Don't waste your time planning, unless...
I deal daily with clients setting goals and assessing goal achievement. That's at the heart of strategy implementation and client success.
My hard-earned guidance: Don't waste your time planning, unless you are prepared to set and achieve goals.
As humans, we are wired to set goals. Be they for ourselves, our family, or our business, we constantly engage in goal-setting, that is, identifying what we would like to achieve and need to make happen for things to be better or to avoid worse outcomes.
Often this goal setting, especially for our personal goals, is on the fly or not deeply considered. "Let's go to Florida for spring training" or "I will start eating a more plant-based diet" may not be the result of thorough planning.
But sometimes our goals flow from a well-developed and deeply-considered plan, such as the strategic plans and annual business plans we help all types of organizations and leaders, owners, professionals, and entrepreneurs develop using best-practice processes including our Fast Track Strategic Planning System.
The premise of these plans is that doing big things to drive positive change will push you and/or your organization to an envisioned future of great success. Setting goals and achieving them is how you bring strategy to life, how you get down the road to your vision.
The end game of most planning processes, including our Fast Track Strategic Planning System, involves setting 12-month goals that are the annual workplan for strategy implementation. Monthly, weekly, and daily goals, beyond those required to “do business,” should flow from these 12-month goals.
That brings us to the question of execution, that is, achieving the goals. Goal achievement is pivotal concern for a strategy consultant and business coach like me. The issue is implementation. We need to recognize that goals without execution are meaningless.
Let's delve into goal-setting and implementation, first considering the value of having goals.
Goal setting is linked to success
Research tells us that goal-setting is healthy and fosters success. Setting goals is linked with higher motivation, self-esteem, self-confidence, and autonomy. 1 And there's more! Research has established a strong connection between goal-setting and success. 2
Yet, while just setting the goal fosters a better mind-set and helps pave the way to success, goal-setting in and of itself is not enough. Whether your goals come from casual planning - such as New Years' resolutions - or from a best-of-class planning process, the stark reality is that most goals are never achieved.
New Year’s resolutions are an example. A University of Scranton study shows that 92% of people who set these goals never actually achieve them. 3 On average, only 8% of these goals that people set are achieved.
Since New Year's resolutions tend to be more casual, aspirational. and often not very serious, you might ask, "What's the harm in not achieving them?"
It's not my role to push best practices that intrude on your flights of fancy. However, consider the idea that pursuing best practices, whether they be in your business life or personal life, produces better outcomes and, hopefully, more satisfaction and happiness.
How to foster goal achievement
To achieve your goals:
Write them down. In a study conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University: 4
Participants who wrote down their goals were 42% more likely to achieve them than those who didn't write them down.
Fewer than 20% of people wrote down their goals.
Actively commit to them. Making an active commitment directly affects action. In one study, researchers found that of a group of individuals who passively agreed to participate in a volunteer project, only 17% showed up to participate. 5 Contrast that with those who agreed to volunteer through active means - writing it down, signing a contract, etc.: 49% appeared as promised.
Report to another person. Dr. Matthews’ study also showed that more than 70% of participants who sent weekly updates to a friend reported goal achievement (accomplished their goal or were more than halfway there). Only 35% of those who kept their goals to themselves, without writing them down, reported goal achievement.
Make them specific and challenging. Research shows that:
Specific and challenging goals lead to higher performance than easy goals, "do your best" goals, or no goals. 6 Goals affect performance by directing attention, mobilizing effort, increasing persistence, and motivating strategy development. Goal setting is most likely to improve task performance when the goals are specific and sufficiently challenging.
Only 43% of people set difficult or audacious goals. 7
People who set difficult goals are 34% more likely to love their jobs.
Top executives are 64% more likely to set difficult or audacious goals
Top executives are 91% more likely to enjoy leaving their comfort zone in pursuit of their goals
Make them believable. Research on goal-setting shows an inverted U-shaped relationship between difficulty and performance. 8 Easy goals lead to weak efforts, but so do goals that are too hard. The key factor here seems to be that goals need to be challenging, but also believable to be effective. If you don’t think you can actually reach a goal, you won’t.
Use the 80% rule. Psychologist Barak Rosenshine found that this was the approximate success rate students should experience while in school. Too much success and you’re likely not picking hard enough goals. Too little and you can fall into the confidence trap (meaning lack of confidence). 9
One way to calibrate this is to set smaller goals (think 30 days) and track your success rate. If you’re under 80%, try setting a more achievable target. If you’re over 80%, try something a little more ambitious.
Visualize failure. Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer suggests a key ingredient to the success of your goals is what he calls implementation intentions. These are when you visualize difficulties that might come up in pursuing your goal and decide in advance how you will handle them. 10 This planning can keep you from abandoning your goals when things get difficult.
Set ABC goals. Psychologist Frank L. Smoll emphasized that effective goals are: 11
A – Achievable
B – Believable
C – Committed
If your goals are not achievable or believable then you will quickly become discouraged. Achievable and believable goals are easier to commit to. The higher the commitment, the higher the chance of success.
Make them SMART. 12
This is the most widely promoted goals format:
S – Specific. Target a specific area for improvement.
M – Measurable. Quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
A – Achievable. Results can be realistically achieved, given available resources. (But better to stretch than to aim short.)
R – Relevant. Address an area of strategic importance.
T – Timely. Attainable within the timeframe.
Make them SMARTER. 13
Users of the SMART format over time recognized that the format was useful for setting goals, but did not offer guidance on what to do after the goals were put in place. The SMARTER format offers guidance for assessing goal implementation progress and results:
S – Specific.
M – Measurable.
A – Achievable.
R – Relevant.
T – Timely.
E – Evaluated.
R – Reviewed.
Make them HARD. 14
The HARD format was set up in response to the mechanistic SMART format. HARD promotes goals that engender an emotional connection, strong visualization, great urgency, and difficulty:
H – Heartfelt
A – Animated
R – Required
D – Difficult
Align them with your values. Effective goals are based on our high values and ethics. 15 Studies show that the more we align our goals with our core values and principles, the more likely we are to achieve and benefit from them.
Use a rudder and an oar. Goal achievement expert James Clear writes that to get to your goal, you need both to steer yourself (or your organization) in the right direction - that's the role of the rudder. 16 And you need to propel yourself in that direction rather than sit dead on the water - that's the oar part of the analogy.
You need an action plan. Goals are outcomes, that is, results. They are what you aim to achieve. Actions are what you do to achieve your goals. Your goals and actions should be aligned.
Planned actions to achieve goals should be specific and discrete. Goal achievement usually requires multiple, sequenced actions, that is, an action plan.
A well-crafted action plan:
Results in demonstrable progress.
Lays out what’s needed to get to the goal.
Has timelines for achievement.
Relates to the strategy being implemented.
Assigns actions to individuals and through them to groups, departments and teams.
Is chronological and sequential in nature.
Results in an integrated process.
Enables progress and results to be measured.
Enlists the organization in a balanced effort.
Reflects the organization’s resources.
What to ask about your goals
Questions to assess goal execution:
Are sufficient resources (people, time, money, etc.) allocated for successful execution of action plans and projects?
Do you and the team have the skills and knowledge needed?
Do those charged with execution “own” the strategy they are executing?
Are decision parameters and performance targets clear?
Do you have a system to measure progress?
Does information flow among those involved in execution?
Is inordinate time spent inventing how to do the work versus actually doing the work?
Endnotes
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265-268.
Matthews, G. (2015). Goal research summary. Paper presented at the 9th Annual International Conference of the Psychology Research Unit of Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), Athens, Greece.
Norcross, J. C., & Vangarelli, D. J. (1988). The resolution solution: longitudinal examination of New Year's change attempts. Journal of substance abuse, 1(2), 127–134.
https://kitzu.org/study-highlights-strategies-for-achieving-goals/
Goldstein, N. J., Martin, S. J., & Cialdin, R. B. (2008). Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Free Press.
Locke, E. A., Shaw, K. N., Saari, L. M., & Latham, G. P. (1981). Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980. Psychological Bulletin, 90(1), 125–152.
https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/35353793-are-smart-goals-dumb
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.
Rosenshine, B. (2012) Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), p12-39.
Gollwitzer, P.M., Oettingen, G. (2013). Implementation Intentions. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY.
Smoll, F.L., & Smith, R.E. (2021). A social-cognitive approach to conducting evidence based coach-training programs. In J.M. Williams & V. Krane (Eds.), Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance (8th ed., pp. 386-408). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a SMART way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.
Yemm, G. (2013). Essential Guide to Leading Your Team: How to Set Goals, Measure Performance and Reward Talent. Pearson Education. pp. 37–39
Murphy, M.A. (2011). Hard Goals : The Secrets to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Erez, M. (1986). The congruence of goal-setting strategies with socio-cultural values and its effect on performance. Journal of Management, 12(4), 585-592.
