The first part of this article (see below) emphasized several problems with how organizations set goals. Additional potential problems with setting personal goals, career goals and business goals include the following.
We Had to Destroy the Village
In an effort to meet the current period's goals, the long-term viability of the organization is put at risk. Hamilton gives these examples of negative actions people take to meet unrealistic goals. "They:
- Focus development efforts on the next sale.
- Offer deep discounts on products to move future sales into the current period.
- Push expenses into the future, rather than accounting for them when incurred.
- Use expensive promotions that actually generate less in sales than they cost.
- Fail to carefully develop long term strategic efforts, when 'strategic' means the payoff is not within the next goal time period."
A former IBM manager illustrates this point with this story. "One ridiculous process was the way IBM used to set sales quotas. In the later years there, when the company was showing very slow growth, you could count on a 25-30 percent increase in quota. It didn't matter that most IT (Information Technology) budgets were stagnant, so the quota process was demoralizing in a big way. The way to make dollars there, was to find a job where they weren't sure how to set the quota - some kind of new area - and clean up and move on. Some people specialized in this sort of behavior."
Goal Setting Becomes About the Plan, Not the Execution
Hamilton says a potential serious downside occurs when "the ratio of energy, time and creativity that goes into creating the goal outstrips (and comes out of the hide) of actually managing the product."
In one small manufacturing company, a management group decided to use gantt charts to track goal accomplishment. After starting with a huge investment of time in making the charts for all of their goals, the management group soon abandoned the charting. When questioned later, they affirmed that the charting was taking too much of the time they needed to accomplish the goals. But, they had awesome charts while they were keeping them up.
Another example of this is when an organization spends time and energy to develop a comprehensive business plan, and then the plan sits in a drawer. While the act of making the plan was important, the follow-up is the critical piece. Regular review and follow-up make a plan live - and serve.
Too Many Goals Make Nothing a Priority
In my work with small and mid-sized manufacturing companies, I often find that people wear so many hats, they are overwhelmed with the sheer number of goals they are expected to meet. I once facilitated a strategic planning session during which people analyzed and established priorities. They moved non-priority items to a “B” list and believed they had successfully created an “A” list of the most important, achievable goals.
You can imagine my consternation when, at the end of the session, the senior manager looked at the list of goals on the “B” list and said, “These are all givens. We have to accomplish these anyway.”
People with too many goals experience these issues.
- They never feel as if they accomplish a complete task.
- It is difficult to tie their goal accomplishment to a reward and recognition system that recognizes their accomplishments.
- They don't know what is most important to accomplish next.
- They fall prey to the "check it off the list" syndrome in which they check tasks off their list before the actions have been integrated by the organization.
Goal setting is a positive, powerful, business practice when it tells your staff where you are going. Effective goal setting also demonstrates what success will look like during the journey and upon arrival. When practiced poorly, however, goal setting can negatively impact your organization in all the ways described, and more.
