9 ms·

Consider Not Setting Goals in 2013

59 points by apress 14y ago

joshbert 14y ago
I'm not. I'm setting and doing goals all year long, this year won't be any different.
stephengillie 14y ago
tl;dr: Focus on journeys, not destinations.
Spooky23 14y ago
Personally, where I have control, I treat goals as objectives or things to strive for vs. tasks or some sort of SLA. Why? If you make goals checkboxes, you end up doing whatever is necessary to meet the minimum criteria for "done". The article used a football quarterback being given a financially backed goal of "Don't throw interceptions; if you do, you will be penalized $X". The lesson to be learned there isn't "Goals are bad". The lesson is "Don't establish dumb goals". I worked in a sales organization when I was in college that determined that selling a specific high margin add-on product was critical to the organizations success. They gave sales management the ability to cut margin on the base product to increase sales of the add-on product. My incentive was based on selling the add-on, and my boss's bonus was tied to the ratio of base-product/high-margin product. His boss was paid based on ranking of total add-on product sales vs. his peers. Guess what happened? We sold the base product at a loss, hit our KPIs, and made a bunch of money. The company did not.
- lutorm 14y ago
  The lesson is "Don't establish dumb goals". I thought the point was that you can't anticipate the side effects setting a goal will have. People are likely more creative in reaching it in ways you didn't imagine.
  - blasstula 14y ago
    What I gathered from the article is that conceptual goals are less prone to deviation from your intentions than quantifiable ones.
dsr_ 14y ago
The point bears repeating: when you set an incentive tied to a measurable target, you will get behavior that focuses on that target, even if everything else has to suffer. Give your CEO a bonus based on revenue, and profit will suffer. Base it on profit, and quality will suffer. If you tell your customer service people to bring down the average length of calls, they will do so by hanging up on people. Tell them they have a bonus based on post-call satisfaction surveys, and on-hold times will go up. Those are all well-intentioned goals. If you set a really bizarre goal, things can go really wrong. And if you don't set goals at all, nobody knows what you think needs improvement. Management is hard.
- nostromo 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- ok_craig 14y ago
  These seem like good analogies for poorly thought out economic decisions made by governments. E.g. cars of a certain class will have a higher carbon tax, so car companies respond by popularizing cars of a different (bigger) class. (The SUV boom.)
swombat 14y ago
Or perhaps, draw the right conclusion from the data: setting bad goals is really bad. Don't set bad goals.
paulsutter 14y ago
I like the author's suggestion of setting a focus rather than a specific goal. For example, weekly revenue growth rate (from pg's growth essay). A company wide focus on growth rate can crystallize alignment on the most important dimension. But setting a specific pass/fail goal ("growth will be 5% a week") could reduce intrinsic motivation, cause weird short term behaviors, and even cap the upside. Benchmarks are very useful (5-7% is great, 1% means you're still lost, 10% is a blockbuster), but there's no need to set a specific number. Just get everyone rowing in the same direction.
hnriot 14y ago
This reminds me of a Stephen Fry interview commenting on the same point. http://youtu.be/4byn2CIwec0 http://youtu.be/4byn2CIwec0
MattRogish 14y ago
The really fun thing about this is that folks have realized this and, instead of focusing on intrinsic motivation, have just added more metrics to try and balance things out. Enter the "balanced scorecard" with 30 different metrics that the manager or employees have little/no direct control over. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237399000341 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237399... Yes, the Balanced Scorecard has some use but I think it's still missing the point.
- MDS100 14y ago
  So how do you create/increase intrinsic motivation? Giving them more freedom + choosing their own goals (or at least let them think the goals are theirs)?
tchock23 14y ago
Some of these examples have less to do with the fact that a goal was set, and more to do with the fact that there was a financial incentive tied to it. Financial incentives can have the side effect of reducing intrinsic motivation (see Daniel Pink's book "Drive" for research and examples).
_grace_ 14y ago
Set goals! Set goals! For the love of god, set goals! You'll make my startup fail: http://chizzl.com/ http://chizzl.com/
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Quickly! Pivot into setting focuses! You still have a window!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
apeace 14y ago
I like to keep a light journal of tasks I accomplish every day. I think of this as goals in reverse. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, similar to achieving a goal, but at the same time allows me to focus on the present, as the author suggests. Looking back on the journal also allows me to put the present and the future in a well-defined perspective, which helps me give the time estimates that business types inevitably require.

59 points by apress 14y ago

joshbert 14y ago

I'm not. I'm setting and doing goals all year long, this year won't be any different.

stephengillie 14y ago

tl;dr: Focus on journeys, not destinations.

Spooky23 14y ago

Personally, where I have control, I treat goals as objectives or things to strive for vs. tasks or some sort of SLA. Why? If you make goals checkboxes, you end up doing whatever is necessary to meet the minimum criteria for "done". The article used a football quarterback being given a financially backed goal of "Don't throw interceptions; if you do, you will be penalized $X". The lesson to be learned there isn't "Goals are bad". The lesson is "Don't establish dumb goals". I worked in a sales organization when I was in college that determined that selling a specific high margin add-on product was critical to the organizations success. They gave sales management the ability to cut margin on the base product to increase sales of the add-on product. My incentive was based on selling the add-on, and my boss's bonus was tied to the ratio of base-product/high-margin product. His boss was paid based on ranking of total add-on product sales vs. his peers. Guess what happened? We sold the base product at a loss, hit our KPIs, and made a bunch of money. The company did not.

lutorm 14y ago
The lesson is "Don't establish dumb goals". I thought the point was that you can't anticipate the side effects setting a goal will have. People are likely more creative in reaching it in ways you didn't imagine.
- blasstula 14y ago
  What I gathered from the article is that conceptual goals are less prone to deviation from your intentions than quantifiable ones.

dsr_ 14y ago

The point bears repeating: when you set an incentive tied to a measurable target, you will get behavior that focuses on that target, even if everything else has to suffer. Give your CEO a bonus based on revenue, and profit will suffer. Base it on profit, and quality will suffer. If you tell your customer service people to bring down the average length of calls, they will do so by hanging up on people. Tell them they have a bonus based on post-call satisfaction surveys, and on-hold times will go up. Those are all well-intentioned goals. If you set a really bizarre goal, things can go really wrong. And if you don't set goals at all, nobody knows what you think needs improvement. Management is hard.

nostromo 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
ok_craig 14y ago
These seem like good analogies for poorly thought out economic decisions made by governments. E.g. cars of a certain class will have a higher carbon tax, so car companies respond by popularizing cars of a different (bigger) class. (The SUV boom.)

swombat 14y ago

Or perhaps, draw the right conclusion from the data: setting bad goals is really bad. Don't set bad goals.

paulsutter 14y ago

I like the author's suggestion of setting a focus rather than a specific goal. For example, weekly revenue growth rate (from pg's growth essay). A company wide focus on growth rate can crystallize alignment on the most important dimension. But setting a specific pass/fail goal ("growth will be 5% a week") could reduce intrinsic motivation, cause weird short term behaviors, and even cap the upside. Benchmarks are very useful (5-7% is great, 1% means you're still lost, 10% is a blockbuster), but there's no need to set a specific number. Just get everyone rowing in the same direction.

hnriot 14y ago

This reminds me of a Stephen Fry interview commenting on the same point. http://youtu.be/4byn2CIwec0 http://youtu.be/4byn2CIwec0

MattRogish 14y ago

The really fun thing about this is that folks have realized this and, instead of focusing on intrinsic motivation, have just added more metrics to try and balance things out. Enter the "balanced scorecard" with 30 different metrics that the manager or employees have little/no direct control over. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237399000341 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237399... Yes, the Balanced Scorecard has some use but I think it's still missing the point.

MDS100 14y ago
So how do you create/increase intrinsic motivation? Giving them more freedom + choosing their own goals (or at least let them think the goals are theirs)?

tchock23 14y ago

Some of these examples have less to do with the fact that a goal was set, and more to do with the fact that there was a financial incentive tied to it. Financial incentives can have the side effect of reducing intrinsic motivation (see Daniel Pink's book "Drive" for research and examples).

_grace_ 14y ago

Set goals! Set goals! For the love of god, set goals! You'll make my startup fail: http://chizzl.com/ http://chizzl.com/

stephengillie 14y ago
Quickly! Pivot into setting focuses! You still have a window!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

apeace 14y ago

I like to keep a light journal of tasks I accomplish every day. I think of this as goals in reverse. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, similar to achieving a goal, but at the same time allows me to focus on the present, as the author suggests. Looking back on the journal also allows me to put the present and the future in a well-defined perspective, which helps me give the time estimates that business types inevitably require.