Divine goal-setting
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Does goal-setting actually work?
There's a difference between a list of daily or weekly tasks and your life and career goals. Yes, your day-to-day work helps you get where you want to go, but how do you set a target at which to aim? In fact, what's the point in even setting goals when plans so frequently change and life can often feel uncertain?
Well, as my guest on the podcast last week, Marc Effron, explained, the science is unequivocal – setting goals, and specifically big ones, is a vital component of high-performance at work.
Let's start by understanding why.
It’s human nature not just to live up to expectations but to exceed them. In some people, that manifests as proving people wrong – "I'll show them".
In others, it comes from wanting to demonstrate that our parents, friends, partner, or boss are right to believe in us.
Lastly, some are intrinsically motivated to achieve their maximum, given the tools at their disposal.
That said, the size of our ambition and the determination to succeed varies from person to person, which is why we can't directly correlate our success in business to the traditional definition of intelligence. Hard work, persistence, and resilience often play a much more significant role than IQ.
In practice, our performance rises to the level of well-defined and appropriately judged goals. On a small scale, if you challenge me to write 50,000 words for a book by the end of February next year, I'm going to make damn sure I do it. Yes, it seems ambitious, possibly even damaging to my health, but it's by no means impossible, and I'm highly motivated to do it. When you know something's achievable, you really can focus your mind on achieving it.
It's just as true in professional sport. As a track athlete with the ambition of competing for an Olympic title, you may have a particular target time in mind, which would make you a likely champion. Setting that big goal provides the discipline to stick with the strict diet and training regime and achieve your best.
I've written previously about Eliud Kipchoge's attempt to run a marathon in under two hours, a mark that was considered unbeatable. While in his case, it took a little more than just hard work – the support of a whole team of pacemakers and some custom-made, springy shoes helped – he eventually achieved the 'impossible'.
What are the characteristics of well-defined goals?
In the workplace, to achieve your goals, they should first be aligned with the interests of your employer - the success of which is often the sign of effective management and leadership. If you work for yourself, on the other hand, you might think about how your ambitions align with the needs of your customers.
In both cases, there'll be an intersection at which you can frame a time-bound, measurable goal that both motivates you and delivers value to your company or client. If you find it impossible to find alignment, then, frankly, you might want to consider another job.
That's not to say goal setting is easy. Like any other skill, you should treat it as something to improve on over time, and aiming high will help you do this.
In Marc Effron's book 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest), he gives a fantastic example of someone who literally did this to great effect.
While in the middle of a commission from Pope Julius II in 1506, Michelangelo, first and foremost a sculptor, was asked by the very same Pope to down his tools and pick up a paintbrush. The ‘client’ had decided he had other priorities and wanted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted with an image of the twelve apostles.
After politely declining, initially, invoking his already busy schedule, Michelangelo eventually caved in, on one condition. Instead of a relatively simple painting, he outlined a grand vision of illustrating major Old and New Testament stories in the form of hundreds of figures and powerful images.
What's more, Michelangelo brought in a famous theologian and friend, Augustinian friar Giles of Viterbo, to advise him on the project, reinforcing his already extensive biblical knowledge. The sixteenth-century, ecclesiastical equivalent of hiring Jony Ive (Apple’s legendary chief designer) and Tim Cook (previously COO and now CEO) to plan and execute your new product launch!
We all know the result. It seems that Julius (the Steve Jobs character in my fantastical and tenuous comparison) and Michelangelo knew what they were doing because, whether consciously or not, it was a textbook example of goal setting.
As Marc Effron pointed out, the Sistine Chapel project demonstrated:
Alignment - Michelangelo agreed with Julius' vision but suggested improvements
A Promise - he reprioritised his time and made the chapel his primary goal
Increasing the target by setting a stretch goal - why only paint a dozen people when he could create hundreds?
Framing - Michelangelo and his client agreed on a specific, substantial and measurable goal – to create a masterpiece on the ceiling of the chapel
What are your goals, and are they BIG enough?
You can hear my interview with Marc Effron on the podcast via THIS LINK. I’ll be sharing more thoughts and a selection of the week’s most interesting articles and podcasts later this week.