Originally written 23/01/99 Revised and Updated on October 06, 2008 GOALS AND GOAL SETTING "All men seek one goal; Success and Happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in relation to them. First have a definite, clear, practical idea, a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust your means to that end" - Aristotle - Greek Philosopher - Student of Plato and Tutor of Alexander the Great Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals - Aristotle "If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there" - Holy Koran "A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder" - Anonymous " Mine are all uncomfortable goals" - Alex Kroll, quoted in the book "Tactics" by Dr. Edward de Bono "Goals. There's no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There's no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there's no telling what will happen when you act upon them." -- Jim Rohn "If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal." -- Zig Ziegler "An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, a never happen. The day you put your goal in writing is the day it becomes a commitment that will change your life. Are you ready?" -- Tom Hopkins "Goal setting illuminates the road to success just as runway lights illuminate the landing field for an incoming aircraft." -- Nido Qubein "The establishment of a clear central purpose or goal in life is the starting point of all success." -- Brian Tracy Success is not a destination, It is a journey - Anonymous Success is failure turned inside out - Anonymous What is a goal ? A goal can be very simply defined as an end towards which some efforts are directed. In a game of Soccer, each team tries to push the ball into the opponents goal post by a team effort. Similarly, in Organizations the Goal is to achieve a predetermined target, by determining the objectives to achieve the desired results. A goal is not an objective or a mission statement. Very often Goals, Objectives and Missions are mixed up leading to confusion. Goals are specific and always measurable, missions are a statement of intent and objectives are of a strategic nature.  A goal should answer the following questions :  What?  Why ?  Who ?  Where ? When ? How ?  Goals are to be set to establish a direction, identify expected results, Improve team work and a sense of purpose by setting targets and improving performance.  A goal should be defined and written down It should be measurable  It should be achieved in a specific time frame  It should be achieved at lowest possible costs  Finally setting goals is not enough. The organization should be geared up to achieve it. For this the leader has to do the following :  Implement action plan  Monitor progress periodically  Revise the objectives, tactics and strategy to achieve it without changing the goal. Assuming the goal is realistic it should never be changed. There could be cost and time overruns in achieving your goals due to various unforeseen hurdles in which case the goal could have been unrealistic. Hence goal setting is very important and due care should be taken before setting it. I have for a long time believed that goals should be realistic and attainable. However of late, I have come to the conclusion that setting uncomfortable goals, as advocated by Mr. Alex Kroll quoted above, has its own advantages. This stretches you to the maximum and rewards are very high. The target should be high enough but not so high as to be out of reach. Very few people are capable of setting such uncomfortable goals and attaining them. The above portion is the original that was first published in the public domain. Added on June 15, 2000 Comment from a reader: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 07:58:18 +0300 Chris Gill wrote:  "Need further clarity and examples on objectives" My reply: "Thank you for your comments. Shall look into it and do the needful." When I wrote this very small write-up in January 1999, for giving a talk on this subject to a group of participants, I never anticipated the response to this brief article. I am amazed by the number of downloads of this article and this appears to be the most popular one among the visitors. The article is on" Goals and Goal setting" and does not cover objectives. The objectives of a company or an individual will differ and will be situation specific. As mentioned in the article above, objectives are always of a strategic nature. The objectives have to be decided by individuals/organizations as they proceed towards their goal. The objectives can be likened to milestones on the path to your goals. If you are climbing Mt. Everest then first you need to set up a base camp. After that you will have to decide where you will halt on the way to top. There could be as much as five halts on your way to the top. Each halt will be your objectives. After you reach your objective number one, you still have other objectives to reach before you attain your goal. Added on August 06, 2000 Taken from " Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll One day , Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat sitting on a tree. The conversation went like this: Alice: Which road do I take ? Cat: Where do you want to go ? Alice: I don't know Cat: Then it doesn't matter Moral of the story: You should know where you want to go ? Research on goal setting tells us the following: People who set goals for themselves do better than those who do not. People who set specific goals do better than those who set vague goals. Difficult goals, if accepted, result in better performance. Successful goal attainment is found to be related to conscious goal setting, awareness of forces related to the goal, high expectations of success, high psychological safety, a concern for measuring progress and an emphasis on self evaluation. Added on April 02,2001 Dear Doris, Thank you for getting in touch. It appears that you have not fully understood me and the context the article was written. I am giving the explanation below: Goals are set either individually or collectively for a group. In the case of individuals, the "who" means the concerned individual. However, in cases where there is collective or group responsibility, then someone - the "who", should be made responsible for achieving it. Here, the Leadership factor comes in. Why many fail in achieving their goals is mainly due to this factor. No doubt other reasons also exist.  "Where" in this context means the "Direction". When People wanted to find a sea route to India from Europe in the 15th century, there were two options. Sail east or west. Both options would have yielded the results but sailing east would help in reaching the destination earlier. But Christopher Columbus sailed west and discovered the Americas. Since earth is round this is possible but in actual life it may not yield the desired results.  My own philosophy in life has been, if everybody is going in one direction then you take the option of swimming against the current. This is very difficult and one needs great courage, knowledge, skills and attitudes but the rewards are also equally high. Trust I have cleared your doubts. Best wishes   Madhavan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message -----  From: Doris  To: madhavan@madgopes.com   Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 12:09 AM Subject: What a goal should answer?  Please explain why a goal should answer who? and where? Appreciate your explanation or more information. Thanks in advance. Added on November 12, 2005: A number of people frequently ask the difference between goals and objectives. I thought it best to give a small and a simple example. Let us say we want to increase sales which is the goal. The image below gives the various objectives for reaching the goal. Image courtesy of www.mmgindia.com . © Copyright. All rights reserved. Added on November 30, 2005 When I wrote the above article in January 1999, the focus was on goals and goal setting for teams and done for the top management team of one of my clients. I also did not touch upon the impact of goals on motivation to keep it short and simple. My approach is very focused on any subject. I do not like to mix topics, however related they may be.  We have to work in teams today. Individual and Team goals must be aligned and congruent as far as possible. It is not possible to get hundred percent congruence at any time. I have been asked number of times how to set goals for businesses by many people including clients. Establishing Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives for various clients has been a major activity for me over the last 7 years. Because it has become a FAQ, I have decided to add this post script below: The Goal setting theory was first postulated by Dr. Edwin A Locke in his paper "Towards a theory of task motivation and incentives" in his book 'Organization behavior and performance' in 1968.  The primary and pioneering research on Goals and Goal setting was done by him and followed by many others. The various researches established the following guidelines: Specific and difficult goals led to higher performance It was noticed that they had to be accepted by those who had to attain the tasks. The degree of employee participation was directly proportional to his or her perspective of the goal as attainable. This also means that goals can be motivators and shape behavior. The ERG theory on motivation is also applicable. The above is very relevant in a highly challenging and competitive business environment that prevails today. In such a situation, both individuals and teams in organizations do not have much control over their goals. It is akin to shooting at a moving target. Market conditions and Customer expectations dictates them. In such a scenario, how will a team in an organization decide its goals ? The answer to the above question is given below: This is decided by two factors: Competitive requirements Corporate Strategy Teams in organizations should have more than one goal. Long term goals followed by short term goals. The short term goals can be called as objectives, as the term goal can be frightening to many people. The long term goals will be decided by the two factors mentioned above. Once this is agreed upon, it should be broken into short term goals, objectives or milestones and a route map drawn up. Written by Madhavan T Gopalachary Please see the related and equally article titled 'Vision Statement' Some of the quotes in this page are provided by " Bits & Pieces. They are provided free by "Bits & Pieces" - a daily in box - electronic mail delivery service of : BITS & PIECES and is a copyright of The Economics Press, Inc., 12 Daniel Road, Fairfield, NJ 07004, USA. All rights reserved with them. The views, opinions and interpretations are personal. Sponsorship does not mean that the sponsors endorse them. Editorial Policy © Copyright, Oct-08 . www.madgopes.com . Without prejudice. All rights reserved www.mmgindia.com is the official website of Madras Management Group, Chennai, India. www.madgopes.com and www.mmg.name are personal websites and all editorials are published under their banner to retain editorial independence. We would highly appreciate feedback from readers and it may be sent to ipr@mmg.name.