SMART, or from the heart?
I find it hard to believe that the world of HR views SMART objectives …… that’s right, objectives which are Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic and Timebound ….. as innovative. This latest article from HR Magazine, publicising the move by some professional services firms towards a SMART approach to business development, seems to hark back to a bygone era.
Persuading employees, via the carrot of enhanced remuneration, to perform SMART business development activities will deliver short-term results at best and represents an organisational command & control orientation which has seen better days. The problem with SMART anything is that those on the delivery side of the bargain spend more time gathering evidence as proof of performance than actually believing in the usefulness of the tasks and performing them from the heart.
This is just one of many current examples which appear to show the old models of mechanistic business management crumbling under the weight of their own bureaucracy and outdated thinking as new organisational innovations and more effective routes to market open up. With executives facing unparalleled choice and options for going to market in the future, commentators, advisers and consultants ought to have more to offer than a re-hash of 20th century control-speak. Even if some sectors, such as professional services, are slow to embrace change, those with an interest in progressive HR should be showing the way forward rather than publicising techniques which are well past their sell-by date.
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