
Goals Gone Wild: Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting (2009) - ra00l
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-083.pdf
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jib
The best lesson I ever got about goals I got from learning to play (6-max,
limit, texas hold'em) poker. Poker has stupidly high variance to profit ratio,
and an endless amount of metrics you could measure to track progress.

Obviously, the goal of playing is to make money, and almost equally obviously,
focusing on how much money you made is actively harmful if done for sample
sizes lower than 100k hands or so.

The solution to improvement through quantitative analysis in that environment
is to find key drivers that you believe impact your overall goal, analyse
trends you see in those drivers, and based on those find a few areas that you
want to qualitatively drill into to figure out changes you can make. I.e. - "I
open 20% of the time from early position and 25% from late position - if I
compare to other successful players that is too low a difference, so lets see
if I can find some situations where I may be making bad decisions and plug
those holes".

That is what we want to do with goal setting in business as well. Yes we have
some high level KPIs that we want to improve, but actively working "to improve
your revenue" is harmful and will no doubt lead to selling cars that explode
etc. To be successful you set your overall KPI(s), then you forget about it
and focus on smaller things that will over time incrementally add to your
overall goal.

If you have managers and employees who cant make that separation or want to
take short cuts to directly affect the overall goal without focusing on the
smaller bits, or comparing to some kind of "best known" practise, then you end
up with exploding cars, tools that has all features and no usability etc.

~~~
amirmc
> _" To be successful you set your overall KPI(s), then you forget about it
> and focus on smaller things that will over time incrementally add to your
> overall goal."_

I don't see how this works in practice. Once you expose KPIs like this, then
everything in your org works to increase them. Promotions probably get handed
out on this basis. As you say, this leads to exploding cars and bad tools. The
challenge (which you don't mention) is _how_ you create an environment that
doesn't hold the metrics higher than other things. I'd argue that values-
driven orgs probably do this better but I'm not sure.

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jib
Yeah that is the challenge. If I knew the right answer that solves it I would
certainly share, but I dont.

What I try to do is talk about it over and over, and emphasize for each new
initiative we roll out how we dont care about how it will impact the KPIs, we
care about how it will impact our overall goals that the KPIs are trying to
measure.

That said, #1 resistance point for most initiatives is still "how will affect
the KPIs", so we are certainly far away from solving that problem.

Things we've tried to de-emphasize the KPI importance is going away from
having an "exceeds" measure, now we are just "meets objective" or "doesnt meet
objective", with "doesnt meet" set fairly low so that the people who like to
min-max things dont have another clear target to min-max towards, and doing
things like moving the focus to team oriented goals rather than individual
goals to lower the link between KPIs and rewards, and instead linking
individual rewards to general appraisals.

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amirmc
Abstract from the paper:

"Goal setting is one of the most replicated and influential paradigms in the
management literature. Hundreds of studies conducted in numerous countries and
contexts have consistently demonstrated that setting specific, challenging
goals can powerfully drive behavior and boost performance. Advocates of goal
setting have had a substantial impact on research, management education, and
management practice. In this article, we argue that the beneficial effects of
goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal
setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated
with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a
rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of
organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation. Rather than
dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for
motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal setting as a
prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration
of harmful side effects, and close supervision. We offer a warning label to
accompany the practice of setting goals."

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duey
I've witnessed this first hand - we recently started rolling out measured
goals in our warehouses. This involved staff getting set daily goal counts for
certain tasks (products shipped, products put on shelves etc.). As soon as we
rolled out metrics everything that wasn't measured became a low priority. For
example, we were not measuring cycle counts (stock take) so immediately the
number of cycle counts plummeted, which increased our out-of-stock errors. We
had instances of staff hoarding incoming shipments from suppliers at their
workstations in order to get higher rankings.

Overall the warehouses went from being generally efficient to extreme
performers on measured metrics. I think metrics can be clearly powerful, but
you have to be very careful about what metrics you choose to implement.

~~~
nraynaud
A long time ago, in western Europe, kids wouldn't go to school if they were
sick. To check if they were sick the mother would check their temperature with
an alcohol thermometer. Of course the kids understood the goal and used the
night lamp to get the appropriate temperature displayed to skip school.

When talking about metric in corporate setting I like to remind everybody that
I have a strong suspicion that the guy who invented the thermometer also
discreetly invented the night lamp.

(most of the context is disappearing: blinds that force you to use the night
lamp in the morning, alcohol thermometers and incandescent light bulbs)

~~~
watwut
Any source of heat, such as radiator, would do the same job.

~~~
mcguire
And any thermometer. I've used friction on those goofy liquid crystal, flat
plastic thermometers.

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boobsbr
I work as a contractor for a company where employees must set a couple of
goals yearly and meet them. Set them too low, you're considered lazy, fail to
meet one and you're considered unreliable.

There's also a mandatory quota of trainings, which employees must elaborate
and then train their colleagues, and "charitable work" they must participate.

I don't want to be hired.

~~~
dropit_sphere
"Set them too low, you're considered lazy, fail to meet one and you're
considered unreliable."

Ah, yes. "You must be able to handle ambiguity, because we can't."

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Spearchucker
A glass of wine per day is ok. Maybe even good. Two six-packs a day isn't.
Anything is ok _in moderation_ , and with full knowledge of both positive and
negative effects. I have long-term objectives for sure, but avoid setting
long-term SMART objectives for myself, because life happens. At work during
the annual review I set SMART objectives as required, but completely ignore if
not forget them during the rest of the year.

Short term is another story. Every evening I decide exactly what I want to
accomplish during the next 24 hours, always looking at how what I'm planning
for the day aligns with my longer term objectives. That's been crazy useful to
me.

Amusingly, that sentiment has a middle ground which I apply to software
development projects - I live and die by a project's vision/scope, which is
really an objective for a project.

~~~
dsirijus
Agreed on all points, and I'd like to add some numbers that worked for me -
keep about 5-10 long-term objectives. Make one of them taking care of your
health (exercise, nutrition), one taking care of your mental health (mostly
work/rest/socialize balance), and invest in your knowledge/skills. Currently,
I have 5 more (finish project #1, #2, #3, make company profitable, move out of
country).

Additional point I'd like to make is - know thyself. You simply cannot set
goals on some wishful thinking and other randomnesses. While glass of wine per
day is ok, you might better be off without any, or you might need a bottle of
wine a day to manage your cholesterol level (stretching the metaphore).

Also, props for planning out the next day in evening - makes sleep and the
start of next day so much more pleasurable experience.

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DanielBMarkham
Part of the problem here is the problem of aggregation.

We measure things in the aggregate, but we influence them in the minuscule.

So I might measure the fact that a certain fast food restaurant makes french
fries slower than another one, but there could be a thousand reasons why this
is so. Simply setting a goal of increasing the number of french fries
delivered doesn't actually make it happen. Instead, it ends up perversely
impacting all the other areas of the restaurant.

We look at things in big, fuzzy ways, so we naturally think we can influence
them in the same way. We measure in the aggregate, then find some correlations
in the aggregate, declare causality, then set goals. Doesn't work like that.
This is the way things are commonly done, and there are multiple logical
errors here. [Add in long discussion about the implications of this on public
policy-making]

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danelectro
There are many types of ambition.

Goal-focused ambition is only one type, it may be the most recognizable, maybe
due to the influence of goal-seeking sports competitions.

Goals are great for some games, some of which are competitive. Not everything
is a game.

Sometimes a team benefits from a goal more than an individual.

What if you have a goal that is not recognized or appreciated?

What if you've already reached your goals?

What if you have stronger ambition by nature than the goal-seeking type?

What if your goal was to perform without a specific goal while still
outperforming those who focused on it?

What if you recognized the factors identified in the original PDF decades ago
and groomed yourself to be able to sometimes engage in more effective goal-
seeking than the pure devotees, while also outperforming them toward their own
goals while yourself being unfocused, whenever you wanted to according to the
situation?

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wpietri
"Given that small actions within an organization can have broad implications
for organizational culture (Fleming & Zyglidopoulos, 2008), we postulate that
aggressive goal setting within an organization will foster an organizational
climate ripe for unethical behavior. That is, not only does goal setting
directly motivate unethical behavior, but its introduction may also motivate
unethical behavior indirectly by subtly altering an organization’s culture. In
sum, although many factors contribute to unethical behavior, the point cannot
be overstated: _goal setting motivates unethical behavior_."

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BetaCygni
What a rubbish article. Without goals, how would anyone know what needs to be
done? How would you know what is expected of you? If it is a generic company,
the main goals are to make sure the company stays around and to make a profit.
You then create sub-goals to achieve the main goals and repeat this until
everyone knows what needs to be done. If the sub-goals do not agree with the
main goals you get the mess which the article describes. This is caused by
WRONG goals.

~~~
wdewind
While my initial reaction is similar to yours, keep in mind that what's being
proposed by the article is the concept that no one sets goals well enough that
they should be used the way they are right now. This is a premise I don't
agree with, mostly because I think their data is really shallow, but the point
is that they are proposing a reality in which you cannot find a decent dataset
of people setting goals well within their company.

