Goal Setting

What is Goal Setting?

Goal setting means specifying an outcome or standard to pursue. “Improve sales” is an intention. A defined sales target gives you something to work toward and a way to judge progress.

Locke and Latham’s goal-setting theory examines how the content and difficulty of goals affect task performance. Their 2002 research synthesis reports that specific, difficult goals often produce better performance than easy goals or instructions to do your best. Specificity alone is not enough: a precise but easy target is still an easy target.

How Goal Setting Works

Goals can direct attention, increase effort, support persistence, and encourage people to find or use better task strategies. Whether they help depends on commitment, ability, feedback, and task complexity.

The popular SMART criteria offer a checklist for writing goals. A checklist and a theory of goal setting serve different purposes. Making an objective sound precise does not establish that it is a good objective.

Examples of Goal Setting

• Personal: Save a specified amount toward a purchase.
• Academic: Reach a target exam score or master a defined set of skills.
• Professional: Complete a project milestone by an agreed date.
• Organizational: Improve a defined measure of customer satisfaction.

Limits and Practical Problems

For a task someone already knows how to perform, a performance target can direct effort. For a new, complex task, a learning goal—such as identifying and testing several ways to solve the problem—may be more useful than an immediate high-output target.

Goals also focus attention on some things at the expense of others. A sales target, for example, does not describe every aspect of good customer service. Decide what must be protected while the target is pursued.

A goal specifies the desired result. It does not supply the skills, resources, or strategy needed to achieve it. Nor does research on task performance establish that ambitious targets always improve well-being. Set a goal that fits the person and the problem, then check what it actually changes.