SMART Goals & Team Tenets

In Part 1, we covered the OP1/OP2 framework — how to separate strategic direction from execution planning. That gives you a structure for when and what to plan.

This article goes one level deeper: how to write goals that are actually useful, and how to keep your team focused with explicit tenets that define your team's unique value within the organisation.

The SMART Framework — Done Properly

Most people have heard of SMART goals. Few teams apply them rigorously. The framework is often reduced to a checklist exercise during annual reviews, producing goals that technically pass the test but don't actually drive behaviour.

Here's the framework, with teeth:

Letter	Means	The Hard Question
S	Specific	Can someone who wasn't in the room understand exactly what "done" looks like?
M	Measurable	What number moves? Can you check it without asking someone's opinion?
A	Achievable	Given current resources and constraints, is this realistic — or are we setting up a goal we'll quietly abandon in Q3?
R	Relevant	Does this connect to a team or company objective? If this goal succeeds and nothing else changes, does anyone notice?
T	Time-bound	By when? Not "Q4" — what date? What's the checkpoint before the deadline?

A bad SMART goal vs. a real one

The difference isn't the framework — it's the rigour you apply to it. A SMART goal should make you slightly uncomfortable because it's precise enough to be proven wrong.

The Goal Refinement Checklist

Before you lock in your goals for the cycle, run them through this checklist. It catches the most common failure modes — goals that look good on paper but fall apart in practice.

First checkpoint: priority honesty

Before evaluating individual goals, ask the uncomfortable question: are these 4–5 goals truly my highest priorities for the year? Are my time and resources actually focused on these? Or is there a different, unwritten list of goals and priorities that I use for my day-to-day work?

If the answer is "there's a shadow list," your written goals aren't real goals — they're performance theatre. Fix the list before refining the wording.

Common goal problems and how to fix them

Problem	Example	How to Fix
Activity-based, not results-based	"Train 3 black belts" (activity) vs. "Remove 3 calendar weeks from the work process" (result)	Ask: who is the customer of this work? What do they need? If the actions succeed, how does the business benefit?
Too vague to measure	"Ramp up production more quickly" vs. "Increase units shipped per week from 200 to 350 by Q3"	What result are you producing? What number tracks it? What level of performance is "good enough"?
Measure with no target	"Improve high performer turnover rate" vs. "High performer turnover rate between 5–7%"	What number or percentage means success? Without a target, you can't tell whether you've achieved anything.
Tracking cost exceeds value	25 different measures for a single goal — creating reports for all of them costs more than the data is worth	Select 1–2 measures that best capture what you're trying to achieve. Use existing tracking systems where possible.

The quality of the goals top management writes is critical to the success of goal alignment across the organisation. Many managers and employees will look at those goals and mimic them — for both style and substance.

Team Tenets: The Soul of Your Team

Goals tell your team what to achieve. Tenets tell them how to behave while achieving it. But tenets aren't just guardrails for when capacity is limited. They serve a deeper purpose: they define what makes your team different.

Tenets establish your team's internal brand — what the team is known for, what it stands for, and where its boundaries are. A team with clear tenets is a team that can articulate its unique value proposition within the organisation. It's a team that doesn't drift into another team's territory, doesn't duplicate work that another group already owns, and doesn't get pulled into distractions disguised as opportunities.

If you've ever seen a soul.md file in a codebase — a document that describes a project's philosophy, what it is and isn't, what trade-offs it makes deliberately — team tenets are the same thing, but for how your team operates.

Tenets are most useful when they're opinionated. A tenet everyone would agree with is just a platitude. A real tenet takes a side — and in doing so, it tells the rest of the organisation exactly what to expect from your team.

What good tenets look like

Tenets work in pairs: what we will do (even when it's hard) and what we won't do (even when it's tempting). Here's an example set for a platform engineering team:

Why tenets matter for goal planning

When your team has 15 possible projects and capacity for 6, tenets are how you decide. They answer the question your goals can't: "We could do this, but should we?"

• Tenets filter incoming requests. When a stakeholder asks for a one-off integration, your tenet about generalised solutions gives you a principled reason to push back or reshape the ask.
• Tenets resolve tie-breaks. Two projects have similar impact estimates. One aligns with your tenet about incremental delivery; the other requires a big-bang release. The tenet breaks the tie.
• Tenets create consistency. When team members make daily decisions autonomously, tenets ensure they're pulling in the same direction without needing a meeting for every call.
• Tenets differentiate your team. In any organisation with more than a few teams, it's easy for mandates to blur. Tenets make explicit what your team does that no other team does — and equally, what you deliberately leave to others. This prevents duplication of effort and makes cross-team boundaries clear.
• Tenets eliminate distractions. Interesting work that doesn't fit your tenets is not your work. Without this filter, teams accumulate side projects that fragment focus and dilute the team's identity. A team known for nothing specific delivers nothing specific.

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Final Thought

SMART goals give you precision. Tenets give you focus and identity. Together, they tell your team what to do, how to decide, and what makes them distinct. But goals and tenets alone can still float in isolation if they aren't connected to the company's financial reality.

That's the subject of the next post in this series: how to trace every goal from the individual contributor all the way up to the P&L — and why that vertical alignment is what separates busy teams from effective ones.