The Dark Side of Goal-Setting

Goal setting is trendy, and you’ll find very few voices in business and management circles offering counter ideas or alternatives for the achievement of success. The acronym S.M.A.R.T. makes you want to make it yours—makes you want to be smart. So if you’re smart, you’ll set goals for your life and work. Goal setting is the starting point for all worldly achievement and material gain, powerfully driving behaviour and boosting performance in a competitive world. We don’t doubt its theoretical foundation or its efficacy in achieving personal success in life. It is ingrained in the western industrialised mind, pervasive and unquestioned in business & management literature and the popular press. But it has a dark side, and in its pursuit, we often become blinkered to its negative consequences and lose sight of important aspects of life and work.

There was a period in my life when I, like countless others, believed that setting lofty goals was the route to success. As with a doctor’s prescription, I merely needed to do exactly what I was told to realise my vision for the future. But none of it worked.

Goal Setting: The Gold Standard For Achievement

Mitchell & Daniels, in their chapter on motivation in the?handbook on Psychology Volume 12: Organisational Psychology [1], suggested that goal setting is?“quite easily the single most dominant theory in the field, with over a thousand articles and reviews published on the topic in a little over 30 years.”?They say that goal-setting is based on the idea that human behaviour can be explained by an individual’s consciously chosen goals and intentions. They cite the influential work of Locke and Latham[2]?who conducted a substantial review of goal-setting theory in 2002 and concluded that goal-setting works for attaining performance outcomes. Research is uniform in its findings that difficult and specific goals result in higher levels of performance than vague instruction to, “just do your best”.

For example, research suggests that in order for goal-setting to positively impact performance, structured and deliberate feedback that enables people to gauge progress toward goal attainment is required (Erez, 1977)[3], commitment is necessary for a goal to have motivational effects (Tubbs, 1994)[4], and ability and knowledge are important. In other words, a specific and difficult goal, provision of feedback, and ensuring commitment will not result in increased performance if that person does not have the necessary skills and abilities to perform the task.

Since?Goal-Setting Theory [5]?first reared its head, we have been told persistently that those who have specific, challenging, and non-conflicting goals consistently achieve higher results in life than those without goals. Both research and practice insist that with goal-setting, the higher the goal, the higher the outcome, and the greater our personal growth and contribution to society.

“[with goal-setting] rewards result in high satisfaction as well as high self-efficacy regarding perceived ability to meet future challenges through the setting of even higher goals. — Latham &?Pinder[6]

So it is clear, and we have little to concern ourselves with. Goal-setting seems to be the secret potion for personal and societal achievement, the panacea for the pains of all human desire. If you’re not reaching the lofty heights you think you should, or if results are running counter to how you pictured them, you must be doing it wrong.

The Mother & Father of All Fuck-ups

One day, an old bloke on the building site told me, laughing, that assumption is the mother and father of all fuck-ups. We were in conversation about one aspect of the project that needed clearance. Someone said they assumed security had been told, but of course, they hadn’t. He wasn’t an academic; he was a tradesman — a skilled and experienced man near retirement who had lived enough life to know confirmation bias when he saw it.

Assuming by the sheer weight of momentum behind an idea that the idea is unquestionably accurate is like walking around with blinkers on. It leaves us wide open for something unaccounted for to come in from left field and wipe us out. And when it comes to Edwin Locke’s goal-setting theory and all those who reinforced it, we acquired the mother and father of all assumptions. In his paper on human reasoning, Evans (1989)[7]?suggested that “confirmation bias is perhaps the best known and most widely accepted notion of inferential error to come out of the literature on human reasoning”.

Raymond Nickerson (1998)[8]?said empirical evidence supports the idea that confirmation bias is extensive and strong and appears in many areas of human interaction. The evidence supports the view that once we have taken a position on a given topic, our primary purpose is to defend or justify that position. In other words, regardless of whether our evaluation of the evidence was measured and fair beforehand, it can become highly biased afterwards. And so it seems with goal-setting. It is unquestioned in many areas, most notably in business and management and personal development.

As with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan Logical Fallacy[9], the absence of evidence to the contrary does not prove the infallibility of a theory. It merely means we haven’t found evidence yet, so proceed carefully. But this is not our approach not to goal-setting. The message is strong; if you want to achieve something in life, set a goal, lay out the steps you’ll take towards it, work your bollocks off, and hey presto! It assumes linear cause and effect; it blinkers us to the potential for harm and disruption, and it assumes a simplistic version of reality. In short, goal-setting turns us into blinkered simplistic thinkers, and our means begin to justify ends.

Blind Pursuit of?Goals & Its Damaging Effects

In a 2009?article in the Academy of Management 1 [10], the authors highlight several cases where the blinkered pursuit of corporate goals resulted in unscrupulous behaviour, disaster, and even death. One such case was that of the Ford Pinto.

The Pinto?Case

Consider the case of the Ford Motor Company in the late 1960s. The company was losing market share to cheaper Japanese imports, and the pressure from shareholders was high. Their CEO, Lee Iacocca, introduced the specific, measurable and challenging goal of producing and delivering to the market a vehicle that was “under 2,000 pounds and under $2,000” within two years. A nice catchy title that management and workers could easily digest! Enter the subsequently highly successful Ford Pinto.

Within the limits of the focused and results-driven goal, they had settled on the design and had tooled their assembly lines accordingly. Coupled with a tight deadline, this meant that any required changes to the design or construction resulting from crash tests would be impossible—they were all in. But testing had revealed a critical fuel tank fault. The designers had positioned the tank behind the rear axle in a tight space, and tests showed the tank was prone to rupturing on impact. Executives knew about the fault, and subsequent investigations revealed they remained steadfastly committed to their goal instead of correcting the faulty design. Their decision is as remarkable upon reflection as it was catastrophic. Apparently, a favourite saying of Lee Iacocca was, “safety doesn’t sell.”

“You have to keep in mind, that the price elasticity on these subcompacts is extremely tight. You can price yourself right out of the market by adding $25 to the production cost of the model. And nobody understands that better than Iacocca.” — Engineer at?Ford.

Their calculations revealed that the costs of lawsuits to Ford coming from Pinto collision fires would be less than that of the cost of fixing the design. Lawsuits show that 53 people lost their lives in fires resulting from Pinto ruptured fuel tanks, and countless others were physically and emotionally damaged. However,?an article in Mother Jones magazine ?suggests that by conservative estimates, Pinto crashes caused at least 500 burn deaths, although the figure could be as high as 900.

The remarkable thing about Ford’s decision was that the cost of correcting the fault would have only been a few dollars per unit. However, the narrowness of their specific and measurable goal closed them off to the human cost. Speed to market, fuel efficiency, and cost were the only factors worth considering. Safety, ethical behaviour, and personal and company reputation didn’t come into the decision-making process unless it had a dollar value. This example is extreme but nonetheless illustrates the problem.

The Flaws & Side-effects of Goal-setting

The authors of the?Goals Gone Wild study ?suggest that too often, the systematic flaws and serious side-effects of goal-setting are ignored for the sake of short-term gain. They say that goal setting can degrade our performance, motivates increased risk-taking and unethical behaviour, inhibits learning, reduces intrinsic motivation, and erodes healthy organisational culture. This is quite the opposite of what you might have thought previously. Here’s a bit more on the problems they highlight and some lessons we might learn from them.

The Problem of Narrow?Goals

In research by Simons and Chabris titled, Gorillas in our Midst[11]?examining the omission of important information in decision making,?inattentional blindness ?was highlighted. In short, their research showed that when our attention is too narrowly focused, we omit information that can prove vital. With the Ford Pinto, this played out to disastrous ends.

Goals inform us about what behaviour superiors value and what ones are appropriate in a given situation. Recognising what behaviour is desired can lead us to focus on short-term gains while losing sight of the potential for devastating long-term effects.

The Problem of Too Many?Goals

When we have multiple goals, we are prone to concentrate on only one goal. In the workplace, for example, where goals may be quality or quantity-based, human beings tend to prioritise the number. This was shown in?research by Gilliland and Landis in 1992 . They gave participants both quality-based goals and quantity-based goals under various conditions. The researchers found that when quantity and quality goals were both difficult, participants were willing to sacrifice quality for quantity. In other words, goals that we find easier to achieve tend to get more attention than other goals.

Do this instead:?Multi-tasking is dead. Take one job at a time and give it your best effort. Take your time and focus on quality. That’s what you’ll be remembered for.

Setting An Inappropriate Time?Horizon

Mistakes are more likely to be made in high-pressure situations. Even where we set goals to the appropriate aspect — quantity or quality — our expectation for completion may be inappropriate. Studies from the business world show us that goals emphasising immediate performance, such as this month’s sales targets, for example, prompt short-term based sales team behaviour that can harm the organisation in the long run. Cheng, Subramanyam, and Zhang showed?in their research [12]?that companies frequently issuing quarterly earnings tended to meet or beat expectations. However, they also had a tendency to invest less in research and development and were at the expense of long-term growth.

Do This Instead:?As mentioned, slow down and take a longer view. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Often we find ourselves setting goals just because we think we’ll look good in achieving them, and we set an over-optimistic time frame. So instead, take your time, accept that you’ll encounter obstacles and be ok with that.

How Goal-setting Increases Risk-taking

Goal setting distorts our preference and appetite for risk. Evidence shows that when we are motivated by specific, challenging goals we tend towards riskier strategies and gamble on outcomes. It’s not so with less challenging or vague goals.

A high-profile example is the Mount Everest disaster on 10th May 1996, which resulted in eight climbers, including two guides, losing their lives. Four expeditions attempted to summit on the same day, but the climbers were trapped when a powerful storm hit the mountain. Even experienced climbers Hall and Fischer, both Everest veterans, struggled to cover short distances down the peak. Despite the worsening conditions, Hall and Fischer stayed with their clients, but eventually, oxygen supplies ran out, and rescue teams couldn’t reach them on time.

Mountaineer Jon Krakauer, who attempted to climb the peak that year, wrote a best-selling book about the incident,?Into Thin Air. In his book,?Krakauer suggested that the combination of inexperience on the part of climbers and the greed of those who lead them was responsible for the tragedy. Other reports of the disaster suggest that the decisions of two team leaders were an example of a “destructive goal pursuit.” Rob Hall and Scott Fischer were so committed to their goal to reach the summit that they were prepared to play roulette with their own lives and that of six of their clients.

Do This Instead:?Set a plan with boundaries on how much you're prepared to spend in terms of money and effort. Make it flexible, and be prepared to walk away with nothing. It’s a maximum acceptable loss scenario. Avoid falling foul of sunk cost effect[13].

Goal-setting Increases Unethical Behaviour

There’s no doubt about it, the Ford Pinto case highlighted in very clear terms that rigid goals leave no room for correcting our course. As such, all kinds of unethical behaviour creep in. As the ends justify the means, we become contemporary?Niccolo Machiavellis .

Consider the 1990s case of US company Sears, whose executives set sales targets for its car mechanics of $147 per hour. The move increased the bottom line; however, this specific, challenging goal encouraged workers to overcharge and carry out unnecessary repairs to customers’ vehicles. The problem extended company-wide, and Edward Brennan, Sears chairperson, was forced to acknowledge that the goal his executives had set for workers had motivated them to deceive their customers.

Do This Instead:?Don’t be greedy. Setting earnings goals solely numbers-based with little consideration for the human-in-the-transaction aspect might work short-term, but they will kill your reputation in the long run.

Goal-setting Creates A Culture of Competition

This negative aspect of goal-setting is linked to the previous one. As with the Sears case of over-charging, the drive for profit overshadowed the importance of collective effort, comradeship, and empathy. Sears staff might have had concern for the human being at the end of the transaction, but the goal laid down by bosses took precedence. We don’t know how the instruction was delivered, but it seems that charging a high rate may have been linked to job security. It made the individual’s survival paramount over the quality of service and pitted workers against one another rather than providing quality of service.

Do This Instead:?Where a survival of the fittest mentality prevails in the workplace, the sacrifice of even those closest to us can be justified. Instead of people working together, they work against one another. Narrowly focused goals bring about detrimental outcomes. Instead, try to nurture a culture of collaboration rather than competition. Link earnings to collective effort rather than the individual.

A final?note

I’ve had a problem with goal-setting forever, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Goal-setting felt shallow and unsubstantial to me, and I fell flat every time I attempted to execute the process. It didn’t work for me, so I quit trying. Instead, I decided to throw myself into things I enjoyed and see what happens rather than planning my life to the end degree. In essence, I was detoxing myself from shallow material-based striving I had come to know.

Daily work needs to be more than a mere transaction. It needs to have inherent value rather than be a means towards an end. And that’s the problem with the results-oriented workplace, the dominant narrative around value and expertise, and our sense of personal worth. It’s far too materialistic and quantity driven. Work has become a process of obtaining a bottom line and lacks substance, meaning and purpose for many people.

I believe that without inherent personal value, our work becomes soulless and sterile. And whether you work as a solo operator or are the head of a larger ongoing concern, the work itself needs to be the reason we get up in the morning instead of some goal-oriented measurable outcome. Otherwise, we might as well be soulless automatons.

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References

1. Mitchell, T. R., & Daniels, D. (2003). Motivation. In W. C. Borman, D. R. Ilgen, & R. J. Klimoski (Eds.),?Handbook of psychology: Industrial and organizational psychology,?Vol. 12, pp. 225–254). John Wiley & Sons Inc.
2. Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990).?A theory of goal setting & task performance. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
3. Erez, M. (1977). Feedback: A necessary condition for the goal-setting-performance relationship.?Journal of Applied psychology,?62(5), 624.
4. Tubbs, M. (1994). Commitment and the role of ability in motivation: Comment on Wright, O'Leary-Kelly, Cortina, Klein, and Hollenbeck (1994).
5. Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives.?Organizational behaviour and human performance,?3(2), 157-189.
6. Latham, G. P., & Pinder, C. C. (2005). Work motivation theory and research at the dawn of the twenty-first century.?Annual review of psychology,?56(1), 485-516.
7. Evans, J. St. B. T. (1989). Bias in human reasoning: Causes and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
8. Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises.?Review of general psychology,?2(2), 175-220.
9. Taleb, N. N. (2007).?The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable ?(Vol. 2). Random House.
10. Ordó?ez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009).?Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting .?Academy of Management Perspectives,?23(1), 6-16
11. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.?Perception,?28(9), 1059-1074.
12. Cheng, M., Subramanyam, K. R., & Zhang, Y. (2005). Earnings guidance and managerial myopia.?Available at SSRN 851545.
13. Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985).?The psychology of sunk cost .?Organizational behavior and human decision processes,?35(1), 124-140.