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GOAL SETTING THE WAY IT IS AND THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

Todd Dewett, Ph.D.

Among the many things studied by organizational scholars, goals win the gold medal for being useful.  A few thousand studies demonstrate that goals work.  However, in practice, we bungle the job more often than you would imagine. Most of us have heard about SMART goals, right? Then why aren’t you using them! SMART typically stands for specific, measurable, aligned, reachable and time bound. These are pretty self-explanatory, though to this I would add a “P” for participatively developed. If you are dealing with something that affects someone else at work, like setting goals for subordinates, if it is at all possible, seek their input and participation. Generally speaking, it makes the pill easier
to swallow. Now we have SMART (+P) goals. Okay, goals are supposed to be an ideal tool for managing performance by reducing ambiguity and directing focus. They help us understand specifically what to do, how to do it and when, etc. In practice, however, goals often turn into a classic example of what I call the “shoulda skipped it” syndrome.

A behavior or practice is part of the “shoulda skipped it” syndrome if it is pursued with the best of intentions, yet after enacting it, things are actually worse. For example, a well meaning leader does something he believes will be good – for employee relationships, good for the quality of work, etc. He chooses to start an idea program, institutes a new reward or starts a brown bag lunch group. Then life happens. The day’s crises bubble to the surface. Your boss piles some new ridiculous project in your lap that you did not see coming. Endless pressures and constraints pop up. As a result, the activity you were working on was not planned correctly, was not communicated correctly and/or was not executed and followed up on correctly. The idea program produces ideas nobody acts on, the reward system is mocked by employees as a game of favorites completely disconnected from merit and the brown bag lunch never gets past the first ham and cheese sandwich. People watch this happen and, predictably, they become incrementally more cynical and less pumped than they were before the process started.
Best of intensions aside, something that was intended to produce a positive outcome created a negative outcome. We shoulda skipped it!

How do we screw up goal setting to the point that goals contribute to the “shoulda skipped it” syndrome and add to ambiguity instead of reducing it? Several ways. First, we often do not use them when we should. Great outcomes do not simply materialize as a result of fun conversations or wishful thinking. How many times have you been in a meeting, heard a long discussion about the need to correct this or fix that or improve this, only to see the meeting end with a bunch of people looking sheepishly at their shoes or the back wall hoping and praying they will not be the sap charged with actually doing something? Many times no one is tasked with doing what you all just agreed should probably be done. Imagine that.

Then when we do use goals, a slew of ambiguity-creating acts follow. First, we might make the goal too general or vague. This violates the “S” in SMART (+PR). Without specificity, measuring the goal will be difficult to impossible. Professionals set many goals only to later realize they have no confidence in their ability to measure performance – that equals time wasted. Then there is the “A” for aligned. Is the goal congruent with higher level goals and objectives? Here is a bombshell. I believe that leaders and companies actually set too many goals. Most of us need more focus. You will find that great companies do not focus on fifty things at once (in terms of goals, scorecard metrics and the like) – they focus on only a few, and they are specific. The more you focus, the easier it is to judge alignment. Next, we have the “R” for reachable. When we set goals too high, the “R” magically transforms from Reachable to Really Ambiguous. As in, how in the hell am I going to pull that off? Set them too high and you have lost before you began. Your goal is to find the sweet spot, which of course varies for each individual and group. Then there is our friend “T” for time bound. Strangely, I do not have anything quirky to say here. Most people recognize the need for a due date. The only thing we are really prone to screwing up is estimating how long something will take. Great rule:  do your estimation and add
15%.

Earlier, I mentioned that the only thing we need our goals to be is PSMART (+P) if they are to be useful. Let me add one last thing – an “R” for resources. You cannot ask someone to build a house without a
hammer or the right team for the job. And you certainly cannot send them to the job site if they do not have a permit to build. A simple way to look at assigning someone a goal from a resource perspective is to address what monies are needed, what materials are needed (hammers, nails, wood, etc.), the people they will need to work with or receive assistance from (roofers, the sheet rock crew, etc.) and anyone else who needs to know that this person is working on the issue (the developer, inspectors, etc.). The last part is particularly important. Heaven help the leader who “empowers” someone to do something and then does not inform the right people that their employee will be mucking around
in unknown territory. It does not build confidence when a bunch of other leaders start questioning the employee’s authority to do what you have asked him to do.

There you have it. Productive goal setting is attainable as long as you remember the new and improved acronym SMART (+PR)!