• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Goals Gone Wild: The Use and Abuse of Goals

July 7, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 2 Comments

An article in The Economist (7-March-2015 Issue) discussed the side effects of goal setting, more specifically the perils of overprescribing goals. This article echoes my earlier commentary on “The Trouble with Targets and Goals.”

The Economist article mentioned a Harvard Business School paper titled “Goals Gone Wild” by Lisa D. Ordonez, et al. This engaging literature review discusses many of the predictable side effects of goal setting on individual and organizational performance:

  • When goals are too specific, they can narrow people’s focus. People tend to fixate on a goal so intensely that they overlook aspects of a task that are unrelated to the goal. Even if unrelated, these overlooked details may be significant enough to warrant attention.
  • When people are assigned too many goals, this can encourage them to concentrate on tasks that are comparatively easier to achieve.
  • When goals aren’t afforded an appropriate time-horizon, they can distort long-and short-term priorities. Short-term goals can steer people toward myopic behavior that harms their organization in the long term. Conversely, long-term goals can be vague about the immediate course of action and obscure what’s required in the short term.
  • When goals are too challenging, they can discourage risk-taking. As a result, people may use deceitful methods to reach their goals or even misrepresent their performance levels—they may exaggerate their feats, conceal underperformance, or claim unmerited credit. The authors acknowledge the complexity of setting goals “at the most challenging level possible to inspire effort, commitment, and performance—but not so challenging that employees see no point in trying.”
  • When goals are complex, specific, and challenging, they can push people to focus narrowly on performance and neglect opportunities for experiential learning.
  • When goals are comparative, i.e., when goals pit employees against their peers, goals can hinder cooperation between people and even create a culture of unhealthy competition within a team.
  • When goals, by definition, try to increase extrinsic motivation, they can subdue people’s intrinsic motivation. Goals can challenge some people far more or far less than necessary if the intrinsic value of the job itself is already deeply motivating.
  • When goals fail to consider individuals’ skills or prior achievements or when they are not tailored enough, they can be too easy for some and too difficult for others. On the other hand, customizing goals can lead to feeling of discrimination or favoritism.

A Warning Label for Setting Goals

The authors propose a clever cautionary graphic sign and conclude,

For decades, scholars have prescribed goal setting as an all-purpose remedy for employee motivation. Rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal setting as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision.

Idea for Impact: Set objectives that are not only well designed, but also challenging and attainable.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Numbers Games: Summary of The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Muller
  2. The Trouble with Targets and Goals
  3. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  4. Putting the WOW in Customer Service // Book Summary of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness
  5. Don’t Over-Measure and Under-Prioritize

Filed Under: Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Goals, Motivation, Performance Management

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Talha says

    July 7, 2015 at 9:21 PM

    Good one!!!
    But then how should goals be set? SMART?

  2. Nagesh Belludi says

    July 16, 2015 at 12:10 PM

    Talha, yes, SMART goals with a focus on the ‘why’ of a goal

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Popular Now

Anxiety Assertiveness Attitudes Balance Biases Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Perfectionism Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Simple Living Social Skills Stress Suffering Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
Think Wrong

Think Wrong: John Bielenberg

Software firm Future Partner's exclusive problem-solving system that helps see through siloes and bottlenecks in the decision-making process.

Explore

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators

Recently,

  • Acting the Part, Change Your Life: Book Summary of Richard Wiseman’s ‘The As If Principle’
  • Inspirational Quotations #1105
  • Why Doing a Terrible Job First Actually Works
  • The Barnum Effect and the Appeal of Vagueness
  • Inspirational Quotations #1104
  • How to … Address Over-Apologizing
  • Van Gogh Didn’t Just Copy—He Reinvented

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!