You’ve probably heard this saying before: “Set goals if you want to accomplish anything substantial”. That advice is deeply embedded in leadership practices and is consistently echoed by personal coaches, self-help gurus, managers and executives.
Our society is infatuated with goal setting, particularly “stretch” goals or “audacious goals.” In our culture, we tie goals to accomplishment. As a society, we don’t consider an individual or organization successful unless they’ve achieved major goals. And leaders typically motivate their subordinates to achieve these goals by emphasizing “bigger and better,” through hard work, and increased productivity. And the way to measure that success is to measure goal attainment.
While both academic research and popular self-help sources advocate for goal-setting, there's compelling evidence suggesting that despite genuine intentions and efforts, many people and organizations fall short of achieving their goals. Often, in such instances, the person setting the goal receives all the blame, but the real problem might lie in the concept of goal-setting itself.
The question we should ask is: Is the metric of success—goal attainment—truly effective? Is setting goals really always a positive thing? A collaborative study by researchers from four prominent business schools suggests that setting goals can sometimes do more harm than good, sometimes even causing significant damage to organizations and individuals – a clear indication that setting goals does not always serve their purpose.
These researchers stated, "The beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated, and the systematic harm it can cause is largely ignored." Some adverse outcomes of goal-setting programs include increased unethical behavior, an over-focus on one business area at the expense of others, distorted risk preferences, a deterioration of organizational culture, and decreased intrinsic motivation.
Furthermore, it showed that people who failed to achieve high and specific goals showed a tank in their self-esteem, and motivation compared to participants who met their goal. This shows that goal failing can have detrimental effects on individuals and organizations’ long term outcomes. Hence, it's crucial for organizations to weigh these potential negative effects when implementing goal-setting initiatives.
The truth is, while setting high and specific goals is a well-established management tool to bolster performance and motivation, it's becoming clear that there are potential pitfalls to consider. One of the most significant risks associated with goal-setting is the potential for failure and its detrimental effects.
The contradiction of ambitious goal setting
While goal setting can be beneficial, there's a significant downside to setting high and specific goals: the risk of goal-failure and its subsequent negative consequences. Failing to meet a challenging and precise goal can have profound effects on an individual’s emotional state, self-esteem, and motivation. This diminished state of self-related factors can yield serious consequences both personally and organizationally, manifesting as decreased organizational citizenship behavior, or even increased absenteeism. Moreover, a decline in motivation can lead to a lack of engagement in challenging tasks or a preference for less demanding tasks.
Attempting to achieve High and specific goals, to boost performance, can paradoxically trigger processes that undermine one's self-worth when unachieved. Research reveals that when individuals fail to meet stretch goals, their performance declines. In fact, one study showed that only 10% of employees actually met their stretch goals. This proves that setting goals only motivate when they have been reinforced by past positive rewards and feedback. When goals are not met, fair of failure emerges in the mind of the individual, which acts as a deterrent, pushing individuals back to familiar and comforting behaviors and thought patterns.
If Setting Goals is a Must
If you must set goals, it is better to focus on small wins in combination with process improvement. This will help you to not internalize failures and drive organizations forward without the negative consequences of stretch goals. However, utilizing this approach means you are abandoning the hasty “ready, fire, aim” problem-solving method.
With this approach, the heavy lifting must be done upfront, with a profound understanding of the goal that you are trying to achieve. Furthermore, this method demands a change in focus where boosting outcomes metrics is no longer the sole demand, but attention is also placed on refining the processes that lead to those outcomes.
If you must set goals, do the following first:
Specificity: Are the goals too narrow? Narrow goals can blind people to important aspects of a problem. Ensure that the goals are holistic, comprehensive, capturing all important aspects for firm success.
Goals challenge level: Make sure to equip employees with the necessary skills and training, and steer clear of overly punitive measures for unachieved goals as this will surely deter motivation or self-belief if the goals aren’t met. Make sure that if goals are not met, individual employee evaluation should not cause self-efficacy
Who’s setting the goals? Involving individuals in goal-setting can boost commitment, though there's a risk to being too lenient when setting goals, as people may get tempted to set goals that are extremely easy to reach.
Check the Timeframe: Be sure that short-term efforts to reach a goal do not harm investment in long-term outcomes. If you have to forego some short-term goals to benefit long term ones, please do so.
Risk Association: Goals can alter risk taking behaviors among employees, which can be detrimental if the goals aren’t reached. Hence it is important to clearly define what constitutes an acceptable risk.
Ethical Implications: Depending on the goal, it might induce the willingness to act out unethical practices to the fact that you might feel prompted to justify questionable actions. If you are trying to achieve these types of goals at work, going too far might even taint the organizational culture. It is best to safeguard yourself from doing such actions.