Goal Setting: An Example of why it is Not Easy to Practice Evidence-Based Management
I am a strong advocate of Evidence-Based Management. Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer provide some of the best thinking on EBM, and I often quote passages from their books The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense here in my articles.
But honestly, it can be very difficult to implement sometimes. There is an OCEAN of peer-reviewed, scientific research out there on a number of subjects, so just sorting though it can be a challenge even for folks like me that are trained to do so. And many times after reading what appears to be an important article in a high quality journal, I have one of three reactions when I think of how I would explain the relevance of the research to practicing managers:
1. Huh? What the heck did they just say?
2. Ok, I get what you are saying, but what am I supposed to do with this?
3. Is that it? There is really nothing radically new here.
To make things even more challenging, even the best researchers often disagree about what the evidence really says.
There is a UGLY debate about goal setting that has found its way into the publication Academy of Management Perspectives. The debate is about whether our knowledge concerning the effectiveness of goal setting is so well established it cannot be questioned, or whether there is still more important knowledge yet to be discovered.
On one side we have four extremely well trained scholars from Harvard Business School, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, and the University of Arizona. These scholars contend that goal setting is like a prescription-strength medication that can have “both powerful positive effects and formidable negative side effects” (p. 83). A summary of their research was printed in The Economist in March 2009.
On the other side of the debate are Edwin Locke and Gary Latham. Locke’s website states that the Locke and Latham goal setting theory was ranked #1 in importance among management theories. Locke and Latham conclude the “attacks on goal setting, full of sound and fury,….are much ado about nothing.” (p. 91). Locke and Latham cast the four scholars that question the efficacy of goal setting as practicing dubious science and ethics, and they are in turn labeled by the opposition as “Scholars Gone Wild.” This is as nasty as it gets.
Is goal setting “a slam dunk?” Or are there significant limits to the effects of this prescription that we still need to learn and document more rigorously? I prefer to pitch my tent in the camp with those still on the journey of learning. If you think you know it all, you have nothing left to learn. That’s the cause of a demise that you won’t see coming until it is too late.
As Sutton and Pfeffer point out, “even the best medicine has side effects.” I’ll give you more of my anecdotal observations on goal setting in a future post. Stay tuned!
About the Author: Bret L. Simmons
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Goal Setting: A Few Anecdotal Observations. « Bret L. Simmons | August 14, 2009
- LeaderLab » The Practical Insignificance Of Exceptional Management Research | January 3, 2011
Welcome to my blog! Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section of my posts. I publish all constructive, non-anonymous comments. 
Having been the recipient of goal based management in a variety of forms I look forward to your anecdotes. Given the speed at which human behavior is changing, I find any scholars in the more social of sciences claiming issues are resolved and closed to debate to be on shaky ground.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 14th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Fred, I totally concur. In the social sciences there are few if any closed debates. When I post my few observations about goal setting, I hope you will return and share some of yours. Thanks!! Bret
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Brett
Goal setting was a Big thing in the software firm I worked. There is the annual senior management forum where goals, targets and objectives are handed down from one layer to the next, top to bottom. In addition there are quarterly reviews where adjustments and corrections are made to goals and objectives.
It is hysterical and creates tension around the organization.. grave consequences will result if one can’t meet one’s goals.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 14th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Michael: You nailed a few of my big concerns about how goal setting is often administered – poorly. Goals handed down and not negotiated, grave consequences, tension – excellent points. Thanks for sharing! Bret
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I’ve been in and around industry/business long enough to have this impression: 25, 30, 40 years ago managers and executives did not often set numeric goals; over time it became obligatory–measures of achievement naked unaccompanied by a goal, thereby to show gap and degree of gap closure.
I can’t (yet) prove this, but have been building a research file and plotting ways to get at then vs. now practices in management-by-goals. A Google search, part of the research, is how I found your blog on the subject.
Actually, just before your blog came up, I had Googled “dubious management goals” and was quite surprised that first up was a reference to a section from my own 2007 book. It’s some pages that raise all sorts of issues about performance metrics, management-by-the-numbers, and so on.
I see management goals (except necessary ones, such as the need to cut cash outlays, or the firm goes under) as hopes plucked out of the air. They are like New Years’ resolutions. Actually, those are always personal, and personal goals–maybe even small team goals–are okay. For some of us they motivate us–as constant reminders (e.g., to lay off the calories, or not be late to work). For many others, they fall flat, as they would without the goal, but no harm done.
A management goal is far different. It boils down hugely complex, interacting sets of variables to a single numeric. Achieving the number does what? Much better than that numeric goal is measuring progress by a trend line, the important characteristics of which are steepness, length (months, years), and evenness.
A few months ago I ran across some of the goals debate that has appeared in academic journals (I was a prof for years, but with more years doing applied research as an independent). I’ve corresponded with one of the lead authors, who had not made the connection between management goals and the performance measures–”metrics”–that are, in business, the main reason for the goals.
How can there be a goal that does not get tied to a performance number? How can the subject of management goals and numerics not be cause for a subtraction that reveals a performance gap? (Showing gaps is, parenthetically, the primary way that management consultants try to get contracts.) I find plenty of fault for the whole works. But most managers, irrationally, would be lost without their goals and metrics–and gap analysis.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Welcome, Richard! I really appreciate your expert thoughts on this topic. I am a huge fan of continuous improvement so your books look very interesting. If anyone reads this comment, I would encourage you to Google Richard or go to Amazon.com and look for his books.
“Hope plucked out of the air” I concur. Too many goals are arbitrary and reflect a total lack of knowledge of what the current system is actually capable of producing. It was either Deming or Joiner that said most managers are numerically illiterate and that is certainly reflected in the way they approach goal setting.
Thanks, Richard! Bret
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