SMART goals only in corporates?

It is “that time” of the year!

Appraisal and goal-setting time at the corporates. HR teams are burning the midnight oil ( or wasting electricity) as they race against time and against the allotted budgets attempting to complete appraisals and then ….. wait for the backlash, attritions…. it doesn’t stop there. Goals for next year are to be set, approved by supervisors and entered in the system. Mind you, the goals should be SMART i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Time-bound. SMART your goals ought to be, notwithstanding that you or your supervisor may not really be smart. To run a company SMART goals are a must.

It is “that time” of the year!

The temperature is rising. Election fever has set in. Politicians of all hues are cross-crossing the country throwing promises to the masses and abuses at their opponents. That’s not all, every party comes out with a manifesto setting out what it would do if it forms the government. Needless to add, maybe 0.000001% of the voters may actually go through the complete manifestos of contesting parties, weigh the pros and cons, and then decide which party to vote for. This does not mean the political parties can get away with whatever wild promises, harebrained schemes or any misleading agenda item.

When the expectation from every employee running a company is that he should set SMART goals for the overall betterment of the company and goals which can be easily measured subsequently, how do we allow political parties to get away with anything in their manifestos? Should not the manifestos be SMART? Without getting into specifics, I can safely say that most of the manifesto items of all political parties will fail the test of being Measurable and almost invariably never Time-bound for sure. Attainable or Achievable? Just forget it anyway, once elections are over. Relevant ? Politicians create issues and relevance. They try and come out with solutions in the manifesto which are neither Specific, Measurable, Attainable or Time-bound.

The Election Commission should step in and ensure that all political parties submit their manifestos to it first before making them public. The ideas of each party could be different but when presented to the public, the goals set out should be SMART. Is the Election Commission listening?