// the upgrade

Upgrade your SMART goals.

Matt Roberts
By Matt Roberts, co-founder, ZOKRI
Strategy & OKR consultant

The AI install pack goes into the AI you already use, then paste in a SMART goal and ask if it is really sharp. It coaches on what SMART cannot: which goal is worth setting, and whether the target is honest.

Get the book and the pack →

What SMART goals gets right

SMART earns its place. It compresses the two most robust findings in goal science, specificity and measurability for feedback, into five letters anyone can remember. Every well-written Key Result is, underneath, a SMART sentence. As a hygiene check at the sentence level, it is excellent.

The gap the average AI leaves

SMART writes a good sentence; it never decides which sentence is worth writing. Worse, the "A" for Achievable quietly teaches pre-negotiation, and the average LLM will happily help you draft a comfortable, achievable goal, which is a sandbag with good grammar. The upgrade adds the two things SMART leaves out: why this goal now, and how to hold ambition without punishing honesty.

// make it better today

What to improve, and why it works

1. Make it a change, from X to Y, not a state

"Improve customer satisfaction" is a mood. "Raise CSAT from 4.1 to 4.5" is a goal. A measurable target always names a starting point and a finish line, because a number with no baseline cannot tell you whether you moved.

2. Be careful with “Achievable”

Inside any system where goals carry consequences, "achievable" teaches people to promise what they already know they can deliver. If a target is a deliberate stretch, label it as one, so a shortfall is expected and honesty costs nothing. Calibration and ambition only fight when you refuse to say which one a given target is.

3. Add the why SMART omits

SMART checks the sentence and stays silent on the point. Before you polish a goal, write one line above it: why this goal, and why now? A perfectly SMART goal aimed at the wrong thing is just an efficient way to waste a quarter.

// shown, not claimed

One SMART goals goal, upgraded

Before

Improve customer satisfaction by improving our support process this year.

After

Raise CSAT from 4.1 to 4.5 by cutting first-response time from 9 hours to 2. Labelled a stretch, because we are testing whether speed is the real driver of satisfaction, not just assuming it.

The before is vague and unfalsifiable. The after is a real change from a baseline, names the lever, and labels the ambition honestly, so nobody games it and everybody knows what is being tested.

// the two-minute install

Install it into the AI you already use

Same files, three tools. Pick yours. It really is about two minutes.

Claude recommended
  1. New Project.
  2. Add the files to Project knowledge.
  3. Ask it to review a goal.
ChatGPT
  1. New Project (or a chat).
  2. Upload the files.
  3. Ask it to review a goal.
Microsoft Copilot
  1. Start a chat.
  2. Attach the files.
  3. Ask it to review a goal.
// the 30-second proof

Before you install, ask your AI to review one real goal and screenshot the answer. Install, ask again, screenshot the difference. That gap is the point. Try: Paste a SMART goal and ask: is the target a real change from a baseline, is any stretch labelled honestly, and does it say why this goal matters now?

// what it does

A coach, not a chatbot

// get the pack

The book and the install pack

The AI install pack comes with From Trading to Scaling: an hour to read, five working templates, the instructions and knowledge files for Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot, and a conversation with Matt about any of it.

·The book, 13 chapters, about an hour’s read
·The Strategy Template, the OKR Template, the Idea Collection sheet and the Bonus Calculator
·The AI install pack, two minutes to install
·A conversation with Matt
Get it for £100 →

Free things get downloaded, not installed. A hundred pounds is the smallest number that makes somebody open the file, and this is the only place the pack is available.

// the honest boundary

What the pack is, and is not

The pack carries the principles and the working templates: the book, the strategy one-pager, the OKR template, the idea sheet and the bonus calculator, plus the knowledge files that make your AI coach against a method rather than the internet average. That is yours to keep, and it is enough to install all six things without us.

What it is not is the whole machinery. The playbooks, scoring scales and the 140-plus linked concepts, installed into your own tools and kept current, are the licensed layer above this. And the human work, the training, facilitation, coaching and mentoring that gets a company past its first messy quarter, is our people. Knowledge does not install courage, or referee a hard conversation. We would rather say that here than let you find out.

// one install, or the whole company

One install helps one person. The advantage is your whole company running on a shared operating system: the same method in the AI everyone already uses, at every level, with routines and automations carrying the repeatable work, and your people freed to find and compound the knowledge and IP only you have.

One install at a time does not create that. Building the operating system does, and that is what ZOKRI does. See the method we install and the platform it runs on.

// the layer above this

When you want more than the pack

The full method, installed →
The licensed upgrade: all the machinery in your own tools.
The human help →
Training, facilitation, coaching and mentoring.
A short, low-pressure chat with Matt →
Bring a goal. Leave with a straight answer, no pitch.
// asked and answered
What is wrong with SMART goals? +

Nothing, at the sentence level, and that is also the limit. SMART makes a goal specific and measurable but never tells you which goal to set or whether the target is honest. Its "Achievable" criterion can quietly encourage sandbagging inside systems where goals carry consequences.

Are SMART goals and OKRs the same? +

No. A well-written Key Result is a SMART sentence, so SMART lives inside OKRs. OKRs add the layer above the sentence: which goals, why these, at what rhythm, and how the quarter is graded. SMART is the grammar; OKRs are the argument.

What does the “A” in SMART get wrong? +

Read as "Achievable" inside a system with consequences, it teaches pre-negotiation: people promise what they can already deliver. The fix is to keep targets honest, label deliberate stretch as stretch, and grade on judgement, so ambition and calibration stop being enemies.

// use a different system?
Upgrade your OKRs →Upgrade your EOS Rocks →Upgrade your KPIs & dashboards →Upgrade your V2MOM →Upgrade your North Star metric →Upgrade your No framework yet →See all doors →