Strategic HR Technology Investment: A Comprehensive Checklist for Global HR Teams
We all agree to this point that goal setting helps us focus and achieve things faster. Good goal setting brings good results, but poor goal setting brings poor results.
So now you may ask, what is good goal setting? And what are the consequences of poor goal setting, in that how does it affect the company’s bottom line. We’ll help you explore these two main ideas in this article.
There’s such a big emphasis on goal setting simply because goals map a path for the future. Many of the industry big-shots have agreed that goal setting has played a big part in getting them to where they are today. In most cases, it is flat out specified that clear goal-setting and success are deeply interlinked and cannot exist without the other.
And yet, it may be surprising to find that goal setting is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some organizations prefer to wing it if that is the approach they have taken from the start. While others tend to set goals without realizing the amount of thought that needs to go into accurately mapping the future.
Also read: A 7 Step Guide To A Successful 360 Degree Feedback Process
So let us take a look at some of the consequences that arise from poor goal-setting and how it impacts organizations.
If your goals are poorly thought out, the path to the future becomes muddled. Employees will not know where to direct their efforts, managers will not know when to course correct, nobody knows what the end goal looks like and everything is chaotic. In the end, the organization suffers because profit margins are impacted and productivity consistently falls. And all of this occurs simply because goals were not mapped out well in advance.
This is another egregious outcome that stems from poor goal setting. Productivity often happens at a premium. Employees are paid to work long and hard hours and organizations spend reams on money on offices, equipment, tools, employees, benefits, etc. in order to ensure that work gets done. Poor goal setting undermines all of these efforts and renders them useless. In short, a poor goal setting is often an expensive failure.
Poor goal setting also changes the markers of success. And this is dangerous because a marker of success should not be something as basic as finishing up a goal, rather it should be the outcome that determines how successful the goal is.
Imagine your goals are frequently shifting and changing. Can be quite frustrating, isn’t it? You might be jumping from project to project, not really being able to grow roots anywhere. This has a significant impact on productivity and also breeds disengagement. Stability is an important factor when it comes to working. When employees are faced with a lot of instability work-wise, they tend to seek other pastures.
Also read: Why Every Organization Should Practice Continuous Feedback
Unfortunately, one of the biggest casualties of poor goal setting is creativity being killed. When goals keep changing, employees are not going to get a chance to flex their creative muscles because they are so busy scrambling to accomplish the goal, since they have no idea how long it is going to last. Mind you, in this context, goals are not being changed nor are they being course-corrected. Rather, they are arbitrarily being dropped.
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