Is goal setting a waste of time?

Question: Many companies require employees to set goals, especially for the new year, but some workers balk at the idea. They whip something off and quickly forget what they even wrote down. How could the process be handled better so that employees don't view it as simply administrative garbage that wastes time?

Answer:

Most of the time, these exercises are administrative garbage that wastes time, because there is no follow up. Ever. You could write anything done. No one looks at it – or follows up to see if you did it or accomplished your goals.

If companies really want employees to create goals – they should first, ask themselves some questions. Starting with – WHY!!!! Why do you want employees to write down goals? What exactly are you hoping will change as a result of employees setting goals. If the answer is – well – we think it’s a good way to motivate people – then the next question should also by why. Why do you want to motivate people? What will motivated employees do differently? Keep asking these questions – until you get to your real problem that you really want changed. 

Once you understand what exactly it is you really hope will change – you can start thinking of ways you might accomplish that. Asking employees to write down goals – is probably not the best way to get whatever your real goal is accomplished. But you won’t know that – until you know what exactly you are hoping to change by doing whatever it is you think you should do as a manager. 

Good managers, don’t waste employees time on nonsense. They focus their energy and work to create cohesive work groups that excel at problem solving collaboratively.  Thinking you need employees to have “goals” as employees -  may be a proxy problem. It may not be – but it most likely is. Focus on what your real problem is and your employees will thank you.

A better idea: 

It may be better to do a session with key employees at various levels of the organization and have a conversation about what the company can do better to help the employees get their jobs done more effectively.  Ask them – what they think the goals of the manager should be for the coming year. What do employees wish the managers would do differently? That information – will probably yield better change results than asking employees what they want to change about themselves.

 

So I would flip the question upside down and rethink why I think asking employees to write down goals is a good idea in the first place and instead - focus on finding out how I could do better as their manager. I'm pretty sure - every employee has ideas on how their manager can improve things. 

 

How to not lose sight of your values when making goals

I come at this both behaviorally and philosophically. I am a Humanist and provide philosophic counselling on goal setting.

What I tell people to do is you need to spend some time setting both primary goals, secondary goals & tertiary goals. Most of what you are talking about is people focused on tertiary goals, which is why they lose sight of their primary goals.

Primary Goals

For instance, my primary goal is to live life fully, love other people and leave the world a better place. If I do that, I’ve succeeded, even if financially I am not in any given moment a financial success. Life is full of ups and downs.

Secondary Goals

My secondary goals are related to the “leave the world a better place” part of my primary goals. I want to help people to stop bullying and learn how to live life without fear of other people. How to make better decisions using critical thinking so that they can actually create strategies that will actually work and help them reach their goals. Having my secondary or business goal grounded in my primary goal of leaving the world a better place helps me not give up even when I want to. My work is too important to not do.

Tertiary Goals

My tertiary goals is – what exactly I’m going to do to accomplish my 2ndary goals.  So in my case, that is – create a learning company that teaches these things. It is only when I get to a tertiary goal that I can really start to develop a strategy to accomplish it. But by making sure my tertiary goal is based in my primary goal, when I create that strategy I do so in a way that honors and incorporates my primary goal – which is to live life fully.

To not get lost in the weeds of the day to day work of trying to make my tertiary goal a reality – I re-evaluate every 6 months. Is what I am doing helping me to my primary goals or secondary goals or tertiary goals? Do I need to rethink one of my tertiary goals?  Do I need to re-allocate my time and priorities? The answer is ALWAYS yes. Yes I do need to re-prioritize based on what is working and what isn’t and whether or not I am enjoying the work or not.  I know there are things I should be doing for my business, but if I don’t like doing them, I’m not going to do them. Every six months I take stock. What am I doing well, what am I avoiding? If I am avoiding something, which I always am, is there another way for me to accomplish that task without doing it in a way I don’t like?  If I get creative, the answer is yes.  Let me give you an example, I was doing public speaking and I realized I don’t like travelling. So I retooled the business to be an online learning program. If people want me – they can take an online class and skype me in if they want a live Q&A. I’m much happier and I’m not neglecting my family and it takes WAY less time than the other business model I was pursuing.

By making my primary life goals explicit, I am able to consider those goals as I make strategies for my business goals (which are actually tertiary and in service to my primary and secondary goals. I don’t see  how anyone can balance their priorities if they don’t make their values and priorities explicit. If writing those values down helps, do that. For me – my primary goal is my motto. Live life, love other people, leave the world a better place. When it doubt, I go to my motto. It has yet to steer me wrong and I’m very satisfied with the arc of my life so far and where I am going to now.

PS  - I do teach this philosophic approach and the critical thinking skills that go with this in an online program https://humanistlearning.com/video-planning-for-personal-success/  or as a streaming video (through Amazon Prime) or as a DVD.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

If you are doing too much, goal setting can help you prioritize.

If you are competent, you are busy. Sometimes too busy. People are always asking you to help out and take on a bit more work. So in addition to your work, your family and the upkeep of the house, you also have volunteering and hobbies and well, life.

I am also an entrepreneur. There are all sorts of things I could and should be doing to support my business, but the reality is, I have time constraints. I can’t do everything.

Yet, I don’t feel overwhelmed. My secret? I understand my goals so that I can prioritize.

Knowing what you want to accomplish, and more importantly why you want to accomplish helps you sort through the day to day demands and prioritize those that are critical, that that need to be done and those that would be nice to do.

Lots of people have a to do list. What they have trouble with is deciding which stuff can wait. In order to prioritize your to-do list, you have to know why those items are on your list in the first place.

We have primary goals and secondary goals and then intermediary goals that help us achieve our secondary and primary goals.  My primary goal is to live life fully and to leave the world a better place.  All my secondary goals, like create a business to help people learn how to stop bullies are in support of my primary goal.  My intermediate goals, like call on companies to talk to them about buying my sexual harassment trainings, are intermediate goals, designed to help me achieve my secondary goal which will help me achieve my primary goal of making the world a better place.

The reason it’s important to have a goal hierarchy is because you can’t prioritize your to-do list if your goals your to-do list are in support of aren’t prioritized! When I am in a time crunch, I look at my to do list and it’s very easy to sort into must do and can wait. Why? Because I have my priorities straight.

To learn more how to do this – take my ecourse: Planning for Personal Success at:  https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/ 

How to stay focused and not give up

Having a plan and sticking to it is easier said than done.

I am the queen of distraction. So how do I focus on getting my work done when I’d rather be watching a Bollywood movie?

Easy – I have a goal. A goal that is important. In fact, it’s so important that getting it done is going to have a tremendous positive impact on society and the world in which we live. I am so passionate about my goal that working on it is a pleasure. So much so that taking time off to do other things is actually pretty hard for me.

In order to be successful, you have to have some idea of what you mean by success. How you define success is your goal.  I like to break goals down into primary goals and secondary goals.  My primary goals are fairly static.  Live life well and be happy. Try to make others so at the same time.

My secondary goals are way more flexible and they change over time. So – getting a degree was a goal for a while. Why get a degree? So I could live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

My current goal is to set up my business Humanist Learning Systems (https://humanistlearning.com) so I can get paid to teach people how to stop bullies using science. Why? So I can live life well and be happy while trying to make the world a better place at the same time.

See how secondary goals are in service to your primary goals? Whatever I am working on – is in service to my primary goal.

The mistake many people make is in not having a primary goal. Without that, your secondary goals have no grounding. You don’t have a good reason why you are doing what you are doing. If your goals are not grounded in a really strong reason why, then when, not if, you encounter problems, you have no real motivation or reason to keep working on them.

If you are having a problem staying focused, then consider rethinking your goals. If you need help – consider taking my course – Planning for Personal Success (https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/) which will not only help you better define your primary goals, but it will also teach you how to be more strategic in your decision making along the way.

Keep your goals to yourself

Delaying your gratification makes a difference in whether you achieve your goals or not.

I like to tell my son when he wants something now that one of the hallmarks of being a human being is that we have the ability to delay our gratification. What does this mean?  It means that we have the ability to choose not to receive a reward right now.  Why would we choose that?  Well, in order to get a better reward later, of course.

This is just really a fancy, kind of scientific way to describe the concept of saying, we have the ability to plan for the future AND, that’s a good thing.

But there’s a problem. It’s not enough to make plans. In order to be successful, we generally have to do a bit of work to make our dreams happen. Sure, you can wish upon a star if you want, but successful people don’t stop there. They do the work that is required to make their dreams a reality.

Here’s where delaying your gratification really matters.  It turns out, that if you tell other people your goals, and they congratulation you on setting your goals, your brain treats that congratulation and a reward and – having achieved you reward, you don’t need to work so hard on it anymore. And that’s actually what happens.

I realize I seem to quote Derek Sivers a lot – but he’s right on a bout a lot of things. Here is a Ted talk he did on this topic: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself#t-173955 

What he says is that the more we share our goals and plans with others, the more likely we are to feel like we’ve already accomplished them and we mistake talking about our goals with doing something to achieve them. And because we think we’ve already worked on this when we talk about it, we don’t put as much effort into it as if we had kept our goal to our self. Apparently when we talk about it, our brains perceive it as real and that’s good enough for the brain.

I don’t know about you, but for me, perceived success ain’t nearly as good as real success. I’m not afraid of doing the hard work required to make my business a success. I make sure that when I talk about my business goals that I also emphasize the fact that they aren’t a reality yet – and that I still have a lot of work to do to make them a reality. Because unless I make it happen, nothings going to happen.

Don’t mistake your dreams for reality and don’t fall prey to the positive thinking movement’s non-science approach.  Thinking about what you want isn’t going to make it magically happen. And imagining it’s already happened actually makes it less likely to happen because it makes you less likely to put in the effort to see your project through to completion.

If you want to be successful, stay firmly grounded in reality and do the hard work required to make it happen.

The Future

Why having a goal is important.

Having a positive vision of the future is important. I’m not in favor of unrealistic optimism, but it is important to have some idea of what you want to accomplish despite the realities of the present.

Without a goal to work towards and achieve, you have no reason or meaning in your life. I’m not saying, your goals need to be grand. Heck, there have been times in my life where just getting out to the mail box to get the mail was a major accomplishment. What I am saying is, having that as a goal, as stupid and minimal as it was, helped me to get through some rough times in my life. I might not be able to take on the whole world, but I could, at a minimum get out to the mail box. And that little victory helped me to reclaim my will to live.  I hadn’t given up. Not totally anyway.

Sometimes you just have to take it day by day. And that’s ok.  However, I find it best to have longer term goals for myself, larger projects to work towards. Projects that I can break up into smaller doable things.

For instance, my  - get myself to the mailbox today, was part of a larger goal to eventually reclaim my life and get on with living life fully. Every time I succeeded in getting to the mailbox, I was succeeding, in a small way, towards my larger goal.

Nowadays, I have big goals and big plans. These ideas and projects and goals keep me motivated and engaged and help me feel alive, even when things aren’t going as smoothly as I had hoped.

So think about the future. What do you want to accomplish? Now set out and do it! Just don’t forget to pick up your mail in the meantime. The small tasks are important too.