Jan Brueghel, Triumph des Todes
“At a time when stock market flotations were all the rage in top football circles, performance-related pay (PRP) was all the rage in public sector/civil service offices. Both ideas proved to be rubbish (see ‘bankers’ bonuses’ for details). But not before both wrought considerable damage. A key part of PRP where I once worked was the concept of ‘SMART’ objectives, which won the ‘misleading acronym of the year’ award so often in the early-90s it got to keep the trophy. SMART stood for ‘Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timeous.’ And while this contained an element of superficial common-sense, it failed utterly as a measure of determining pay, for reasons to numerous and dull to detail here.” (twohundredpercent)