14
Goal Setting to Shape Behavior
Make haste slowly.
Few things consume more management time than goal setting. Establishing “realistic, attainable, yet challenging goals” has been a battle cry for legions of managers—and management consultants. In fact, training courses in goal setting and the accompanying “conducting an effective performance appraisal meeting” are second only to sales management skills as the most popular nontechnical training courses offered by most companies.
You’d think that as often as goals are discussed, developed, and used by managers, there would be agreement on how to set goals and document their value to business. Yet there is not. SMART goals are very popular today, I think, because the acronym is easy to remember. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, results, and time-bound.
Can you see what’s missing? It should be obvious by now. There are no consequences in the model, positive or negative. In other words, they are not very smart. Although I do not have specific research on these SMART goals, I would bet that they are not any more effective than traditional goals because the same feature is missing from them as well.
As I’ve mentioned previously, noted quality expert W. Edwards Deming advised us to eliminate goals and standards altogether. Deming had observed how, in actual practice, goals and standards limit performance. He said that people who are capable of more reach their goal level and stop. In other words, performers typically give only what is asked for, even when they are capable of more.
Remember, in earlier chapters I described this same scenario as a sign of management by negative reinforcement. What Deming saw in many organizations was that the majority of people attain goals in order to escape or avoid the consequences of not meeting the goals rather than attaining or exceeding their goals as a means of receiving positive reinforcement.
Understanding the True Nature of Goals
Goals are antecedents for either reinforcement or punishment. If people are punished when they fail to reach a goal, they will reach the goal, if they can, only to avoid the punishment. However, if people reach their goals and receive positive reinforcement, they will not stop when they get to goal but will continue to perform at their best, knowing that more positive reinforcement will be forthcoming.
The belief that goals improve performance interferes with their effective use. If goals are set but there are no consequences for either success or failure, the goals will produce no improvement and ultimately will be a waste of time.
A textile sales organization in New York used a goal-setting process called targeting with its salespeople. This semiannual process consumed several months of management time each year. It involved the sales manager sitting with each salesperson, reviewing every account, and setting sales targets for the next sales season.
When asked how many targets were met each season, the most common response by far was “about 75 percent.” The actual data were available but were not routinely reviewed. When we actually examined results for the previous season, we discovered that only 8 percent of the targets had actually been met! Management was shocked and was sure that the data were wrong. We then looked at the data from the season before and found that goal attainment was only 11 percent.
Management had mistakenly assumed that good participative goal setting would surely produce improvement.
Goals Get Results (A Management Myth)
What we know by now is that the setting event will not produce the outcome if the consequences don’t favor it. Goals, no matter how well conceived, are antecedents. Only if they are antecedents for positive reinforcement will people be enthusiastic about reaching them and willing to set more.
The Best Mistake
When Deming encouraged management to eliminate goal setting, he was really calling for the elimination of goals as they are currently used. And I agree. However, I know that goal setting does have the potential to contribute to improved performance if used in the correct way.
Very clearly, the purpose of setting goals should be to increase opportunities for positive reinforcement. If this is the purpose, we should want many, not few, goals. And contrary to common sense, the best mistake to make in goal setting is to set the goals too low. The reasons for these techniques may be obvious to you by now:
- If the goal is low, it increases the probability of success. If the goal is reached and success is celebrated, the motivation to do even more the next time is increased. It is not far-fetched to expect goals to be set where attainment is 100 percent. This will ramp up faster than larger goals and exceed them more often.
- If goals become the antecedent for positive reinforcement, then the more goals you have, the more occasions there are for positive reinforcement.
The mistake that is most commonly made when setting goals is associated with the word challenging. The concept of “challenging goals” usually causes managers to set fewer goals and to set them too high. Fewer goals that are harder to attain mean very few opportunities for positive reinforcement and reward. The result is a lower number of goals attained.
The Challenge of Stretch Goals
I hope by this time that your company has discontinued the practice of setting stretch goals. Stretch goals reduce the probability of success because they are too difficult, maybe even impossible, to attain. “Stretching” reduces the probability of success. Depending on how far your performers are stretching, the probability of success may be less than 50 percent. No business can survive these days by reaching its goals only 50 percent of the time. Researchers have observed that fewer than 10 percent of stretch goals are ever reached.
Stretch goals evolved as a means of avoiding the phenomenon Deming observed. That is, people get to the goal and wait for the next one before starting to improve again. When there is a goal and then a stretch goal beyond the initial one, people know they can’t quit, but they also know that failing to reach the stretch goal won’t be “the end of the world” because management is admitting that the probability of attainment is low. Using stretch goals to try to fool people into superior performance just doesn’t work.
As I mentioned previously, when I talk negatively about stretch goals, I annoy many managers because they have used them and consider them successful, although they rarely have any data on attainment rate. Rather than being annoyed, they should be excited about the possibilities that using better methods provide.
Make Haste Slowly
You may have gotten the idea that when I say things like “set goals that are relatively easy to achieve,” I don’t understand the urgent demand for dramatic improvement in the marketplace today. To the contrary, I understand that the urgency is so great that we can’t afford any more mistakes in the use of goals and standards, whether applied to individuals or to the organization as a whole. We can’t afford to waste another decade guessing about goal setting. We can’t afford to waste another day. Let’s stop guessing and look at what we know.
Equal Goals Are Unfair to All
Nothing is more unequal than the equal
treatment of unequals.
Across-the-board goals are unfair to everybody. For example, if we ask for 10 percent improvement in productivity from everybody, it will generally be too difficult for the lowest performers, too easy for the average performers, and too difficult for the best performer.
The learning curve in Figure 14-1 illustrates the proper way to set goals. At the lower end of the curve, notice that the goals are modest. In the middle range, the goals are more moderate. At the upper end, the goals are once again smaller. Lindsley (1991), mentioned earlier, taught that all goals should be equally difficult.
Figure 14–1 Goal setting in a training situation.
Look at it this way: if the average performer can do 100 units per hour, a 10 percent improvement would be 110, an increase of 10 units. For performers completing only 80 per hour, this seems equitable, an increase of only 8, but the problem is that if doing more were easy, they would already be doing more. Because they are behind every day, the organizational consequences and consequences from the supervisor are typically not positive, but yet they still don’t do more. On the other end of the scale, those doing 120 per hour have to do 132 just to meet the goal, an increase of 12. The problem is that because the top-end performers are close to the asymptote, any improvement is difficult.
For each performer, you should set the first goal slightly ahead of his or her current performance. You will make much more progress if you use short time-frames (i.e., days, weeks) and smaller goals than you will if you set high goals and longer time-frames (i.e., month, quarter, year).
The process of setting attainable goals based on current performance allows you to reinforce everyone for his or her individual performance. It also allows all performers to progress at their own pace.
Take the case of an individual in a group performing at 73 units per day when he should be at 110 per day. Don’t hesitate to start with an initial goal of 75, even if others in the group are producing at much higher levels. The next goal might be 77 or 78 and the next after that 83 or 85.
If you use daily or weekly goals, it won’t take long for a reinforced performer to reach the ultimate goal; when he gets there, you will have a turned-on, fired-up individual. Compare this approach with one where you tell the entire work group that everybody needs to produce at 110, 120, or more and then wait until they do before you provide any reinforcement. You might wait a long time.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race—More than a Fable
The fastest way to change individual behavior is to set small goals, reinforce effort, and celebrate attainment. Remember, positive reinforcement accelerates the rate of improvement. The only way we can achieve dramatic improvement in anything is with lots of reinforcement.
Think about your organization. Think about yourself. If you can’t visualize how you and the rest of management are going to act when the organization is successful, you will probably not be in a position to celebrate effectively when you are. The Japanese have a saying, “Many raindrops make an ocean.” This means that every improvement, no matter how small, is valuable and a cause for some recognition.
Americans seem to have a hard time with this. We want large, rapid changes, and we want them now! Our motto seems to be, “If you can’t give me want I want right now, I will get someone who can.”
Well, that approach is a trap. The resources to make dramatic change are most likely already at your fingertips. Consider this: suppose that you have 1,000 people in your company. At the end of the day, as everybody is leaving, you ask them, “Tomorrow, do you think you could do your job this much better?” as you hold your index finger and thumb a quarter inch apart. What do you think people will say? The overwhelming majority will say, “Sure!”
Let’s say all 1,000 say, “Yes” and then actually make some small improvement. And you, in some way, let them know that you noticed and appreciated the improvement. At the end of the next workday you ask the same question. You will probably get another “Yes.” How many days would you have to do this before the company’s performance improved dramatically? Three weeks? A month? Surely not longer, because you would be compounding 1,000 improvements every day.
Think many small improvements; think frequent positive reinforcement.
Shaping: The Fastest Way to Change
The fastest way to improve performance actually seems slow. It involves positively reinforcing small improvements. Because positive reinforcement increases the rate of behavior by reinforcing small changes in performance, you are able to accelerate performance early and often.
If we reinforced every behavior in a learning situation, we would generate a lot more excitement, enthusiasm, and improvement than if we reinforced only every 100 behaviors. The rate of change is directly related to the number of reinforcers received.
The technical name for this process is shaping. Shaping is the process of positively reinforcing successive approximations (small) toward a goal. The ability to shape behavior is the essence of effective teaching, coaching, managing, and supervising. Shaping is at the heart of bringing out the best in people. To shape effectively requires the ability to break down a task into small steps, the patience to reinforce very small changes, and the celebration of reaching the final goal.
Creating Rubik’s Fanatics
Years ago, I used to demonstrate how I could teach everybody to do the Rubik’s cube, a popular three-dimensional puzzle. All I needed to “hook” them was 30 minutes with their hands on the cube. It was easy. I was able to generate so much enthusiasm with this shaping exercise that, eventually, I had to give it up as a classroom exercise because the class became so involved in practicing the cube that they couldn’t focus on the class work.
The way I created this enthusiasm was first to teach the students how to find the “top” of the cube. I showed them how to determine the top, tossed it to them, and asked them to find it themselves. A simple verbal reinforcer, “Good,” was sufficient to let them know they were successful. I repeated this process again and again until they were always successful at finding the top quickly. Then I showed them the next step of finding the colored blocks that should go on the top, then how to move those blocks to the top, and so on. Using this step-by-step approach, I arranged for them to receive several hundred reinforcers in 30 minutes. This was enough to keep many of them awake late into the night, practicing. The next morning they showed up early to ask my help with a step they couldn’t remember, always eager to learn the next step.
I liked this problem as a class exercise because moving the sides of the Rubik’s cube is about as meaningless a task as you can devise. And when you’re successful, the only thing to do is mess it up and start over again. It clearly demonstrates how meaning resides in consequences—not behavior.
The result of a completed cube was too far away from the initial tasks to provide any meaningful reinforcement. It was only the many positive consequences that were provided for making one block at a time go into place that not only kept the students working on the cube in class but also induced them to continue to work on it for hours into the evening.
The example of shaping that I have just described may sound impractical for the real world of work. In fact, however, it is very pragmatic and efficient. It requires only two things: (1) the final outcome must be important to you and/or the company, and (2) there must be positive reinforcement for very small increments of change.
If the change is important, it is worth the investment of your time. And if you will invest the time and effort in reinforcing often in the early stages of improvement, you will have to reinforce much less often later on. In other words, it takes a lot of reinforcement to establish a habit, but only an occasional reinforcer to keep it going.
You have probably heard the expression, “Pay me now or pay me later.” The effective use of shaping costs you more time and effort now but will pay you many dividends in improved performance and reduction in turnover and in retraining time and disciplinary action later.
Organizational Goals and Benchmarking
IQS Study Explained
The International Quality Study (IQS, 1992) commissioned by the American Quality Foundation found that benchmarking, the practice of tracking business processes considered to be the best in a given sphere of influence (“best in industry” or “best in the world,” for example), produced positive results on bottom-line variables only in the best-performing companies. Companies rated medium or low in performance showed no performance improvement. The study showed that “in fact, low performers who benchmark their marketing and sales systems can actually expect their performance to suffer.”
When you understand how the average company uses goal setting, it is easy to see why the IQS found such results. The best-performing companies probably find the levels of performance of the benchmark companies to be easily attainable. As such, they could get a lot of reinforcement from the knowledge that attainable improvement resulted in being on track to be the “best in the world,” “best in the industry,” and so on.
However, many of the medium and low performers probably were overwhelmed by the gap between their performance and that of the benchmark. Indeed, some managers probably used the data to punish low performers.
These lower-performing companies must focus first on incremental gains with small goals. This will increase confidence in their ability to improve. As small gains are made, the subsequent gains will be bigger and bigger. Soon these companies will be in a position to compete with, even challenge, the best companies in the world.
Remember, where you set goals in relation to present performance is critical, but the most important thing is the celebration of goal attainment. The celebration of attainment is what makes goals motivating.
David McClelland, a Harvard psychologist, has studied achievement for many years. His research determined that the highest achievers in our society set moderate goals. Being the highest achievers probably means that they have high aims but that they use moderate goals to manage their performance day to day. Your employees are no different. They can and will operate at their best every day. What we have to do is help them to get to that point one step at a time. Asking for quantum leaps in performance will only discourage the performer and disappoint the manager who is asking. Goals can play a part in bringing out the best in people, but only when they are used as opportunities to recognize progress toward being the best.