You Don't Have a SMART Goal. You Have a Wish in Business Clothes.
Updated: Aug 19
How the SMART Goal Framework turned into the SMART Wishful KPI that frustrated managers, put good employees in impossible positions, and sometimes rewarded the wrong things.
Article Summary
There will not be one. Why? Because you really need to read this one – long as it is, it will help your law firm or business hit those elusive revenue goals while improving employee performance and morale.
SMART goals have been around for decades, and most of us have used some version of them during our careers. I certainly have. They have been part of my business development, territory management, account management, marketing planning, and performance measurement for years.
But somewhere along the way, SMART goals became less about management and more about putting a number and deadline into a sentence.
You have probably heard one of these in a meeting:
“Increase revenue by 20% this quarter.”
Or:
“Increase conversions by 15% by the end of Q3.”
Those sound-like goals because they are specific, measurable and time-bound. But what is someone actually supposed to do with them?
A percentage tells you how success will be measured. A deadline tells you when leadership wants to see the result. Neither tells the person responsible how the business expects that result to happen.
That distinction matters because SMART goals were never intended to be a prettier way of writing KPIs. And when you look at where SMART goals actually started, the reason becomes much clearer.
A Goal Framework With a Forgotten Soul
In 1981, management consultant George T. Doran published a short paper in Management Review called There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives.
His original acronym was:
Specific
Measurable
Assignable
Realistic
Time-related
The word that catches my attention is Assignable. Today, most of us know the “A” as Achievable or Attainable. Those are useful considerations, but they are not what Doran originally wrote.
Assignable meant somebody was responsible.
That makes sense when you consider who the framework was written for. Doran was talking about management goals and objectives, not personal resolutions. The goal needed to be clear enough that someone could own it, understand what was expected, and be held accountable for moving it forward.
He also connected objectives with action plans. That is the part I believe businesses have increasingly lost. The SMART statement remained, but the work behind it became separated from the goal. Over time, the measurable result itself started being treated as the goal.
How a Number Became a Goal
The changes to SMART did not happen all at once, which is important because each shift moved the framework a little farther away from its original management purpose.
The 1980s and 1990s: SMART Moves Beyond Management
As SMART became more widely used through the 1980s and 1990s, it moved beyond corporate management into training programs, sales organizations, personal development, coaching, and individual goal-setting.
That broader use began changing the framework itself.
The original A — Assignable increasingly became Achievable or Attainable.
On the surface, that may sound like a small wording change. It really is not.
Assignable asks: Who is responsible for making this happen?
Achievable asks: Can this realistically happen?
Both questions matter, but they solve very different problems.
When SMART is used for personal goals, Assignable can seem unnecessary because the person setting the goal already owns it. It makes sense that Achievable gained traction as the framework expanded into personal development.
But in a business environment, removing Assignable also removes one of the strongest accountability elements from Doran’s original thinking.
The emphasis begins shifting from who owns the work to whether the outcome seems possible. That is an important change because businesses need both. A goal should be realistic, but somebody also has to be responsible for moving it forward.
By the Early 2000s, the Definition of a SMART Goal Was Shifting Again
As SMART continued spreading through management training, sales, professional development, coaching, and business education, more interpretations appeared. By 2003, Paul J. Meyer’s Attitude Is Everything was presenting another interpretation of SMART, and multiple versions were already circulating.
The version most businesses recognize today eventually became some variation of:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable or Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
Now look at what happened to the original words.
Assignable became Achievable or Attainable.
Realistic often became Relevant.
Time-related became Time-bound.
None of those newer concepts are inherently wrong. Relevance matters. Feasibility matters. Deadlines certainly matter. But the overall emphasis of the framework was changing. And then the internet accelerated it. SMART goals became something that needed to be easy to explain in an article, worksheet, template, software platform, or downloadable planning tool.
Eventually, we arrived at formulas that looked something like this: Increase [metric] by [percentage] by [date].
Specific? There is a defined outcome.
Measurable? Absolutely.
Achievable? Someone decided it probably was.
Relevant? Presumably.
Time-bound? There is a deadline.
Done. Except the person expected to achieve the goal may still have no idea what needs to change to produce it.
That is where I believe the biggest breakdown occurred. A statement such as:
“Increase revenue by 20% by the end of Q3.” can now satisfy several parts of the modern SMART framework.
But nothing in that sentence tells anyone:
Where the 20% is expected to come from
Which customers or accounts should receive greater attention
What activities need to increase or change
Whether new resources are available
Who owns different parts of the work
How progress will be evaluated before Q3 ends
We created a very measurable destination without necessarily creating a route to get there. And somewhere along the way, we started confusing the measurement with the goal itself.
The Modern SMART Goal Framework Version Is Everywhere
You can see this interpretation in mainstream business guidance today. Salesforce, for example, has used an example that develops a sales goal around increasing sales by 20% within six months.
Adding the timeframe certainly makes the desired result clearer. But if I am the employee responsible for achieving it, I still have some fairly important questions.
Which customers or accounts should I concentrate on?
Am I expected to increase new business, expand existing accounts, or both?
What activities are expected from me?
What resources or marketing support are available?
How often will we review progress?
If we are not on track after two months, what changes?
Those questions are not unnecessary details. They are the strategy and management structure that give the number a realistic chance of being achieved.
This Is How I Have Used SMART Goals in Business Development Efforts:
My own approach to SMART goals comes largely from years of business development and account management. Territory management teaches you very quickly that saying “grow the territory” does not grow anything.
You have to understand where the opportunity exists, decide which accounts or referral sources deserve attention, determine the activities most likely to move them, and then track whether those activities are actually producing results.
The KPIs matter enormously, but they come after the strategy.
Example 1: InnovAge PACE Business Development Representative role
At InnovAge PACE, for example, I focused my business development activity on priority agencies and high-value personas instead of treating every potential referral source exactly the same.
25% increase
referrals within two quarters
60% expansion
of my account portfolio
40% increase
lead generation
65% conversion rate
100% achievement of my sales quotas throughout my tenure
Later, at The Elder & Disability Law Firm, I used the same basic thinking in a very different environment. Business development programs were designed around territory expansion, referral relationships, networking, outreach, community visibility, and measurable performance.
I also built KPI and ROI reporting that allowed us to look at results weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually.
500%+ growth
in territory reach
400% increase
in B2B referral partner meetings
45% increase
in high-quality lead referrals during the COVID pandemic
Again, the KPI showed the achievement toward the goal. The strategy and the activities are what produced it. That is why I have always looked at SMART goals as part of a larger management process rather than a sentence-writing exercise.
When the KPI Starts Driving the Wrong Behavior
There is another problem with turning the KPI into the goal: people start managing to the number. And that can produce some very strange business behavior.
Performance metrics are supposed to help us understand whether the strategy and activities are working. But once a metric becomes the primary target, especially when compensation, performance reviews, or job security are attached to it, people naturally begin focusing on whatever moves that number.
Sometimes that is exactly what you want. Sometimes it is not.
Only 2 in 10 employees say their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. Gallup has quoted on their current website.
Think about that for a minute.
We can hold someone accountable for hitting a number they may not fully control, while also leaving them out of the process that established the goal in the first place. That creates a management problem before it creates an employee-performance problem. It can also encourage people to optimize for the metric rather than the business outcome behind it.
There is a well-known principle for this: Goodhart’s Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In simple terms, as soon as you incentivize a specific metric, people will find a way to hack, game, or manipulate the system to hit that target, even if it completely destroys the original goal of the measurement.”
We see versions of this everywhere:
A sales representative evaluated primarily on the number of calls made and can make more calls without having better conversations.
A marketing team measured on website traffic can drive enormous traffic that produces very few qualified leads.
A law firm measuring intake only by the number of consultations booked could increase appointments while attracting more cases than the firm does not actually want.
A business development professional measured only on meetings can fill a calendar with people who will never become meaningful referral partners.
Technically, the KPI can go up while the business does not experience any revenue growth. That does not mean KPIs are the problem.
Badly connected KPIs are the problem.
The metric has to remain connected to the strategy, the activities, and the actual business result you are trying to create. Otherwise, people can become extremely good at hitting the number you gave them while completely missing the reason you gave them the number in the first place.
The KPI Is the Scoreboard, Not the Game Plan
This is where I think businesses get themselves into trouble. Leadership decides it wants a 20% increase in revenue and turns that number into the goal. Then someone is assigned responsibility for achieving it.
But if leadership has not identified the strategy, resources, activities, or opportunities that can reasonably produce that increase, the business has assigned an outcome rather than developed a goal.
And if the employee misses the number, the first question often becomes: “Why didn’t you hit the goal?”
Sometimes the better question is: “Did we ever discuss a workable plan for getting there – with them or allow them to produce a plan?”
The percentage point is how you measure success. It is not how you achieve it. That is why I use a very simple test when looking at a goal: After reading it, does the person responsible know what they should do Monday morning?
If the answer is no, the goal needs more defining. For example: Increase qualified consultation bookings by 20% during Q3.
That gives us an outcome and a timeframe. Now compare it with:
Sarah, our intake coordinator, will increase qualified consultation bookings by 20% during Q3 by implementing same-day callbacks for web inquiries, reducing response time from 48 hours to less than four hours, and following up with no-shows within 24 hours. Progress will be reviewed weekly through September 30.
Now Sarah knows what she owns. Management knows what activities are being used. There are measurable indicators along the way.
And if consultation bookings are not improving, there is enough structure to determine what needs to change before the quarter is over. That is much closer to a management goal and a KPI reality.
Why This Matters for Law Firms and Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
This is especially important for law firms and small-to-mid-sized businesses because there usually are limitations: people, budgets, or resources. People wear multiple hats. Marketing teams may be small – or just one person. Business development can fall on attorneys, owners, managers, or one person trying to coordinate all of it. And, that is perfectly fine, but that makes clarity even more important.
If you tell someone to increase referrals by 25%, they need to know what you expect them to do differently. Are they supposed to:
Develop more referral relationships?
Increase meetings with existing referral partners?
Target a different geographic territory?
Attend more industry events?
Re-engage dormant accounts?
Improve follow-up?
Build a new outreach program?
Increase marketing support around the BD effort?
Those are business decisions. The KPI tells you whether those decisions are working.
This is also why businesses sometimes end up rewarding or criticizing the wrong things. An employee may be extremely active but working on activities that were never likely to produce the desired result.
Another employee may hit a number because of market conditions that had little to do with the assigned strategy. Without connecting the goal to the activities and the KPIs, management has very little context for understanding why the result occurred.
Bringing the SMART Goal Framework Back to Its Management Roots
I am not suggesting we need to abandon the SMART framework or pretend that the last four decades of its evolution never happened. I am suggesting we remember what it was designed to accomplish.
SPECIFIC
The goal should be specific enough that the person responsible understands what is expected and what actions are connected to the outcome.
MEASURABLE
You need meaningful KPIs so you can see whether the strategy is producing progress. But the measurement is not the strategy.
REALISTIC
Does the organization actually have the people, resources, budget, market opportunity, and time required to achieve what it is asking for? A goal does not become realistic simply because we put it into a SMART template.
TIME-RELATED
Yes, there needs to be a deadline. But there also need to be checkpoints before the deadline. If you establish a six-month goal and do not review it until month six, you have lost five months of opportunities to adjust the strategy.
Before You Call It a SMART Goal
The next time you are creating goals for your business or your team, ask:
What result are we trying to achieve?
Who owns it?
What strategy do we believe will produce the result?
What activities support that strategy?
Which KPIs will tell us whether those activities are working?
Do we have the resources required?
When will we review progress and make adjustments?
If you cannot answer those questions, adding a percentage and a deadline will not solve the problem. SMART goals work when they connect planning, accountability, activity, measurement, and results. That is how I have used them throughout my own business development and marketing career, and it is how I use them when helping businesses create strategies that people can actually execute.
You have a wish in business clothes and that will never help your law firm or business hit high scores.
Ready to lay out a new framework for yourself or your marketing team? Let's talk about how SMART Goals can shift that dynamic and get you numbers that equate to real performance metrics.
Julie Fisher lives in Beaumont, California, and is the founder of Fisher Marketing Services LLC, a leading fractional CMO and marketing consultancy. Julie has over 30 years of B2B, B2C, and B2G account management, SMB advertising, business development, and marketing experience that includes over 7 years of in-house law firm marketing leadership.
Email me at juliefisher@fisher-marketing.com
Connect on LinkedIn: Julie Fisher Fractional CMO
