If you’re looking for an official SMARTIE goals definition, you found it. Below you’ll find our complete guide, along with a step-by-step template you can use to develop effective individual, team, or organizational goals. Ver este recurso en español.
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What are SMARTIE Goals?
Goals are a concrete way to drive results, but without an explicit equity and inclusion component, goals won’t address disparities, support belonging, or produce better outcomes for marginalized communities.SMARTIE goal-setting ensures your commitment to equity and inclusion is anchored by tangible, actionable steps. SMARTIE goals are:
Strategic
The goal reflects an important dimension of your organization’s current programmatic or capacity-building priorities. It advances your mission.
Measurable
The goal includes metrics or standards by which reasonable people can agree on whether the goal has been met, such as numbers or defined qualities.
Ambitious
The goal is challenging enough that achievement would mean significant progress—a “stretch” for the individual, team, or organization.
Realistic
The goal is achievable with the resources and capacity you have. It’s possible and worth the time and energy.
Time-bound
The goal includes a clear deadline.
Inclusive
The goal reflects concrete activities or approaches that bring traditionally marginalized people—particularly those most impacted—into the work, decision-making, and activities in a way that shares power.
Equitable
The goal addresses systemic injustice, inequity, or oppression.
For mission-driven organizations dedicated to advancing equity, reducing barriers, and protecting democracy, SMARTIE goals should drive your everyday work.
How to Set SMARTIE Goals: 5 Steps
If you’re new to the SMART method for goal setting, check out our seven tips for getting started. When you’re ready, our SMARTIE Goals Worksheet walks you through five steps for writing strong SMARTIE goals.
1. What do we want to achieve?
Why is this strategic, important, and worth the effort?
2. How will we know we succeeded?
What standards or metrics will you use to measure success?
3. What are the start and end dates?
Do we have the time, resources, and capacity to reach this outcome in this timeframe?
4. How will we get there?
What specific tactics or activities will we use to achieve success?
5. How will we advance equity and inclusion?
What steps will we take to operationalize equity and inclusion in the process or activities? What unintended consequences or negative impacts could arise? Where do we need more input from impacted communities? See below for examples.
SMARTIE Goals Examples
As you develop SMARTIE goals, you’ll begin to spot choice points: forks in the road where shifting the status quo can produce better outcomes for marginalized communities—and your organization.
Whether you’re already familiar with SMARTIE goals or moving from equity-neutral SMART goals toward SMARTIE goals for the first time, these goal-setting examples can help you spot choice points and anchor your goal-setting process in equity and inclusion principles.
1. Be specific about how you’ll address inequities.
At face value, some goals don’t advance equity and inclusion, so you’ll want to specify how you’re advancing equity or mitigating negative impacts in your process, activities, and metrics.
Ask yourself: If the outcome in the goal isn’t specifically promoting equity and inclusion, is the process of achieving the goal going to improve equity and inclusion for our team/organization?
Examples:
- Your development team has a goal to “raise $X by Y to cover this year’s budget and 3 months’ operating reserve.” There are many ways to do this. Using the SMARTIE framework, you could set an activity goal: “recruit, retain, and develop 30,000 dues-paying members, at least X% of whom identify as [people of color/women/trans or gender non-conforming/poor/Spanish-speaking].”
- Your policy team has a goal to create and disseminate X policy briefs on immigrant rights by the end of the year. To ensure your process is even more inclusive and equitable than last year, you specify: “We will consult with X coalition or Y community leaders to get feedback before finalizing.”
2. Check for unintended impacts.
Sometimes, you don’t have enough information to anticipate consequences or spot disparities. If that’s the case, be explicit about how and when you’ll engage impacted stakeholders.
Ask yourself: What unintended consequence might result from this goal? Who have I consulted to check for negative consequences? Who’s missing from this list? When and how will I engage people?
These examples build bias checks into goals:
- “Lower overhead costs by $X by [date]” can be improved by adding “…with quarterly check-ins with staff to check for negative disparate impact of cost savings.”
- “Increase representation of staff with marginalized identities in our hiring processes by [date]” can be improved with the addition of “…with checks to ensure staff with marginalized identities aren’t carrying an unequal share of the work.”
3. Share power.
There’s a fine line between inclusion and tokenism. What’s the difference? Power. Don’t just tack on “…and 20 volunteers should be people of color.” The people impacted by the issue should influence the goal and the process in a meaningful way.
Ask yourself: If I add an outcome or activity related to a specific marginalized community, will achieving this goal help build power or shrink disparities for this community? If so, how? Who needs a meaningful say in this decision?
Here’s an example of a goal that shares power:
- “Build a volunteer team of 100 door-to-door canvassers by May, with at least 10 people of color recruited as volunteer leaders first, so that they can help shape the way we recruit and run the canvasses.”
Sharing power should never stop there. Use our list of common equity and inclusion choice points and find more resources in our library for mitigating bias in hiring, decision-making, and more.
Who Created the SMARTIE Goal-Setting Method?
We did! TMC trainer Bex Ahuja spearheaded the development of the SMARTIE method to help leaders produce better outcomes for the communities we serve and the organizations we lead.
Check out frequently asked questions about goal-setting and performance.
Download: SMARTIE Worksheet
Bex is a co-author of “Management in a Changing World: How to Manage for Equity, Sustainability, and Results” and an adjunct TMC trainer. Bex is the Managing Director at Rockwood Leadership Institute.