’, ‘build power’) into a single, time-stamped, measurable sentence that a team can act on and be held to.
The acronym is variously attributed to George Doran (1981) and the November 1981 Management Review issue that popularised it; the canonical expansion is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound.
Practitioner guides (the People Power Manual, the Community Tool Box) treat SMART as the necessary but not sufficient first step of an objective — a SMART goal without a strategy for how to reach it is an objective-shaped hole, and the SMART framework should always be paired with a theory-of-change and a work-breakdown structure. The People Power Manual (Commons Library / Change Agency) walks the practitioner through the full campaign arc — goal-setting, power analysis, base-building, tactic selection, action design, evaluation — and treats the SMART-formulated goal as the discrete output of the goal-setting step, before the power-analysis step that decides whether the goal is winnable. [source: people-power-manual]
Full page: [[smart-goals]].
FAQ
What is SMART goals?
SMART goals is the discipline that forces a vague campaign ambition (change policy, build power) into a single, time-stamped, measurable sentence that a team can act on and be held to. The full-page version of this definition lives on [[smart-goals]]. The acronym is variously attributed to George Doran (1981) and the November 1981 Management Review issue that popularised it; the canonical expansion is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound.
Where does the SMART framework sit in the campaign-arc?
The People Power Manual (Commons Library / Change Agency) walks the practitioner through the full campaign arc — goal-setting, power analysis, base-building, tactic selection, action design, evaluation — and treats the SMART-formulated goal as the discrete output of the goal-setting step, before the power-analysis step that decides whether the goal is winnable [source: people-power-manual].
What is the SMARTER extension?
SMARTER adds two criteria to SMART: evaluated (the goal names how the team will know it succeeded) and reviewed (the goal names when the team will re-read it). Practitioner guides treat SMART as the necessary but not sufficient first step — a SMART goal without a strategy for how to reach it is an objective-shaped hole.
Why is a SMART goal only a first step?
A SMART goal without a theory of change and a work-breakdown structure is an objective-shaped hole — the SMART framework names what the goal is, but not whether it is winnable or how the campaign will reach it. The People Power Manual pairs the SMART goal with the power-analysis step that decides whether the goal is winnable, and with the work-breakdown structure that converts the goal into tasks.