ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Personal effectiveness
A manager tells a trainee accountant: 'Improve your performance this year.' Which SMART criterion is the MOST clearly missing?
The goal fails mainly on being specific and measurable. It does not identify what aspect of performance should improve or provide a yardstick to judge success. It has a loose time frame of this year, and improving performance is clearly relevant, so those are weaker criticisms.
- ASpecific and measurable, because no defined target or yardstick is givenCorrect
- BTime-bound, because 'this year' is not a deadline
- CRelevant, because performance always matters to the employer
Explanation
'Improve your performance' does not say what is to improve or how progress will be judged, so it is neither specific nor measurable. 'This year' does give a time frame, so option B is not the most obvious gap.
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