Outcome Goals Are Overrated

One of the more creative acts of leadership is setting goals that inspire performance.

Setting goals is easy, but crafting goals that narrow attention, build excitement, and motivate people to achieve is artful.

The best leaders are masterful goal setters who think long and hard about the targets they place in front of others. They know that the quality of the goals they design has a tremendous influence on what people will achieve.

So, they distinguish between two goal types in a way most leaders don’t.

The most common goals set in any organization or team are best called Outcome goals.

These goals focus on the end result of a competition, event, or initiative. As such, they are highly dependent on external factors and the performance of others. This means they are not within the complete control of those who pursue them.

Outcomes like achieving a level of profitability, attaining a promotion, winning a competition, acquiring a new coveted customer, increasing market share, qualifying for a competition, and earning an accolade are common examples of Outcome goals.

In contrast, Performance goals focus on achieving a specific standard that is independent of how others perform and are largely immune to the influence of external factors.

Performance goals are completely within the control of those who pursue them and typically reflect progress or improvement against a baseline, target, or record.

Examples of Performance goals include averaging 10 new prospect conversations each week, decreasing the number of errors in a process, designing more valuable meetings, exceeding the record of foul shots made in a season, increasing the number of joint projects between departments, improving customer satisfaction by 10 percentage points, and completing a product launch by an agreed upon deadline.

Performance goals, by definition, measure how well a team member or team performs on a specific task or action, regardless of the ultimate outcome. That’s what makes them so important and inspirational.

Because people control how they perform, the goals they set regarding their performance provide a roadmap of progress.

People and teams are inspired with each improvement and success, which is entirely up to their effort, skill, preparation, and practice.

Through well-crafted performance goals, people learn how to be more persistent, confident, and skillful without consideration for an outcome that may or may not become realized.

Leaders who only set Outcome goals pressurize performance. Because everything becomes judged against the attainment of the outcome, the stakes are extremely high and represent a Pass/Fail.

When failure occurs, often after the team performs well but factors beyond their control dash their hopes, people become demotivated, lose confidence, and carry their disappointment forward.

While Outcome goals are important for setting direction and highlighting the ultimate prize worth struggling for, Performance goals keep people grounded in what they need to do now to succeed.

Leaders and teams too often focus exclusively on Outcome goals to the detriment of long-term motivation and success. Team members and teams need both.

How many of the goals you set are Outcome goals?