A measurable goal is not automatically a useful one. Founders need strategy, systems and evidence underneath the target.
A goal is not a strategy
Business culture loves goals because they look decisive. Pick a revenue number, set a deadline, make it SMART and suddenly the future appears organised. The problem is that a beautifully written target can still be attached to a terrible plan.
In Goal Setting Bullsh\*t, the useful challenge is not whether founders should have goals. It is whether the goal helps you make better decisions. “Reach £1 million revenue” sounds ambitious, but it tells you very little about margin, customer quality, delivery capacity or how that revenue will actually be created. “Double our Instagram followers” is measurable, but it may have no meaningful relationship with sales.
Before setting a target, ask what business problem you are trying to solve. A goal should give direction to a strategy; it cannot replace one.
SMART does not automatically mean sensible
Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound can be a useful checklist. It is not a guarantee that the goal deserves your attention. A founder can create a perfectly SMART target for an activity that should not exist. You can measure posts published, networking events attended or cold emails sent and still waste months optimising the wrong thing.
The missing question is usually “why?” What changes if you hit the target? Which customer or commercial outcome improves? What trade-off are you accepting to pursue it? A useful goal creates clarity about what matters. A bad one creates a scoreboard that keeps everybody busy.
SMART goals still need strategy
Sabrina challenges the assumption that using a familiar goal-setting framework automatically produces a useful business goal.
Watch on YouTube →Separate outcomes from inputs
Founders often choose outcomes they cannot directly control: revenue, follower growth, press coverage or the number of inbound leads. Those outcomes matter, but they are affected by customers, markets, algorithms and timing.
The more useful operating layer is the set of behaviours you can influence. If the objective is more qualified sales, useful inputs might include follow-up speed, conversations with target customers, referral asks and proposal quality. If the objective is better retention, inputs could include onboarding, response times and regular customer reviews.
This does not mean ignoring the outcome. It means giving yourself something actionable between setting the goal and checking whether you achieved it. A good goal has two layers: the result you are trying to create and the behaviours you believe will influence it.
First of all... let's explain what SMART stands for, in case people did not actually get my previously hilarious pun!
Build a review loop, not a judgement day
A common failure in goal setting is waiting until the deadline to decide whether the plan worked. By then, the useful learning may be months old.
Set review points while there is still time to change the approach. Ask what is moving, what is stuck and what the evidence suggests. If qualified enquiries are rising but conversion is falling, the answer may not be “do more marketing”. If sales are strong but delivery is collapsing, growth may be creating a different problem.
Missing a goal should produce information, not an identity crisis. Was the target realistic? Was the strategy sound? Did the inputs happen? What changed outside your control?
Goals need trade-offs
Every serious goal consumes something: money, time, attention or capacity. If you say yes to one priority without deciding what receives less attention, you have not really prioritised it. This is particularly important in small businesses, where the founder’s attention is often the scarcest resource. Choose fewer goals. Give each a strategic reason and decide what will deliberately not happen while it is the priority.
A better goal-setting question
Instead of asking, “What do I want to achieve this quarter?”, start with, “What needs to be different in the business?”
Perhaps the business needs a more predictable pipeline, stronger margins, less founder dependency or better retention. That problem gives the goal context. Then choose a measure that tells you whether the problem is improving. Decide which repeated actions are most likely to influence it. Review the evidence before the deadline and adjust the method without casually abandoning the objective.
Goal setting is useful when it turns ambition into choices. It becomes bullshit when the framework itself is treated as progress. A target on a spreadsheet cannot do the work for you. The value comes from the strategy underneath it, the systems that make action repeatable and the willingness to learn when reality refuses to follow the plan.
The goal is not to become better at setting goals. It is to become better at running the business they are supposed to improve.
Do not confuse ambition with precision
Some of the most important business ambitions cannot be predicted neatly twelve months in advance. That does not make planning pointless. It means founders should be precise about the next useful evidence rather than pretending they can forecast every step. A goal can provide direction while the route remains adaptable. The discipline is to keep learning from reality instead of defending a target simply because it was written down at the start of the quarter.
