Goals gone good

Nov 9

Turning wild goals good | 4-min read

Last week, I discussed how our approach to goals at work (and in life) is too often counter-productive and leads to a host of harms, from poor results to low self-esteem. At the same time, goals and goal-setting aren’t all bad; the research (which you know I love) says so.

This week, I’m sharing some hopefully helpful insights into what the experts say turns wild goals good.

Goals should be a compass, not a GPS

One of the most common missteps we take with goals is making them too specific (a blunder buoyed by the “S” in S.M.A.R.T.*).

In my corporate days, I was told to be very specific when setting my annual goals and objectives. If I said “recruitment” was a goal, I needed to write down exactly how many people I planned to recruit with names and dates; if I wrote “market share growth,” I needed to assign a precise number.

In nearly all these cases, I picked reasonable but essentially arbitrary numbers. There were so many unpredictable factors that could arise over the course of a year, and I found myself chasing after goals that, by June, no longer made sense. In the end, I was just striving to achieve checkmarks on my annual review – the little symbols that determined my bonus and promotional eligibility. The real objective -- improving the business I was running – was secondary.

Instead, says the research, we should treat goals as a compass rather than a GPS. This means we set aims that give us direction without narrowing our focus too far: “Grow revenue by at least 5%” is better than “grow revenue by 7.5%”; “Eat healthier” is better than “lose 10 lbs by March”.

Make them attainable

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the motivational adage “shoot for the moon, land in the stars” doesn’t work when it comes to goals.

Too often, we are encouraged to set “reach goals” that reflect our ambition and drive. The research, however, shows that setting aims that are too high or too far can actually damage motivation and trigger feelings of failure, which then further lower motivation. It’s a lovely loop that leads nowhere.

Several years ago, researchers described something called the “stretch goal paradox,” which posits that very challenging objectives only work well in very specific contexts: when an organization (or in the case of humans, an individual) is currently growing, is well-resourced, and is optimistic about the outlook. If any one of those factors is missing, reach goals almost always backfire.

It’s why Google and Amazon can set audacious objectives and keep employees motivated, but grand plans from struggling companies like Yahoo and JC Penney haven’t delivered.

The graphic below is an interesting guide to help identify what goals may be best for an organization, given its context. Though it focuses on company goals, it very much applies to us humans as well. Think of “resources” in terms of “energy and time” and “successful” or “unsuccessful” in terms of your sense of accomplishment or overall wellbeing.

In most cases, as the graphic shows, stretch goals aren’t helpful. Instead, the best results come from smaller, incremental aims that take you further than where you are, but which are fully within reach.

Adjust, adjust, adjust

Instead of viewing goals as a set of fixed posts anchored in the ground, we should consider them living, breathing aims that we adjust as needed.

Too often, we declare something like an annual objective or – yes, I’m going there – a New Years resolution, and assume it must be immovable for it to work. After all, we need something stable to run towards.

However, this rigid approach to goal-setting fails to take into account all the changes that occur in business and in life (an unavoidable phenomenon I like to call “reality”).

As often as we evaluate ourselves or our teams in relation to an objective, we should be evaluating the aim itself: x months in, does it still make sense? Based on what we’ve learned, does it seem realistic? Are there other areas that need to take priority?

The first and only time I had a goal-evaluation conversation at work was mid-2020, when the world and our business were so upended that previous targets were rendered fully obsolete. In fact, the pandemic forced companies across the globe to adapt aims, adjusting earnings projections and objectives on a very large and public scale.

This needs to be a regular practice, not just an exceptional, crisis-induced response. When we attach ourselves too rigidly to a target, we risk spending time and energy on goals that are no longer realistic or fail to serve the larger objective.

The big takeaway: you’re not always the problem

My main message with this two-part treatise on goals is that sometimes when things aren’t working or you’re feeling behind, you’re not the problem. When the systems and practices that govern our work are broken (as in the case of goal-setting), we need to turn our critical eye away from ourselves and towards the real issue.

At work, you may not be able to change your organization’s approach to goals, but you can use this information to look critically at your objectives at work and give yourself some slack on goals that others set for you.

*S.M.A.R.T refers to the common time management principle that says goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound