Why goal setting doesn’t (always) work and isn’t necessary

Many gurus see goal setting as a kind of holy grail. For example, Brian Tracy, in the book ‘Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible’ you the following:

Living without clear goals is like driving in a thick fog. Clear goals enable you to step on the accelerator of your own life, and race ahead rapidly .

In my opinion, Tracy, and many gurus with him,overlook three misconceptions. Time for a critical analysis.

Misconception 1. Goal setting is harmless

Anyone who wants to climb Mount Everest will at some point arrive at Camp Four. From there, you still have to pass Hillary Step, a wall of rocks more than 200 meters from the summit. Experienced climbers know that you should leave Camp Four around midnight so that you have a chance of passing Hillary Step and being at the summit in the afternoon.

Those who have not passed Hillary Step by 2pm should turn around: the risk of accidents is too high then because of the falling darkness and sudden snowstorms. Still, many climbers appear to continue climbing after 14h. They are so close to the summit that they no longer want to turn around. They have their goal in mind and irrationally take great risks. Many climbers have died unnecessarily this way.

You are going to take unnecessary risks

This is, literally, the great danger of goal setting: the stronger you envision your goal, the more likely you are to take unnecessary risks to reach your goal.

This behavior is not exclusive to mountain climbers: we saw it prior to the financial crisis among bankers who took far too many risks in order to maximize their profits. But think also of other examples of entrepreneurs that all took far too great risks. The social damage of goal-oriented managers who do not want to budge is enormous.

Misconception 2: The more concrete, the better

An acquaintance of mine is a teacher at an University in the Netherlands. He wants to teach as well as possible and keep dropout rates as low as possible. However, this was not enough for his manager: a concrete goal had to be set: “I want the dropout rate to decrease by 5% every year. As a result, the manager saddled his employee with a problem. There had to be a student tracking system with all kinds of reports and measurements.

Guess who got to create that student tracking system? And who, as a result, had less time to have conversations with students who were in danger of dropping out? Right! my friend,the teacher. It is a misunderstanding to think that concrete targets are always a solution. Sometimes with concrete targets we actually create a problem.

Misconception 3: A goal provides focus and focus ensures success

“I’m just going to get started” is a poor goal according to many gurus. Yet it is exactly that goal that one student had when he started the site Facemash in 2003, a game where participants could compare photos of Harvard students.

Nowhere was the goal to generate “more than a billion users worldwide. Yet that is exactly what happened with the game’s successor. That successor is called Facebook, the student: Mark Zuckerberg.

Most successes occur by chance …

Gurus who preach that it is essential to set goals forget that there are many successes that came about by accident. For example, one Dr. John Styth Pemberton once sat messing around with all kinds of plant extracts in the kitchenette behind his drugstore.

He wanted to make a drink against dizziness and general malaise. One of his attempts contained syrup mixed with carbonated water. Right: Coca-Cola.

Even at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer they know about it. A few years ago they were developing a drug against angina pectoris. In everyday language: chest pain. In the test phase, test subjects were administered the drug.

After some time, many of those test subjects reported pleasurable side effects to their treating physicians. It then works very well to adjust your focus briefly to erectile dysfunction. That’s how manufacturer Pfizer made a huge profit with Viagra. The same story applies to the accidental invention of penicillin, the microwave oven, post-it memos and corn flakes.

So just stop setting goals altogether?

Gurus find these critical comments about goals difficult. When I talk to them about this, they usually shoot into a kind of reflex: “Oh, so you’re saying you should just kind of live on it?

That’s not what I have in mind: I understand that sometimes it can work well to have a goal: it’s wonderful if someone chooses to spend more time with their children, live healthier, or improve the world by making people smile more.

However, there is something wrong with the belief that success comes closer by setting goals on an ongoing basis. You save a lot of time by spending less time setting goals and just getting down to business. Especially in large organizations, that saves a lot of endless deliberation.

By the way, I understand very well that this message is difficult to sell within your organization. But if you repackage it a little differently, you might get a long way. That’s why I would advise you to package the message in this column as “a synchronistic strategy in which we want to be more open to opportunities and talk less by being more in action mode”. You’ll probably get your supervisor on board with that. In addition, it takes the focus off the downside of goal setting a bit more.

Guest author: This article previously appeared on Dutch website: Mananagementsite.