SMART goal doesn't just mean an elegant one. There is more to it in real sense. A Goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound and when we combine all these we get a SMART goal. It guides people when they set objectives, for example for project management, employee performance management and personal development.
The first known uses of the term occur in the November 1981 issue of Management Review by George T. Doran.
Specific
This term lays stress to the fact that a goal needs to be crystal clear. It needs to pin point to a specific task and should be unambiguous; without vagaries and platitudes. To make goals specific, they must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important.
Measurable
This term focuses on the capability of a goal being measurable by a concrete criteria. The thought behind this is that if a goal is not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress toward successful completion. Imagine a runner on a race track without the finish line. Measuring progress is supposed to help a team stay on track, reach its target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs it on to continued effort required to reach the ultimate goal.
Attainable
Dreaming high is good, however one shouldn't do the same to one's goals. Unlike a vague dream, goals should be realistic and attainable. The goal should be set above the realized potential of the team to motivate them to achieve higher, yet it shouldn't be impossible. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance, as these may be considered meaningless.
Relevant
The fourth term stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter. An IT Project Manager's goal to "Make 50 Vada Pavs by EOD(End of Day)" may be specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound, but lacks relevance. Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals would be considered a relevant goal.
Time-bound
The fifth term stresses the importance of grounding goals within a time frame, giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of the SMART goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization. A time-bound goal is intended to establish a sense of urgency.
Motivation required to do some task varies from person to person. Many people feel
happy about their work and feel satisfied whereas others feel it burdensome.
This
question of motivation has been studied by management theorists and social
psychologists for decades, in attempts to identify successful approaches to
management.
Social
psychologist Douglas McGregor of MIT approached this situation using two
contrasting theories on human motivation and management in the 1960s: The X
Theory and the Y Theory. McGregor promoted Theory Y as the basis of good
management practice, pioneering the argument that workers are not merely cogs
in an organization, as Theory X-Type seemed to believe.
The
theories look at how a manager's perceptions of what motivates his or her team
members affects the way he or she behaves. By understanding this a manager and
adapt his or her approach towards and effective management.
Understanding the Theories
Management
style is strongly influenced by beliefs and assumptions about what motivates
members of team: If it is believed that
team members dislike work, then a manager will tend towards an authoritarian
style of management; On the other hand, if he assumes that employees take pride
in doing a good job, he will tend to adopt a more participative style.
Theory X
The conventional conception of management’s task in harnessing
human energy to organizational requirements can be stated broadly in terms of three
propositions. This set of propositions is called “Theory X”:
1.Management is responsible for organizing
the elements of productive enterprise money, materials, equipment, people in the
interest of economic ends.
2.With respect to people, this is a process
of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying
their behavior to fit the needs of the organization.
3.Without this active intervention by management,
people would be passive even resistant to organizational needs. They must therefore
be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled their activities must be directed.This
is management’s task in managing subordinate managers or workers. We often sum it
up by saying that management consists of getting things done through other people.
Behind this conventional theory there are several additional
beliefs less explicit, but widespread.
1.The average man is by nature indolent
he works as little as possible.
2.He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility,
prefers to be led.
3.He is inherently self-centered, indifferent
to organizational needs.
4.He is by nature resistant to change.
5.He is gullible, not very bright, the
ready dupe of the charlatan and the demagogue.
At one extreme, management can be “hard”or “strong”. The methods
for directing behavior involve coercion and threat (usually disguised), close supervision,
tight controls over behavior. At the other extreme, management can be“soft”or “weak.”
The methods for directing behavior involve being permissive,satisfying people’s
demands, achieving harmony. Then they will be tractable,accept direction. There
are difficulties in the “hard”approach. Force breeds counter forces: restriction
of output, antagonism, militant unionism, subtle but effective sabotage of management
objectives. This approach is especially difficult during times of full employment.There
are also difficulties in the “soft”approach. It leads frequently to the abdication
of management to harmony, perhaps, but to indifferent performance. People take advantage
of the soft approach. They continually expect more, but they give less and less.
Then there is a popular theme: “firm but fair.”This is an attempt to gain the advantages
of both the hard and the soft approaches.
Management by direction and control whether implemented with
the hard, the soft, or the firm but fair approach fails under today’s conditions to
provide effective motivation of human effort toward organizational objectives. It
fails because direction and control are useless methods of motivating people whose
physiological and safety needs are reasonably satisfied and whose social, egoistic,
and self-fulfillment needs are predominant.
Theory Y
For these and many other reasons, there is a requirement for
a different theory of the task of managing people based on more adequate assumptions
about human nature and human motivation. This is termed as "Theory Y".
1.Management is responsible for organizing
the elements of productive enterprise money, materials, equipment, people in the
interest of economic ends.
2.People are not by nature passive or resistant
to organizational needs. They have become so as a result of experience in organizations.
3.The motivation, the potential for development,
the capacity for assuming responsibility, the readiness to direct behavior toward
organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there.
It is a reponsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize
and develop these human characteristics for themselves.
4.The essential task of management is to
arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve
their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.This
is a process primarily of creating opportunities, releasing potential, removing
obstacles, encouraging growth, providing guidance. It is what Peter Druckerhas called
“management by objectives” in contrast to “management by control.”
The above written theories have been derived from
Douglas McGregor's "The Human Side of Enterprise".
Personal Views:
My views differ from those who put the two theories
in perspective of permutations of two cases: one that a manager could be
optimistic(hopeful) or pessimistic(hopeless) and other that an employee could
be hardworking or lazy. My understanding is that every human would do the
requisite work if he finds a suitable motivation to do it. This motivation
level differs from person to person. A hungry man may clean your office for a
loaf of bread whereas a well-fed man wouldn't even supervise the cleaning if he
is given the same incentive. It's because his need isn't a loaf of bread but
something more. 'More' doesn't necessary mean increment in absolute numeric
terms, it could be more in terms of quality, feeling etc.
My understanding is that as per Theory X, a manager
uses a "push" approach. An optimistic(hopeful) manager would be
"soft" or "weak" as explained above whereas a
pessimistic(hopeless) manager would be "hard" or "strong"
again as explained above. But in Theory Y, a manager uses a pull approach. He
or she wouldn't be directing an employee but rather be setting the framework of
the employee's work such that the employee would to be self-driven, because of
the motivation he gets from the framework, to complete the job.
In my real life experience, I have found Theory X to have been predominantly in
use. In my project, I had a Team Lead who was firm but fair. But I can't say
that he belonged to the Theory Y category since my organizational structure
didn't permit him to. Even if he was optimistic about his team mates, yet for
defaulters he had to take strict measures. The system didn't take care of such
defaulters itself rather my team lead would be the one held accountable for, if
any of the subordinates failed to complete the task.
Theory Y is an idealistic scenario wherein the
managers have to create the framework to motivate the employees effectively.
However, most of the managers find that such a system can't be trusted since
they can never be sure of the same.
Personally, if I was a manager, I would strive to achieve a scenario as described in Theory Y, since a motivated employee would be efficient in his work and the management would be effective. The outcome of effectiveness and efficiency would result in excellence.
An another interesting class by Dr. Mandi on Principles of Organization Management. Today, he came to class with 2 boxes of wooden cubes of about 2 cm length and asked who could build the highest tower with those blocks with a single block as base. Students eventually bid to get this opportunity. The deal was finalized at 500 bucks. The winner finally succeeded in making a tower of 16 blocks.
Interestingly, when Professor asked if there was any Organizational Management involved in the process, a lot of students answered positively. Some said about how the tower builder had to manage time, some said that he had to balance the blocks so as to make the tower as tall as possible, hence managing his resources. But then professor made us understand that craftsmanship is not same as organizational management. And even if there is any involved in it, it is negligible.
A cobbler on a road side mends shoes and makes new ones. He uses his craftsmanship to make good shoes, but there is no scalability in his work. There are no concept of sales, performance, results or objectives involved in a scalable manner in his activity. If at his maximum efficiency, he could make 'X' number of shoes, then he caters to the demand of 'X' number of customers amongst who visit him. But organizational management lies in the capability of a person to bring together resources, both human and materialistic, in an optimal amount, in this case say 'n' number of skilled cobblers and raw materials for 'nX' shoes, and manage them to create products more profitably, here, let say they make 'nX' number of shoes, that could be sold to a wider market. Such an approach not only scales up the number of items produced but also reduces the number of various kinds of non consumed goods like tools required for making shoes that could be shared amongst the cobblers, hence reducing the overall cost of manufacturing and increasing profitability.
In purview of this approach, he asked how many students more could join to build the tower in a more organized manner such that the result could be scaled to a higher level. This time eight students volunteered to do the task. He introduced a slight change in the rules and said that only one person could touch the blocks but that person would be blind folded whereas others could guide him or manage the process. Ironically, this group of eight could build a tower of only 7 blocks. After the exercise, when the blind folded person, who was making the tower, was asked about his experience, he said that the primary difficulty he faced was not in placing the blocks but rather in trying to reach a conclusion about the suggestions given by others managing the task. It was then, that professor explained about the second half of the concept that an overly managed process could again bring down the efficiency resulting in a poorer performance. This is something a person working in any industry can easily correlate to. If one has a lot of managers over oneself, then it becomes very tedious to do even a simple task and hence a flatter approach should be used, i.e. using only the optimal number of managers required such that every manager justifies the existence of his role.
These were some of the basic but interesting fundas that I learned today about organizational management.
My first class at NITIE, Mumbai was a very interesting
experience. Quite different from what my previous college and industry
experience had been. A real fun filled first session by Dr. T. Prasad
a.k.a Dr. Mandy who entered the class with a set of toys : Two soft
balls with globe printed on them, two Plastic Butterflies, and a Wooden Lion that moved all by itself under gravity on a wooden track. While
allowing
us to play with those small toys, he showcased some of the basic
principles of
management through simple things that keep happening around us but using
a
different perspective. For instance, how a simple plastic bird
designed in
a slightly unconventional way so that it balances itself on its beak,
could be
marketed not just as a toy for children but rather as an interesting
showpiece
to elders by adding an intangible component of scientific art into it
and how a business could be build around a simple idea.
I
dedicate this blog to Dr. Mandy, who explained the significance of
writing in replicable way that could be used to educate masses. After
all, re-experience of real life incidents, not caught live on camera,
can be done
only by recreating it through the brilliance of imagination from words.
And it made sense that even if each student wrote 10 blogs each about
their subjects, there would be enough online content that one wouldn't
need to join a college to learn any specific subject.
For
a person like me, joining for a post graduate program after 2 or 3
years
of experience from an IT company like Infosys, the cost of opportunity
not only
includes the college fees but also the income forgone that I could have
earned
while working. Hence, what is at stake could be around Rs 2500/- per day
which
is approximately 150% more than what I had been earning. But what I
realized in my class was whether I could get back at least a fraction of it
while "studying here". And then Prof Prasad made me realize that
"studying here" is no more different than being capable of applying
those concepts to earn my living here itself. Tasted the flavor of
"Socho becho, becho seekho, seekho socho" methodology. Somehow the best
way to learn is by doing what you want to learn and that
was the extract of the motto.
A class not just focusing on
management subjects but also an inspirational one that instills in one
the desire to excel in what one does. One could define a circle as a
round shape or as a locus of
all points on a plane equidistant from a single point. One definition is
vague whereas the other one is absolute and precise. Similarly
management too, albeit being a gaseous subjects, requires a precise and
correct understanding.
