…goal setting should be undertaken modestly and carefully, with a focus more on personal rather than financial gain. They* also make the case that much more research–and more skepticism–is needed about the practice of goal setting. “Rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for students of management, experts need to conceptualize goal setting as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision,” the authors write. “Given the sway of goal setting on intellectual pursuits in management, we call for a more self-critical and less self-congratulatory approach to the study of goal setting.”
I tell my CEO executive coaching clients, prior to the executive offsite, that the CEO can dictate the values statement, perhaps with some team input on word choice. If the organization’s stated values are not entirely consistent with the CEO’s personal values you are in for a rough ride. The CEO must embody and have an emotional commitment to the vision, so it largely comes directly out of him or her, too. I like to start the offsite at a dinner where the CEO clearly and emotionally states the values and vision. Then, with those guideposts, the team can get to work on strategy, tactics, milestones, etc.
A question naturally emerges when I suggest this sequence: what about the executives who do not share the CEO’s values or vision? This helps smoke them out early and by “out,” I mean resigning from the company. Any compromise on values is a step into the abyss, what Bion called “non-work.”
There have been more than 110 goal setting experiments conducted in the laboratory and in organizations in just the last twelve years. Ninety percent of these studies obtained positive results for goal setting. This makes goal setting one of the most dependable and robust techniques in all the motivational literature. … A recent study of high and low productivity … found that goal setting and deadlines were the single most frequently mentioned causes of … high productivity. [page 6]
For more than twenty years, I have led groups and individuals through a powerful goal-setting process with astonishing results: marriages, career changes, doubled incomes, published books, and more.
The two downloads linked from this post include all you need. Use the Specific Measurable Results (SMR) Kitworkbook and podcast to follow the same planning method my executive coaching clients have long employed. Like them, you can create a (more…)
He thought–while his hand moved rapidly–what a power there was in words; later, to those who heard them, but first for the one that found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought first takes shape into words.
In 2008, I spoke with two groups of business leaders that I coach on the topic, “What should we be doing now to weather the down economy?” Seven ideas received broad support:
Stay in touch with your center and manage your outlook.
Get busy with personal, executive-to-executive selling.
Why plan? So much changes, so many things are unforeseen. The world is unpredictable and out of our control. The people we depend upon are fallible and have free will. There is no telling what they will do, how they will react to us.
Any airliner spends most of each trip off course and pointed in the wrong direction. Wind, weather, and traffic are constantly diverting the vessel from the perfect path. Rather than being discouraged by the impossibility of staying on course, the pilot and the instruments are continually working to compensate for these random and unforeseeable influences. After a trip of “unplanned” but expected diversions, airliners almost always arrive at their intended destinations. What would be the result if the pilot did not declare where and when he would land? How would he react to the distractions and diversions? Would you buy a ticket on that plane? Rather, could that pilot enroll you in his project?
You have many choices each day–even if they don’t seem like choices–and a consistent target will give you a ready reference for making those choices. Your plan is useful not because it is a description of what will happen, but because it provides a reference point to evaluate and respond to the inevitable circumstances that differ from the plan.
Planning is not Predicting.
The value of a plan is not as a guarantee that things will happen exactly as you expected, but that when the unexpected does -inevitably- occur, you can notice and respond to the deviation.
The following is an excerpt from: STARTUP by Jerry Kaplan
…I first learned the truth about scientific progress from my Ph.D. dissertation advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.
A shy Indian man with a shiny, balding head and an occasional stutter, Dr. Joshi was widely known for his brilliant work in artificial intelligence. Our weekly meetings to help me find a thesis topic were more like therapy sessions than academic discussions. Most of the time he would (more…)
Most of my CEO executive coaching clients have detailed, measurable goals. We use them as navigational aids, comparing interim results with plans and expectations, to help the client make adjustments to their attitudes and activity. I was in the midst of one such review when the client took the conversation in a novel and fruitful direction.
I asked, “Have you looked into that club for sharing exotic sports cars we discussed?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, ” he responded. “Why (more…)
My executive coaching clients often ask how to translate their new insights into regular practice so that the benefit of the coaching is integrated into their lives. This is crucial since the adult executives I coach have well established and largely successful habits that are expressed automatically.
How do we make new strategies and methods just as habitual? One of my favorite techniques is the traveling pennies.
Is there a practice you and your coach have developed that you want to make a part of your life? Perhaps you choose to center three times per day, express gratitude more often, or ask a clarifying question before responding to an inquiry. Here’s how to “operationalize” your good intentions.
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