Last year, Tom wrote about how we use SMART goals to ensure that we create content in a timely and consistent way. We had seen lots of evidence from our users that setting goals was helpful and we were quite excited that we had "A Plan" to execute against.
What we didn't know then and have learned since, is that the plan is not just an important component in creating content in the long term, it is absolutely critical.
We have found, looking at our users' behaviours, for instance that the short term behaviours can be "gamed" to establish beneficial habits but, without a long-term plan, that has simple achievable steps for each participant, it is only a matter of time before things start to go wrong. It's hardly surprising really, why would you invest your time and effort into a task if you have no clarity about why you're doing it or what constitutes success?
Another thing that is very important and is not captured in the SMART acronym, is the importance of a team dynamic. It seems in the case of many of our users, setting team goals which individuals participate in achieving, are even more successful than when individuals set goals for themselves.