Resolutions made at work need more than champagne to succeed.

It's that time of year again. The city is quiet but starting to buzz and anyone who is back in the office is using the time to catch up on work from before Christmas.

One of the things you will almost certainly be doing is setting your goals for the coming year.

Professional goals are different to the ones you made on New Year's Eve. The champagne-infused variety decided upon at midnight on December 31 usually turn out to be more like wishes: lose weight, exercise more, stop drinking/smoking.

But professional goals are those that you will be held accountable for by your boss and by your team. These are goals inexorably linked to performance - your own contributions, as well as those of your team. They are also aligned with the strategy of your division or company and therefore need completion by a set time. Otherwise, you will let down many more people than yourself.

So why do many professional goals turn out to be as useless as New Year's resolutions?

The definition of a goal is: the object or aim of an action, for example, to attain a specific standard of proficiency, usually within a specified time limit.

In short, a goal needs action, commitment, dedication and a sense of urgency. Described like this, goal-setting sounds as attractive as drawing up a budget.

That's why tools such as SMART exist. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

In order to be "specific", a goal should have a precise outcome. Thisoutcome should be "measurable" in that there are established criteria for determining whether the goal has been met. Agoal needs to be "achievable", meaning it can be done; "relevant" or "realistic" in that it has a purpose; and "time-based" so that it is done in a specified period.

Critically, evidence is needed to show that the goal has been achieved. For example, say you want to complete a graduate diploma this year. The evidence will be your certificate of graduation, not that your assignments were completed but you didn't sit the exam.

There are as many fans of this method as there are critics. For example, the award-winning business podcast Manager Tools suggests the only two elements of the acronym worth considering are "measurable" and "time-based" or "time-bound".

"If you subject your goal to the test of SMART and it meets all five points, then it's probably a good or worthy goal," says co-host of the podcast Markm Horstman. "And it is better, by definition, than the vast majority of goals that don't meet those five points.

"But if every manager set goals that were tangible and realistic and specific and achievable, and none of them had any time constraints, it would be a monumental disaster. Idon't see how you can have a goal that doesn't have a deadline. Otherwise, it means you can say, 'Ihaven't finished yet.'

"Measurability and timeliness are the only factors that count in effective goal-setting. John F. Kennedy said he would put a man on the moon 'in this decade'. And if he didn't say 'in this decade', it wasn't going to happen in 1969. And by the way, 'man on the moon' is a measurable goal. Either he did or he didn't."

According to academic research on goal-setting, the highest level of effort occurs when a task is moderately difficult. By comparison, the lowest levels occur when the task is either very easy or very hard.
That's why the research attests to the importance of emotional engagement in meeting the goal as being imperative to success.

Chip McFarlane of the Institute of Executive Coaching thinks the word "attainable" should be replaced with "attractive".

"The word 'attractive' is important because buy-in is required for the person to be engaged in achieving the goal, otherwise it will be unsustainable," says Mr McFarlane, amaster coach and director of IEC.

"It may be the goal meets all the other SMART criteria in that it is specific and measurable and there's a deadline, but if there isn't any kind of emotional engagement and energy, then all the goal will ever be is just a nice idea."

He uses the example of someone going to the gym: "If you ask them, 'why do you go to the gym?' they'll say something like 'to get fit'," he says. "But what's the bigger picture that shows there's some emotional energy invested? The answer to this question could be 'a sense of accomplishment'."

Other academic research has found the key reason goals aren't met can be due to not matching the goal to a performance measure and not providing feedback, which establishes progress and rewards movement towards achieving the goal.

Ann-Maree Moodie is a management educator and the managing director of The Boardroom Consulting Group.

Motivate more

If you have a coach, or if you mentor someone in your organisation, demotivation is a real risk in trying to meet a goal. But a smart choice of words can re-energise and refocus.

Anthony Grant, a coaching psychologist from Sydney University, suggests that when someone is stuck, they'll say something like: "I just don't feel that I'm getting anywhere with this, I feel lost." As an adviser, encourage the person to progress by creating options. "So you need a sense of direction - what would give you that?"

Or if the person is resistant and complaining about the workload and saying something like: "But I couldn't do all of that ..." say: "OK, then, what bits can you do?"

And if they've given up altogether, on the task and on themselves, the line most commonly used is: "I guess I'm just not up to this." The best answer is: "I wonder who would be most surprised to hear you say that?" 

Ann-Maree Moodie is a management educator and the managing director of The Boardroom Consulting Group.