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We talked about using the SMART goal
framework as a very practical tool to set

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effective goals.

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But there's significant limitations
associated with the SMART goal framework.

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And I would like for us to walk through
these limitations and to be aware of

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the risks that the SMART goal framework
can entail when it comes to setting goals.

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Now the first limitation of the smart
goal framework is that it's a very

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tactical framework.

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It helps you set very specific, very
measurable, very crisply defined goals,

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but it gives you very little insight
as to what extent these goals

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are linked with the strategy or the vision
of your team, or the organization.

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And, as a result, it can lead you
to set dangerously unwise goals.

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So let me give you an example, many years
ago, Ford developed a Ford Pinto model.

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With a very specific, measurable,
SMART goal attached to it,

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which is design and
manufacture a car of under $2,000 a piece.

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Now, as a result of that smart goal,

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there were certain compromises made during
the design and manufacturing phase,

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such as it was a lighter model and
it didn't have as much protection.

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As a result, it was particularly
vulnerable even in low speed crashes.

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In particular, the fuel tank would crack.

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The fuel would leak and
it led to fires and explosions.

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When Ford executives first learned
of this defect, they remained so

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committed to this under 2,000
goal per vehicle that they did

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a rational cost benefit analysis of what
would be more beneficial for the company.

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To pull the cars off the market and
fix the design floor or

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to pay off in injury and
death liability lawsuits?

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Their analysis favored keeping
the car on the market and

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it was not until much later when that
defect in Ford Pintos was linked

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to 53 documented fatalities,
and many more injuries,

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that Ford decided to pull the car off
the market and fix the design flaw.

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So again, in this particular case, the
goal was very SMART and crisply defined,

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but it had very little congruence with the
strategy and the vision of the company.

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If your key strategic goal,
if your key strategic comparative

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is to design a safe vehicle for
your drivers and passengers,

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then all the SMART goals should
build on that strategic prerogative.

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Recall that in week one of this course,
we talked with Scott about setting

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effective vision and
strategy for your team.

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It is absolutely imperative
that your SMART goals

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are aligned with that vision and
strategy for your team.

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And again, recognize that because
the SMART goal framework is very tactical,

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it doesn't necessarily give you insights
as to to what extent your SMART goals

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are aligned or misaligned with
the strategy and vision of the team.

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Now the second limitation of SMART goals
is that they can promote unethical behavior.

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Recall that in the early segments of this

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course we talked about stretch goals and

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aggressive goals promoting
unethical behavior.

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Well, it turns out that goals
don't need to be aggressive.

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They don't need to be stretch goals
to promote unethical behavior.

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They just need to be specific.

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Research by Maurice Schweitzer and
colleagues shows that individuals who have

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specific goals are four times as
likely to overstate their performance,

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essentially to lie about
their performance,

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compared to individuals that
don't have specific goals.

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Such as those that have a do
your best type of goal.

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What's even more disturbing is that
it's those people who fall just

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short of their goal, they are especially
likely to lie about their performance.

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So it creates a pretty significant concern

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with respect to these near misses and
unethical behavior in organizations.

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Now there are a variety of things
you can do within your team 

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within your organization to make sure
that you rectify this problem.

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One is, of course,

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you want to make sure that you manufacture
a culture of ethical behavior.

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But more importantly,

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as a team lead, you wanna make sure
that you develop tolerance for failure.

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One of the key reasons we see this
unethical behavior popping up

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when goals are challenging, when they're
stretch goals or goals are specific,

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is often employees are hesitant
to talk about their failures.

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You want to make sure that your teammates
feel comfortable coming to you and

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saying that, look, in this situation, I
don't think we're gonna make this goal and

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here's why.

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Especially if you're in the business
of setting challenging,

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aggressive goals, specific goals.

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You wanna make sure that there's
this comfort in your team for

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those situations where
people didn't quite make it.

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Now the third limitation associated
with SMART goals is that it's a very

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discrete framework.

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this beautiful check list.

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But it gives you very little insight into
how these goals can be interrelated.

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What could be the positive or negative
interdependencies among those goals?

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Goals can be mutually reinforcing and
then you're in luck.

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But they can be in direct
conflict with one another.

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So for example, if I have a goal of
increasing sales and another goal of

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decreasing advertising budget, those two
goals can be in conflict with each other.

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In corporate settings we'll often see
it in the context of poorly coordinated product launches.

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Any particular product launch

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can be couched in a very smart,

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very crisply defined
checklist around goals.

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But when you look at them jointly,
marketing efforts get diluted,

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customer attention wanders, and

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sometimes, different products end up
cannibalizing each other's market share.

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I want to change the pace of
our discussion a little bit.

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I wanna show you a video.

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In this video, you will see players
passing basketballs to one another.

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I'm gonna ask you to count the number
of passes players wearing white make.

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To be clear, for those of us who
are not fans of basketball for example,

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the pass can be an aerial pass, in which
case the ball travels entirely through

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the air on the way to another player,
or it can be a ground pass, in which

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case the ball would bounce off the ground
prior to reaching another player.

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So again,

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I'm asking you to count the number of
passes that players wearing white make.

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For those of you who saw the gorilla,
what else did you see?

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Did you see that one of the players
from the black team left the stage?

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And that the curtain changed colors.

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So that we're certain we're talking
about the same video still,

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let's take another look.

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You will see here that
a gorilla walks onto the stage,

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one of the black teammates leaves
the stage and the curtain changes colors.

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This video illustrates another
limitation of SMART goals.

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Specifically, goals that are too specific.

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They lead to tunnel vision.

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They narrow our attention
focus too much sometimes.

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So we're missing the most blatant,
obvious things around us.

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On average,
about 50% of people miss the gorilla.

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Now if I make that goal even more
specific, and arguably more cognitively complex,

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such as I would ask you to count
separately the number of aerial and

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ground passes in this basketball game,
only about 30% would see the gorilla.

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That again illustrates how specific goals
can contribute to this tunnel vision,

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can narrow our attention and
focus too much.

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Here you're looking at a typical
lung scan that radiologists use to

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detect lung nodules.

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Do you see anything
unusual in this lung scan?

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Now, if you missed this gorilla in the top
right corner, don't be too hard on yourself,

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because about 83% of
radiologists missed that gorilla too.

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What's even more disturbing is that
this gorilla is about 48 times

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the size of an average lung nodule.

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But again you have a very specific
goal to look for lung nodules.

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And sometimes, it makes you
oblivious to the most obvious,

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blatant things that are going
on around this goal.

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So at some point, you might consider
relaxing the specificity condition.

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So I'll give you a specific example.

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When we ask people to
proofread a document for

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grammatical errors, they're very good
at detecting grammatical errors, but

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they're completely oblivious
to blatant content errors.

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When we ask people to just
proofread the document in general,

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they're equally good at catching
grammatical errors, but

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they're also very good at
detecting content errors.

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So think about relaxing the specific
condition if you're concerned that a very,

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very specific goal can narrow
people's attention too much.

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And the final concern and
limitation of SMART goals,

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is that specific goals can constrain
our learning and creativity.

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That is especially true for
those environments that are complex.

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That are poorly understood.

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Where you have a wide choice
of decision-making strategists

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on the way to accomplishing
a particular goal.

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That's when specific goals
can really backfire.

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There's a classic study of
air traffic controllers

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that found that specific goals diminished
their ability to learn on the job.

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We had similar effects in
negotiations research.

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If you walk into a very
complex negotiation,

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specific goals limited your ability to
acquire new negotiation strategies,

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learn them, and
apply them in a negotiation.

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Airline colleagues for example gave us
some insight as to why we're much more

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likely to see this behavior when
people are faced with specific goals.

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It turns out that when we have specific
goals, we're much more likely to

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be very impatient and even chaotic in
our search from one strategy to another.

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Meaning if we discover a particular
strategy to accomplish a goal,

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we don't sit on that strategy
long enough to figure out

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to what extent that strategy
shapes performance.

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We tend to move on to the next
strategy way too quickly,

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before fully understanding the performance
implications of the first one.

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And that, in the long run,
really constraints our ability to learn.

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So again, think about this,
if you're facing a familiar environment,

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the environment that you
understand reasonably well,

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the environment where you have
a very specific subset of

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strategies that can help you
obtain a particular goal.

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And the environment where you have
a set of good intuitions about

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what would be the most optimal
strategy to reach a particular goal.

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That's when specific goals
can be quite effective.

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But if the environment
is poorly understood,

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if it's complex, if you have a wide range
of strategists to reach a particular goal.

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And again, you don't have a strong
intuition as to which strategy

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would be the most effective,
the optimum one.

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Think of setting less specific goals.

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As you might recall in
the beginning of our discussion

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on SMART goals I mentioned to you that
there is one set of circumstances

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where do you best can actually
be an effective goal.

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Well this is one set of
those circumstances.

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In those complex, ambiguous,
poorly understood environments,

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do your best can actually
be an effective goal.