Try not to set goals in 2013
Translation of the article Consider Not Setting Goals in 2013 from Harvard Business Review Blogs.
"Sofia, Daniel" - I called in the apartment of my children of five and seven years old, who played together in the bedroom. “The school bus will arrive in 10 minutes. Let's see who can brush their teeth and be ready to go out first. ”
They, giggling, rushed to the bathroom. Two minutes later, Daniel beat Sophia for almost a second. I smiled at my own victory. I achieved my goal so that they brush their teeth and come together in record time. Or not?
')
Yes, they were ready on time. But in those two minutes they didn’t brush their teeth very well, they certainly didn’t use dental floss, and the bathroom was a mess and chaos.
We all know how important it is to have goals, right? And not just goals, but long-term goals. Big cheeky goals! It makes sense: if you don’t know where you are specifically going, then you will never be there. And if you do not set the bar high enough, you will never live at the maximum of your potential.
This is all the more considered common sense in the business world; this is supported by research. Like the Harvard Business School study you may have heard about in which only 3% of graduates wrote clear goals. Twenty years later, these 3% were 10 times more successful than all the others combined. Fascinating, right?
It would be so if it were true. But it is not. This research does not exist. This is pure myth.
However, this is only one plausible story. By questioning goal setting, we question the very basis of the business. We could argue what goals to set, or how to set them, but who will argue about whether to set goals at all?
I.
I am not saying that goals, by their nature, are a bad thing. They just come with a number of side effects, without which you might be better off.
The authors of the publication of the Harvard Business School, Goals Gone Wild (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html), reviewed a number of studies related to goals and concluded that the positive aspects of goal setting were exaggerated and negative ( “Systematic harm from goal setting”) was simply neglected.
They identified clear side effects associated with setting goals, including “narrow focusing, neglecting untargeted areas, unethical behavior, distorted risk assessment, deterioration of organizational culture, and a decrease in intrinsic motivation.”
Here are some examples that the authors described in their article:
And here's another, from the New York Times :
It is almost impossible to predict the negative side effects of a goal!
When we set goals, we are taught to make them specific and measurable in time. But it turns out that these characteristics can cause the targets to have unpleasant consequences. Specific, measurable, time-limited goals make our behavior narrowly focused, and often lead either to deception or to myopia. Yes, we often reach the goal, but at what cost?
So what can you do in the absence of a goal? Still need to strive for achievements, especially in business. We need help in guiding and measuring progress. But perhaps there is a better way to achieve the desired indicators, while at the same time bypassing the “negative side effects”.
I want to propose a solution: instead of setting goals, consider determining the directions (zones) of your focus.
The goal determines the result you want to achieve; the line of action sets what you want to spend your time on. The goal is the result; direction is the way to go. Target indicates the future you are about to achieve; direction is holding you back in the present.
The goal of sales, for example, you could call a certain income or a certain number of new customers won. The purpose of the activity may be to reduce costs.
Focusing on sales in general can lead to a lot of conversations with relevant perspectives. By focusing on overall operations, you can identify areas where you can reduce costs.
Obviously, these things are not mutually exclusive. You could have a goal and line of action. In fact, you can argue that you need both that and the other together - the goal determines where you are going, the direction describes how you plan to get there.
But there is an advantage in focusing on the direction of activity without setting goals.
The direction of activity is addressed to your inner motivation, does not provide an incentive to deceive yourself or take unnecessary risks, does not force you to seize every positive opportunity to achieve something, encourages cooperation and simultaneously reduces internal competition. In doing so, all the time moving forward to the results that you and your organization value most.
In other words, all the same benefits of goals, but without negative side effects.
How to do it? It's very simple: determine what you want to spend your time on, or decide with the boss how best to use your time - and waste your time doing just that. The rest will come by itself. I found that you can do five basic things, but after that, the effectiveness will begin to decline significantly.
The basis is to resist the temptation to determine the result you want to achieve. Leave this question open and allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised. I am not saying that this is easy to do. I never understood how focused I was on goals until I stopped focusing only on them. Without goals, it was hard for me to believe that something would be done at all.
But things were done. And in my experience, you will not only achieve the same results as when setting goals, but you will also enjoy the process much more, avoiding unnecessary stress and temptation.
In other words, if we focus on the tasks, and not on the result, my children will still get together on time, but they will carefully brush their teeth, take advantage of flossing, while leaving order in the bathroom.
The author of the article, Peter Bregman, is a strategic advisor to various CEOs and company leaders, peterbregman.com .
Translated by: pushev.ru .
"Sofia, Daniel" - I called in the apartment of my children of five and seven years old, who played together in the bedroom. “The school bus will arrive in 10 minutes. Let's see who can brush their teeth and be ready to go out first. ”
They, giggling, rushed to the bathroom. Two minutes later, Daniel beat Sophia for almost a second. I smiled at my own victory. I achieved my goal so that they brush their teeth and come together in record time. Or not?
')
Yes, they were ready on time. But in those two minutes they didn’t brush their teeth very well, they certainly didn’t use dental floss, and the bathroom was a mess and chaos.
We all know how important it is to have goals, right? And not just goals, but long-term goals. Big cheeky goals! It makes sense: if you don’t know where you are specifically going, then you will never be there. And if you do not set the bar high enough, you will never live at the maximum of your potential.
This is all the more considered common sense in the business world; this is supported by research. Like the Harvard Business School study you may have heard about in which only 3% of graduates wrote clear goals. Twenty years later, these 3% were 10 times more successful than all the others combined. Fascinating, right?
It would be so if it were true. But it is not. This research does not exist. This is pure myth.
However, this is only one plausible story. By questioning goal setting, we question the very basis of the business. We could argue what goals to set, or how to set them, but who will argue about whether to set goals at all?
I.
I am not saying that goals, by their nature, are a bad thing. They just come with a number of side effects, without which you might be better off.
The authors of the publication of the Harvard Business School, Goals Gone Wild (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html), reviewed a number of studies related to goals and concluded that the positive aspects of goal setting were exaggerated and negative ( “Systematic harm from goal setting”) was simply neglected.
They identified clear side effects associated with setting goals, including “narrow focusing, neglecting untargeted areas, unethical behavior, distorted risk assessment, deterioration of organizational culture, and a decrease in intrinsic motivation.”
Here are some examples that the authors described in their article:
- Sears set production targets for its car repair personnel at a rate of $ 147 for each hour of operation. Did this motivate the staff? Of course. This made them constantly overstate the time spent.
- Remember the Ford Pinto? A car that caught fire when they hit it from behind? Pinto's result is 53 deaths and many other injuries, because workers missed security checks in pursuit of Lee Iacocca’s great goal about a car that “would have weighed less than 2 tons and cost less than $ 2000 by 1970”.
And here's another, from the New York Times :
- Ken O'Brien, a former New York Jets quarterback, made too many losses. So he got a seemingly quite reasonable goal - to make fewer bad throws, and for every bad one he was punished financially. It worked! The statistics of his losses decreased, but only because he made far fewer passes. In general, his game only suffered.
It is almost impossible to predict the negative side effects of a goal!
When we set goals, we are taught to make them specific and measurable in time. But it turns out that these characteristics can cause the targets to have unpleasant consequences. Specific, measurable, time-limited goals make our behavior narrowly focused, and often lead either to deception or to myopia. Yes, we often reach the goal, but at what cost?
So what can you do in the absence of a goal? Still need to strive for achievements, especially in business. We need help in guiding and measuring progress. But perhaps there is a better way to achieve the desired indicators, while at the same time bypassing the “negative side effects”.
I want to propose a solution: instead of setting goals, consider determining the directions (zones) of your focus.
The goal determines the result you want to achieve; the line of action sets what you want to spend your time on. The goal is the result; direction is the way to go. Target indicates the future you are about to achieve; direction is holding you back in the present.
The goal of sales, for example, you could call a certain income or a certain number of new customers won. The purpose of the activity may be to reduce costs.
Focusing on sales in general can lead to a lot of conversations with relevant perspectives. By focusing on overall operations, you can identify areas where you can reduce costs.
Obviously, these things are not mutually exclusive. You could have a goal and line of action. In fact, you can argue that you need both that and the other together - the goal determines where you are going, the direction describes how you plan to get there.
But there is an advantage in focusing on the direction of activity without setting goals.
The direction of activity is addressed to your inner motivation, does not provide an incentive to deceive yourself or take unnecessary risks, does not force you to seize every positive opportunity to achieve something, encourages cooperation and simultaneously reduces internal competition. In doing so, all the time moving forward to the results that you and your organization value most.
In other words, all the same benefits of goals, but without negative side effects.
How to do it? It's very simple: determine what you want to spend your time on, or decide with the boss how best to use your time - and waste your time doing just that. The rest will come by itself. I found that you can do five basic things, but after that, the effectiveness will begin to decline significantly.
The basis is to resist the temptation to determine the result you want to achieve. Leave this question open and allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised. I am not saying that this is easy to do. I never understood how focused I was on goals until I stopped focusing only on them. Without goals, it was hard for me to believe that something would be done at all.
But things were done. And in my experience, you will not only achieve the same results as when setting goals, but you will also enjoy the process much more, avoiding unnecessary stress and temptation.
In other words, if we focus on the tasks, and not on the result, my children will still get together on time, but they will carefully brush their teeth, take advantage of flossing, while leaving order in the bathroom.
The author of the article, Peter Bregman, is a strategic advisor to various CEOs and company leaders, peterbregman.com .
Translated by: pushev.ru .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/163091/
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