Category: Beyond Leadership

In my last post, I talked about the importance of goal commitment when setting goals for yourself and/or those you lead.

Today, I want to discuss the law of diminishing returns and how it relates to goal setting.  I have honestly thought about a dozen different things that I want to focus on for the New Year, have you?  The law of diminishing returns tells us that the more goals we set, the less likely we are to achieve them.  One goal distracts from another, leaving us less likely to accomplish anything.

From a personal perspective, one way to avoid this is to have a mission statement (see the January 2^nd post) and make sure that any goal you set is related to that purpose.  Another way is to answer two questions that Stephen Covey advocates for asking in his chapter on “Principles of Personal Management” in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  They are:

Question 1: “What one thing could you do (you aren’t doing now) that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?”

Question 2: “What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?” (pp 146)

These can be very simple things.  The key is, there are only two actions or goals and they are done regularly (see last week’s post on changing behaviors to create habits and goal commitment).

From a leadership perspective, the law of diminishing returns tells us, keep it simple.  Too many goals tell those we lead that nothing really is important (and we tell ourselves this when we set too many for ourselves).  I recently heard a Facility Manager in a meeting say that he had three things he focuses on and measures relentlessly (based on lean principles) with his team of over 700 people.  He said he never leaves a meeting with anyone without focusing on those three key goals.

Nothing gives us all ADD more than too many priorities. Have you experienced ADD, and therefore diminished results, because of too many goals or priorities?

**This post originally appeared on Horizon Point Blogpost January 23, 2012.

Research has shown that goal setting, if done correctly, is one of the most supported motivational techniques (Jex & Britt 2008). Setting goals can help you maximize success for yourself and/or the people that you lead.

We’ve all heard of the acronym “SMART” that guides good goal setting:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time bound

I certainly advocate for following these guidelines with any resolution or goal you set. But there are three things that I want to focus on over the next few weeks that have been shown to be important components of goal setting that are not emphasized as much as the acronym components:

1. Goal commitment
2. The law of diminishing returns
3. Feedback

In terms of commitment, before you set a New Year’s resolution, honestly examine how committed you are to the goal. Many people fail because the behaviors that lead to goal attainment are not established by habits. For example, losing weight is one of the classic goal setting examples. If your goal is to lose 10 pounds in 3 months, if you don’t modify your behavior to make it a habit to exercise more and eat less, it isn’t going to work. Your behaviors reflect your commitment. If you’re a leader and need to foster goal commitment with those you lead, here are two tips:

1. Set goals with people you lead versus for them (participative goal setting) -or-

2. If you have to set goals for people, “sell” don’t “tell” those goals.

If you’re interested in reading more about how and why goal setting works and how goal commitment is intertwined in this, check out “Goal-Setting- A Motivational Technique That Works” by Gary Latham and Edwin Locke.

I’ll talk about the law of diminishing returns next week and why feedback is important as well as some tools for providing feedback to yourself or those you lead to round out January’s posts.

Reference: Jex, S.M. & Britt, T.W. (2008). Organizational Psychology: A Scientist-Practitioner Approach. 2^nd ed. Wiley. Pp 247

**This post originally appeared on Horizon Point Blogpost January 16, 2012.

Hopefully you’ve gotten your 2015 new years resolutions down on paper and have a way to track attainment towards them.

Once you’ve done this, I’d encourage you to forget about the goal(s) for 2015 and instead focus on the process that leads to achieving the goals.  Why? Focusing on the long-term often leads to paralyses in the short term.  For example, if your goal is to lose 100 pounds, this could easily become overwhelming.  If you instead focus on a sub-objective towards that goal of limiting your calorie intake to say, 2000 a day and exercising for 30 minutes 5 days a week, these sub-objectives are much easier to measure on a daily basis and much easier to achieve from day-to-day.

In the case of a business example, if your goal is to generate $1 million in revenue this year, what processes and daily actions do you need to put in place and then monitor to achieve this goal?  One thing that might lead to goal attainment more so than focusing on that large target, is what will help you achieve that target daily or weekly like tracking of sales calls made.

There is no better example of how this process or mindset leads to success than how it is demonstrated in Nick Saban’s philosophy.  His relentless focus on “the process” leads to incredible results in the form of wins and national titles.   But Saban and therefore the team’s goal is never winning the national title.  It is always playing the best at every down.  Everyone doing their job down after down leads to team performance that results in success and makes the process of getting there a lot less daunting by focusing you’re your next move not a feat that can seem daunting.

Need help with your next move?  Focus on the sub-objectives section of our goal setting worksheet.

What is your next move towards success in 2015?