If you are like most people you spent much of December 2020 thinking about your goals for 2021. Then the ball drops in New York City, 2021 arrives, and you realize you haven’t been doing much but thinking.
And so, during this early time in January of 2021, many of you are still considering your goals. It is time to stop considering and start developing a system for making them a reality.
Turns out, in reality, not many people have actual goals. Those who do have goals seldom write them down. Those who write them down rarely put a system in place to make them happen.
Here is the research
The idea behind basic goal setting theory is that specific difficult goals lead to higher performance than when people are left to just do their best. According to Heslin, Carlson, and Vanderwale (2009) there are literally hundreds of studies that show the performance benefit of challenging goals. So, there is not much to debate around the purpose of goals and the link to performance.
That is actually where some of the difficulty around goal setting begins.
There is a frequently quoted Harvard Study from 1976 that claims that the 14% of people who have goals are 10 times more successful than those without goals. Turns out, there is a Yale study that quotes very similar numbers from 1953. Yale could never verify the existence of the research and the Harvard data relates to graduates from the business school who had life goals. While the data is motivational, it also seems to not be very credible. So the next time you hear that 86% of people don’t have goals, take the numbers with a big grain of salt.
Now, back to some of the research on goal setting.
In a 2009 study published in the journal Industrial Management and Data Systems, Bobby Medlin and Kenneth Green found that in a data set of 426 full and part-time employees, those who set goals are more positively engaged in the work they do than those without goals. This is nothing new, really. Latham and Locke found similar results around goals and performance published in 1979 in Organizational Dynamics. And at the time, this was nothing new either, as Fredrick Taylor noticed this same thing in the early 1900’s.
This data aligns with what Heslin, Carlson, and Vanderwale (2009) propose that positive goal setting depends critically on issues pertaining to goal commitment, task complexity, goal framing, team goals, and feedback. All are critical elements to goal attainment.
We have known some really important things about goals for over 120 years. And you might argue a lot longer, as ancient Proverbs from thousands of years ago lament, “Plans fail for the lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed (Proverbs 15:22). So, the idea of planning and goal setting and engaging counsel has been around arguably since the beginning of time.
It should be noted that while most managers and leaders see goal setting as a positive panacea, there is research to the contrary. Goal setting does have some detractors. In a working paper from Harvard Business School, Ordonez, Schweitzer, Galinsky, and Bazerman write about the systemic side-effects of over-prescribing goal setting (I love the medical metaphor!).
The claim is that over-emphasis on goal setting can cause organizational confusion, misalignment, a rise in unethical behavior, and a deterioration of organizational culture. Examples are numerous. From Enron, the Ford Pinto, Sears automotive repair scandal, to more recent examples of Wells-Fargo sales scandal of selling 8 products to every customer.
My intention is not to change your mind or convince you of the right perspective on goal setting, rather, to challenge you to expand your thoughts around goal setting by doing two things:
Link your goals to actual problems.
Focus on creating a system to make your goal a reality.
Link Your Goals to Actual Problems
This idea first came to me after reading Bob Biehl’s book “Stop Setting Goals if You Would Rather Solve Problems.” I found that with goal setting I put a lot of effort into setting a specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, timely goal, only to have the environment shift on me to where one of the 5 SMART goal components was no longer applicable.
Instead, what has helped me more is to create a vision and start solving problems to make my vision a reality.
For example, it is pretty easy and pretty common for people this time of year to write SMART goals around things like exercising more or to losing that COVID 15 pounds so many of us have put on. It is easy to write a SMART goal around this, yet so easy also to let the goal go by the wayside.
The first reason is that the goal sounds good, but when it comes time to exercise the person doesn’t want to get off the coach, or the bag of chips is oh so good. The goal is fine, the problem is that the bag of chips is still in the house. If the vision is to exercise and lose weight, what do you have to do to solve the problem?
Focus On Creating A System
The second place to expand our thoughts comes from a couple of books I read recently, both around the idea of habits. The first is by James Clear called Atomic Habits and the second by Wendy Wood called Good Habits, Bad Habits.
Both authors write about the importance of developing systems in order to achieve your desires. It is a systems approach that will help you obtain your goal.
So, if you have a vision, what is the system you need to put into place to make the vision a reality?
Diet and exercise companies take full advantage of this research. Have you seen a commercial for Nutrisystem lately? What are they offering? A system: eat their food, drink their shakes, pay their bill, and you lose the weight. The idea is even in the name of the company NutriSYSTEM.
Will it work? Sure!
Will you keep the vision or goal you had if you change your habits and get used to eating smaller portions? If not, then when you stop the system you put on the weight.
Perspective
Call them whatever you want. Goals, vision, it really doesn’t matter. Stay focused on the problem and put a system in place to develop a new habit.
Goals are great, but they are not enough to change your behavior by themselves.