The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of success and two of its key focuses are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Goal setting is important for anything you want to achieve. In some instances though, goals can be a hindrance. The following post discusses how to set reasonable goals for your business and is entitled, Why Your Business Goals Might Actually Be Redundant.
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Almost everybody talks about the effectiveness of setting goals. Everybody says how goals can help to keep you focused, help you to achieve more, and be beneficial in a plethora of other ways. However, that’s only really if you’re setting goals the right way and taking the correct approach. For those who aren’t pros at goal setting, they can actually be more of a hindrance than a help. That’s right; in some cases, setting goals can actually slow you down and stop you from achieving what you want to achieve. Let’s talk more about this below!
Focusing Solely On Reaching A Goal
When your team is focusing solely on achieving a goal, they may not be performing other tasks.
In short, your focus can become too narrow when you are focused on a goal, and you might even find that you sacrifice one goal for another goal. Something has got to give when you’re hyper focused on achieving a goal. More often than not, you will experience issues in other parts of your business. While you can get help from companies like WGroup IT Management consulting if you’re finding you haven’t got time for other aspects of running your business, you will still need to be realistic and balanced about what you are able to achieve.
Goals Can Be Limiting
Most people don’t realize that goals can be limiting, too. People tend to relax and take a break once goals are achieved, which often means they have overexerted themselves and won’t be motivated to do regular work for a while. People can get so used to having a goal that they don’t do much when they don’t have one to work towards.
Goal Setting Can Cause Bad Behaviour
Goal setting can actually encourage people to lie and cheat. For example, it isn’t unheard of for businesses to create falsified earnings to reach goals. This can cause no end of issues for the company.
When Do Goals Work?
Goals can work when you know exactly what you want to happen, and you’re not too concerned about secondary behaviours. You’ll also need to figure out whether unethical behaviour is a big risk or not. Always set goals with caution, and discuss the steps needed to be taken. Do what you can to prevent unethical behaviour. Research has shown that having individuals do an activity because they find the work rewarding in and of itself is much more effective than doing it because they have been given a goal. In fact, being given that goals can undermine this intrinsic value of work.
Most business owners don’t realize the negative effect that goal setting can have on their business and the people within it. However, now that you are aware of when goals can go wrong and when they can actually work, you may be able to set more effective goals when you need them and get more done in the long run.
How will you set goals moving forward? Let us know!
