The problem with SMART
I won't argue that SMART goals are never useful. For a sales rep, a target of closing 12 new accounts per quarter is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It tells you exactly what success looks like and whether you got there. In roles like that, SMART works well.
The challenges start when organizations treat SMART as a universal standard. The framework was designed for operational, output-focused work, and it performs well there. Apply it to learning, culture, leadership development, trust-building, or creative work and things start to fall apart.
When people cannot write a genuine SMART goal for their actual work, they write a fake one. "Complete three training modules by June 30" instead of "develop stronger commercial acumen." "Hold four skip-level meetings" instead of "build a more psychologically safe team." The process devolves into a checkbox exercise, and the goal does not get met.
The core issue: SMART optimizes for measurability, not for meaning — and these are not the same thing. Some of the most important goals an organization can set are hard to measure in the short term. That does not make them less important. The answer is not to abandon structure. It is to use a different kind of structure for a different kind of work.
Where SMART earns its place — and where it stops
SMART goals suit work that is repetitive, output-focused, and short-cycle. George Doran developed the original framework in 1981 specifically for management objectives in operational settings. It was never intended as a universal theory of goal-setting.
It works reliably when the outcome can be counted or clearly observed, the timeline is short enough that feedback is meaningful within the review period, the person controls most of the inputs, and success does not depend heavily on other people's behavior or perception.
When a goal cannot be made measurable without distorting it, forcing a number onto it does not make it SMART. It makes it wrong. The measure becomes the proxy, and people optimize for the proxy rather than the thing they actually wanted.
An HR Business Partner is asked to improve manager capability across the division. Under pressure to make it SMART, they write: "80% of managers complete the leadership program by Q3." That is measurable. It is also a completely different goal. Completing a program is not the same as improving capability. You can have 100% completion and zero behavior change. The SMART version looks clean in a spreadsheet and tells you almost nothing about whether anything actually improved.
Five goal types that break SMART
Many goals that resist SMART formatting fall into one of these five categories. Recognizing the type helps you choose the right alternative framework.
Learning and development — Improving a skill, building knowledge, growing capability. Short-term outputs do not reflect actual learning.
Culture and climate — Building trust, improving psychological safety, shifting team norms. Causal attribution is hard; culture moves slowly.
Relationships and influence — Stakeholder management, cross-functional collaboration. Outcomes depend heavily on other people's behavior.
Creative and strategic work — Developing new approaches, exploring options, problem-solving. The value often lives in the process, not just the output.
Leadership effectiveness — Developing others, communicating vision, modeling values. Impact is indirect and usually only visible over time.
Alternative frameworks for hard-to-measure goals
OKRs: useful for direction, not just measurement
Objectives and Key Results separates the qualitative aspiration (the Objective) from the indicators of progress (the Key Results). The objective does not have to be measurable — it has to be meaningful and directional.
For an HR professional, an Objective might be: "Build a management culture where people feel supported to develop." The Key Results underneath it could include a mix of quantitative indicators (engagement scores, internal promotion rates) and qualitative ones (themes from 360 feedback, manager self-assessments). Neither has to be a perfect measurement, but together, they paint a picture.
SMART asks: what will you deliver and by when? OKRs ask: what are you trying to change, and how will you know you are moving in the right direction? For developmental or cultural work, that distinction is the difference between a useful goal and a useless one.
Milestone-based goals for learning and development
Learning does not happen on a linear schedule. You cannot reliably predict on January 1st that someone will have developed strategic thinking by June 30th. What you can do is map the journey: what would we expect to see at three months, six months, and twelve months if genuine development is happening?
Milestone-based goals replace a single measurable endpoint with a series of observable waypoints. The goal for someone developing as a leader might look like this:
3 months: Taking on one piece of work with ambiguity. Asking better questions in team meetings rather than waiting to be told what to do.
6 months: Peers and direct reports describing them as more approachable. Handling at least one difficult conversation without escalating to their manager.
12 months: Running a project end-to-end with minimal oversight. Being named by colleagues as someone they go to for guidance.
None of these are fully measurable in the SMART sense — and all of them are observable. That is the key shift: from measuring to noticing.
Narrative goals for qualitative work
Some goals are best expressed as a description of what good looks like rather than a number to hit. A narrative goal specifies what the work involves, what excellent performance in that area looks like, and what evidence would convince a reasonable observer that it has been achieved. The evidence does not have to be quantitative — it might include 360 feedback themes, examples of work product, observations from a manager, or self-reflection against agreed criteria.
Making it work in practice
In most organizations, the right answer is not to replace SMART across the board — it is to use SMART where it fits and something else where it does not. A useful rule: if you can write an honest SMART goal without distorting what you are actually trying to achieve, use it. If you cannot, do not force it.
For most roles, a sensible goal set includes two or three SMART goals covering the operational or output-focused parts of the job, and one or two milestone-based or narrative goals covering development, culture, or strategic contribution.
What to do with this
Audit your current goals for fake SMART. Look at the goals you have written or approved in the last cycle. For each one, ask: does this measure actually capture what you wanted, or is it a proxy? How many are genuine goals versus checkbox activities dressed up as outcomes?
Categorize goals by type before writing them. Before drafting any goal, ask which of the five categories it falls into: operational output, learning, culture, relationship, or leadership. Use that to decide whether SMART, OKR, milestone, or narrative format is most appropriate.
Write one narrative goal this quarter. Pick a goal in your own or your team's work that has been poorly served by SMART formatting. Write it as a narrative: what the work involves, what excellent performance looks like, and what evidence would demonstrate it.
Add a 90-day follow-up to every learning goal. For every development goal in your next cycle, schedule a 90-day follow-up conversation focused entirely on application. Not "did you do the training" but "what have you actually done differently as a result." This one change moves you from Kirkpatrick Level 1 to Level 3 with almost no additional infrastructure.
Build milestones into development goals upfront. For any goal that spans six months or more, map out what you would expect to see at the three-month mark if things are on track. This turns a vague annual goal into something you can actually have a conversation about mid-year.
Try one OKR format for a strategic HR priority. Choose one strategic HR objective for the next quarter. Write it as an OKR: a qualitative objective that captures what you are trying to change, with two or three key results that would indicate progress. The key results do not all have to be numbers.
Make the goal-type decision explicit in reviews. When reviewing goals with direct reports, name the type of goal and the framework you are using to assess it. People notice when their less measurable contributions get named and taken seriously.
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