Outcome-Based Goal Setting, Start with An End

Modern management begins the new year with a grand kick off to focus on performance.  Business as usual of perfecting goal setting exercise may not cut it, anymore. 

Goal setting feels like an uphill battle during the pandemic.  Suddenly, you are racing after murky performance goals. The usual uneasiness of nailing a goal can magnify into discomfort with risks of anxiety. 

The popular cliché of change as the only constant pales in comparison to the disruptive lockdown roller-coaster with a series of infection waves.  

Dynamic nature of work performance in uncertain times mismatches the predictable goal setting toolkit of Management by Objectives, SMART Model, Balance Scorecard, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), GROW model and so on.  

Recent unpredictable business and work conditions paves the way to rediscover the foundation for dynamic outcome-based goal setting.  

Goal Setting Setback 

 A word on our default autopilot goal setting. It seems that for goals to be relevant, you must focus on outcomes first. The matter is, we usually talk about goals. However good it does, we seldom speak about outcomes, and thus, we miss the alignment between organization goals and business outcomes.   

Achieving your goals equal to completing tasks according to your plan. When goals centered around tasks with strict adherence to the Smart model, your scope of goals narrow to milestones in a linear sequential order. Simply over a period of time, you can recycle goals as they shrink further year upon year of copying and pasting each task. 

The nature of general goal setting automates a recipe of steps:  Doing A systematically will lead to Result B. Who is not familiar with goal setting as a series of checkboxes? Management is a list of housekeeping chores. Ideally, going towards a goal is a straight, linear, and sequential process. 

Task-orientation upholds the discipline of an assigned procedural approach. It is mechanical. Like the staff of a global higher education institution meeting with supervisors like clock-work on a weekly task report.  Up to a point that the call of digital transformation can no longer disguise the culture entrenched in task-oriented goals. Miniscule task level meetings filled up the team and individual calendars. 

In the place of tracking tasks attached to goals in hard copies, staff members happily cross off electronic calendars strung together by technological platforms like Asana and Trello. Managers assigned top-down tasks with a few delightful clicks on electronic devices.  

Up to a time, the whole organization struggled to achieve innovation goals as pre-set from the top management, while, the middle and ground level staff members were busy chasing after tasks tied to operational deadlines.  

Masking the “busyness” of work, you can easily get trapped by activities in tasks. We ride an endless cycle of working harder to get our jobs done. Suddenly, we discovered the goals led to nowhere around the outcomes we have set out to achieve.  

Eventually, you risk losing sight of the bigger picture for breakthrough accomplishments. 

What Could Be Better? 

Goal setting should cater for the chunks of trees while eyeing the helicopter view of the forest. Usual goal setting techniques like the SMART model breaks the goals into small chunks of task.  When you are performing to move ahead, the nuts and bolts of goal setting rest in broader terms of outcomes in achievement. 

In archery, the bullseye board appears like a big circle from a distance. The archer aims for the red dot in the middle. This is the same for your goal setting experience. Begin with a broad outcome attached to the goals. Then, work backwards to determine the tasks or activities for each goal in relation to the outcomes. 

With smaller tasks set as goals, failure to achieve goals becomes deviation that needs a review of operating procedures, workflows, and processes. Before you realize, goal setting morphs into a fault-finding mission in endless whodunnit cycles. 

This belief reminds of a quote from Albert Einstein “Something deeply hidden had to be behind things” when understanding the principles underlying outcome-based goal setting.  Let's discuss some practical strategies for doing just that.   

Defining Outcome-based Goal Setting 

Conventional management wisdom promotes the actual outcomes that are consistent with the goals. Outcomes are about you controlling the intended results over a logical sequence set towards the set goals. Progress towards a goal is as important as planning and controlling activities (Gibson, 2011).    

Chances are, if your goal disconnects with an important outcome, it would not get done. This matter leans towards the definitions of outcome and goal setting.  

The Oxford Languages website defines outcome as the “way a thing turns out; a consequence’.  Experts define goal setting in a broad scope of acting to select a target or objective you wish to achieve. To add, Piggot-Irvine (2015) wrote that “Goal setting involves the conscious process of establishing levels of performance in order to obtain desirable outcomes”.   

Doing the outcome-based goal setting puts the outcomes as the hope to achieve when you accomplish the goal. Take for example the organization’s outcome to “increase profit by 70 percent over last three months”. Again, for the same example, the organization goal might be to “increase profits”.  

Drawing from the two definitions above, we can refine outcome-based goal setting within performance dimension of what you want to achieve and work out the various efforts to actually do it.  

Some may ask, what would outcome-based goal setting look like?   

High-Level Outcome-based Goal Setting 

With the outcome-based goal setting mechanism above, common concerns are about vague outcomes. To that, here is how we describe the common parameters to manage outcome-based goal setting pressure.  

Owning Outcomes    

The anchor to your robust goal setting is ultimately in the accountability for the outcomes. 

Organizational culture can institutionalize the mechanics of outcome-based goal setting.  Adding to that, the effect of goal setting on workplace performance outcomes requires your ownership to commit and persistent efforts to reach the end.     

Outcomes Impact 

 Whilst an outcome is the destination, your focus is on understanding the goal’s impact. The key is to find a place to start, which promises a tangible impact.  Ask about how you can accomplish the results to bring a difference to personal, departmental, or organizational objectives. Check the exact way to measure your goal at the starting point. To fully understand the impact you want to have, you should have control over the outcome goals.  

 Examples of outcome-based goals within a scope of impact on performance:   

• Increase the sales of premium women’s shoes by RM600k with an integrated sales campaign between March and October 2021. 
• Reduce the unit cost of our detergent range by 10% through regional sourcing to share bulk-buying with industry players. 
• Recruit 2k new subscriber through the Mid-Year Blockbuster Campaign for company brands. 

Extending the above points, outcomes are the ultimate destination of goals set within the performance boundaries. Outcomes glue the goal setting exercise with the effort of performance domain. To be more precise, the outcome-based goal setting framework points to the essential performance concept of outcomes.  Let’s discuss below: 

Outcome Defines Goal   

Most fitting is Covey’s habit of “Begin with the End in Mind” to see the outcomes in your mind at first. Rely on your thought to form what you cannot see now. Visualize mentally your outcomes so that the goals will follow with physical effort. Acting like a blueprint, goals follow the mental creation of your outcomes.  

Formulating outcome-based goals can include Locke and Latham’s (1990) view that the word “goal” acts as “regulator of action” to stand for the group of intention, task, deadline, purpose, aim, end and objective. Of similar perspective, Devarajan, Maheshwari and Vohra (2018) stressed that “Goals are work converted to activities and tasks for employees; effective goal setting positively impacts employee outcomes.”  

Measurable Outcomes 

Goal setting exercise at work is about your achievement in the form of observational or measurable organizational outcomes within a specified time limit. The outcome part forms a conscious decision for your goals that “you or the organization want to accomplish and within what timeframe” (Barends, Janssen, & Velghe, 2016). The authors reviewed that conscious goals (self-set or assigned) aims to navigate your behavior.  

In similar vein, Wrosch, Scheier, Carver, and Schulz (2003) noted that goals structure people’s lives with choices and action they take. Therefore, your performance pathway consists of opportunities leading to the outcomes of the goal. Outcomes are what you hope to achieve when you carry out the goal. In a way, outcomes are the momentum driving your goals.  

Syncing Fluid Response  

Outcome is the target with countless goals scoring the bullseye. Take a page from the book, 4 Discipline of Execution, where co-author Chris McChesney reminded that “Once a team is clear about its lead measures, their view of the goal changes.” This line of thought of individual work goals attached to outcomes do change with different environments.  Although freedom to respond with a wide range of choices in any given goal exists, the outcomes should not change with the environment we find ourselves in.  Be it when someone outperforms you at work or the competition outsmarted you in a business sense.  

Actionable Progress 

Proactive response to changes at work retains an outcome. In that, do not expect a goal to change an outcome. This is likely why an outcome-based goal setting framework stems from outcome-based thinking of managing performance on a continuous basis. Effective outcome-based goal setting considers the performance system that surrounds you. Too often, the right goals cannot keep up with changing performance expectations or hidden forces. If you are constantly playing catch-up with your performance progress, then, it is worth for you to examine the effort put into a goal absent with signs of making consistent progress.  

Regenerate to Invigorate 

Many organizations in practice are bogged down by an intricate hierarchical goal setting waterfall structure. Nobody sets goals until directions flow down from the top management. Each level supports the one above in a web of connective goals. This pyramid structure is time consuming. For sure, we have experienced the ill-afford frustration in a pandemic to follow the hierarchical luxury of cascading goals from top to bottom like a waterfall approach. Why is this long-used method misguided? Imagine when a split-second turn of events can break a goal toward irrelevance. For example, unplanned movement control events can drag your carefully set goal off course. What if a limit to opening time caused a thriving shopping mall to lose 70%-foot traffic from shoppers overnight? In this case, what can you do with the performance goals set earlier?  

Research led by Wrosch, Scheier, Carver, and Schulz (2003) discovered two options for unattainable goals, namely giving up on effort while remaining committed to it with a feeling of distress or cut any commitment to the goals to remove distress. Expanding the two options, the researchers saw that goals defined who we are, thus, discharging an unattainable goal frees resources to achieve remaining goals after prioritization. In work situations that do not allow goals to be dropped, Ntoumanis and Sedikides (2018) advised to scale back the original goals to open up future opportunities for goal accomplishment.  

Successful reengaging goals in the story of Andy Murray serves as an example of the benefit after “letting go” of one’s cherished goals. His decision to withdraw from the 2013 French Open was a tough one but also a good one; it gave him the time to recuperate and reengage successfully with another goal, that is, winning his first Wimbledon title and ending Britain’s 77-year wait for a men’s champion (Ntoumanis & Sedikides ,2018). Staying the course can still redirect goals to achieve a positive outcome. Re-engagement an initial outcome of a goal may even land you with an unexpected victory.  

In summary, goal setting can be colored by a murky state of uncertainty in the trying times of a pandemic. When you are in such a state, an outcome-based goal setting exercise can be a prompt suggestion to tackle a fluid work environment with shifting performance expectations.

* This article was inspired from a sharing by M.CML, a senior leader of a prominent public listed Malaysia-based multinational corporation.

References 

Barends, E., Janssen, B., & Velghe, C. (2016). Rapid evidence assessment of the research literature on the effect of goal setting on workplace performance. 

Devarajan, R., Maheshwari, S., & Vohra, V. (2018). Managing performance: Role of goal setting in creating work meaningfulness. The Business & Management Review, 9(4), 261-274.  

Gibson, J. (2011). Organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing. 

Latham, G. P., Borgogni, L., & Petitta, L. (2008). Goal setting and performance management in the public sector. International Public Management Journal, 11(4), 385-403  

Locke, EA & Latham, GP 1990, A theory of goal setting & task performance, Prentice Hall, Inc, USA 

Ntoumanis, N., & Sedikides, C. (2018). Holding on to the goal or letting it go and moving on? A tripartite model of goal striving. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(5), 363-368. 

Piggot-Irvine, E. (2015). Why Should You Engage in Goal Pursuit?. In Goal Pursuit in Education Using Focused Action Research (pp. 13-30). Palgrave Pivot, New York. 

Teo, T. C., & Low, K. C. P. (2016). The impact of goal setting on employee effectiveness to improve organization effectiveness: Empirical study of a high-tech company in Singapore. Journal of Business & Economic Policy, 3(1), 1-16. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wong Siong Lai

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