Introduction

What is a book on goals all about?

Most organisations work, or at least they say they work, with goals in one way or another. It’s common practice for business goals and directives to be created and presented by company owners, boards and politicians. These goals are expected to guide them and us by breaking down activities into more specific goals and strategies for different parts of the organisation, such as regions, departments, teams and individuals. The truth is, however, that this method of goal management often looks far better on paper than it does in practice. In reality one of the areas for development most frequently highlighted in employee surveys are goals (or the lack of them). Many employees, for example, seem to find goals difficult to understand or don’t feel they are being followed up properly or often enough. They also feel that some goals do not feel relevant or meaningful to the business they are in, that there are just too many of them, that some goals contradict each other or that there simply aren’t enough of them.

Research into goals is extensive and gives us a very different picture of goals than the one we often encountered in our everyday working lives. This research promotes goals and goal setting as a highly effective way of motivating and engaging people, encouraging wellbeing, reducing stress and influencing results and work performance.

Just why current research gives us such a different picture than the reality we often experience remains a bit of a mystery. One possible explanation could be that the research-based knowledge we have about goals has, for some unknown reason, not yet managed to reach us out in the working world.

Managers and employees often find it difficult to know what to do when working with goals. It is not so much a question of not wanting to, but more about feeling uncertain how to make goals work in practice.

We hope this book can serve as a bridge between this current research and our working lives, and that some knowledge of effective goal setting can cross over to you. This book does not attempt to provide detailed instructions on how to work with goals for the simple reason that such attempts are usually far too superficial and therefore ultimately rather ineffective. Instead this book should be considered an attempt to transfer knowledge of some of the mechanisms and principles that should be considered when working with goals in your own business. Think of it as a helping hand when setting your own goals. When you have finished reading it our hope is that you:

• have improved your understanding of what goals and goal setting are.

• can distinguish b etween different types of goals and understand the underlying conditions that make them more or less effective.

• understand the difference between individual and common goals and when best to apply them.

• have a better knowledge of the underlying motivational mechanisms behind effective goals and goal setting processes.

• understand the most important principles of effective goals and goal setting processes.

• b e aware of the pitfalls of setting goals and become better equipped to avoid them.

This book is primarily aimed not at researchers but at managers and employees living in the real working world. For this reason references will not be continuously cited. There is, however, a list of further reading divided into different categories at the end of each chapter for those of you who want to dig a little deeper into the latest research on goals that this book is based on.