When goal-setting backfires

Photo by Anderaz

"A goal properly set is halfway reached." – Abraham Lincoln

“Ready, aim … fail” by Drake Bennett discusses research that found goals which are incorrectly set can have negative consequences. Goal-setting drives success and without clear goals we are for the most part unfocused and undisciplined.

“It is a given in American life that goals are inseparable from accomplishment. President Kennedy’s 1961 promise to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade is held up as an example of a world-changing goal, the kind of inspirational beacon needed to surmount immense societal challenges. Among psychologists, the link between setting goals and achievement is one of the clearest there is, with studies on everyone from woodworkers to CEOs showing that we concentrate better, work longer, and do more if we set specific, measurable goals for ourselves’ ‘When people are asked do their best, they don’t,’ says Locke, now an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business. ‘It’s too vague. Giving people ambitious and specific goals directs their attention, energizes them, and keeps them engaged longer.’”

When Goal-Setting Fails

Goal-setting fails we we focus in the wrong goals or when we focus on a few goals at the expensive of the greater organisation. Issues and concerns outside of the scope of the set goals get neglected or worse they get ignored.

“The argument is not that goal setting doesn’t work – it does, just not always in the way we intend. ‘It can focus attention too much, or on the wrong things; it can lead to crazy behaviors to get people to achieve them,’ says Adam Galinsky, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and co-author of ‘Goals Gone Wild,’ a paper in the current issue of a leading management journal” Narrow corporate goals can keep employees from asking important questions that they otherwise might. Take the notoriously combustible Ford Pinto. In the late 1960s, Ford CEO Lee Iacocca, determined to take back the market share the company was losing to smaller imports, announced a crash program to create a new car that would be under 2,000 pounds, under $2,000, and would go on sale in 1970. Desperate to meet the conditions and the deadline, company executives ignored and then played down questions about the safety of the car’s design. As a result, the Pinto, with a fuel tank just behind the rear axle, was uniquely prone to igniting upon impact, and 53 people died in such fires.”

The Solution

The article goes on to discusses some solutions to ineffective goal-setting.

“To combat this, Latham, among others, argues that what’s often required is a ‘learning goal’ – one where someone pledges to come up with, for example, five approaches to a thorny problem – rather than a performance goal that assumes that the problem will automatically be solved’ And whatever they are, goals need to be flexible when circumstances change. Francis Flynn, an organizational psychologist at Stanford, says he always tells his students that ‘the best goal you can have is to re-evaluate your goals, semi-annually or annually, to make sure they remain rational.’”

There are other solutions, this goal-setting error has been discussed before by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton who developed The Balanced Scorecard Method as a way to ensure organisations focus on a balanced set of goals. The Wikipedia entry describes the Balanced Scorecard rationale as follows:

“By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests.

Organizations were encouraged to measure, in addition to financial outputs, those factors which influenced the financial outputs. For example, process performance, market share / penetration, long term learning and skills development, and so on.

The underlying rationale is that organizations cannot directly influence financial outcomes, as these are "lag" measures, and that the use of financial measures alone to inform the strategic control of the firm is unwise. Organizations should instead also measure those areas where direct management intervention is possible. In so doing, the early versions of the Balanced Scorecard helped organizations achieve a degree of "balance" in selection of performance measures. In practice, early Scorecards achieved this balance by encouraging managers to select measures from three additional categories or perspectives: ‘Customer,’ ‘Internal Business Processes’ and ‘Learning and Growth.’”

As a leader who is striving to realise a vision and purpose everyday, have you set goals for your organisation and team? If you have, check that they are comprehensive and focus on a number of perspectives and that they do not too narrowly focus your organisation on one or two metrics at the expense of long-term effectiveness. Once you have a set of goals create some S.M.A.R.T objectives?

Technorati Tags: Goals, Objectives, Goal-Setting, Target, Balanced Scorecard, Strategy, Execution

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Tagged as: Execution, Goal-Setting