SMART to FAST objectives

 

Today I learned FAST goals and I would like to compare it with SMART goals:

SMART goals:

The original version:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time Bound

All these are for correcting the commonly seen problems in defining goals.

Too ambitious goals won't motivate people.  It becomes dreams and later become joke.

When goals are not specific, not measurable, and not time bound, there is no feedback.  Defining goals are defining the measurement.

Relevant is reflecting how goals are aligned with values.  Shared values should come first.

These are what I learned long time back.

Later, some changes applied:

Relevant becomes Realistic.  It seems a reaction to those goals which are relevant, but not realistic.  

Time bound becomes Timely.  Time bound means that we need to have a deadline. Timely means that the goal should be adjusted according to the environment.

FAST goals:

Each of this guideline is for correcting the problems seen in the world.  I guess that today's issues are 

Goals were defined but people never discussed about them

Goals were archivable but not challenging enough

Measurable and Time bound are the same as Specific

Transparent is emphasized since many organizations have goals just for managers.  

All these comes from MBO developed by Peter Drucker.  MBO itself was challenged by Deming:

1. Goal setting does not consider capacity
2. Goals created Silos.  This is probably due to the lack of alignment tools. Local optimization is useless when we have constraints from others.  in Chinese, this is called 木桶理論
3. Deming and Eliyahu M. Goldratt taught us that we should focus on constraints and removing them one by one.  It is a very good model for looking at an organization, but MBO does help if the goals can be aligned.