It’s that goal setting time of year again… and I just had a quick review of the goal setting research – gave myself a shock reminder!

People who ‘do their best’ consistently under-perform against those who have challenging, demanding goals.  So if goal setting is weak, ineffective or non-existent at your place of work, then you ( and everyone else) are almost certainly not achieving what you could – even if you are working very hard.

The toughest pill to swallow – even if you have given your managers loads of SMART type goal setting training, the chances are they may still not set good goals. It’s not that people don’t ‘get ‘ SMART – its just that setting good goals takes time and is hard work.

You can find a great summary of all the goal research at

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~antonvillado/courses/08c_psyc101002/Research%20Report%204.pdf

If you’d like some ideas on what to do about goal setting – there is a free white paper here

http://www.3c-performance-management.co.uk/consultancy/white-papers.html

Happy Reading!