The Illusion of Success 621.2
Reach for the stars. Pursue goals beyond your grasp. These are good life strategies. We never know how much we can accomplish until we try.
But what happens when we’re told we must reach the stars or suffer consequences?
A common workplace strategy to spur employee achievement is to set aggressive productivity objectives that, like mechanical rabbits that lead racing greyhounds, are usually beyond reach. Benignly called “stretch goals” by those who set them, the idea is to generate maximum effort. A salesperson who’s expected to increase sales by 10 percent may only achieve a 6 percent gain, but that’s still pretty good.
But there’s a downside to this clever management technique. For one thing, it generates unhealthy stress and low morale when employees catch on to the game and resent being manipulated like racing dogs. For another, unrealistic stretch goals overemphasize short-term performance and encourage employees to conceal, ignore, and defer problems. Finally, some employees will simply cheat to make the numbers.
Organizational audits conducted by Josephson Institute reveal that a high percentage of employees who are pressured to achieve ever-escalating numerical goals manipulate numbers and distort reports. A significant number outright lie.
Pressure is no excuse for cheating, but it’s a frequent cause. Those who play the stretch goal game are accountable for the predictable side effects of relentlessly pursuing numbers, especially if they don’t place even greater emphasis on honesty and integrity.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
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Comments
I'm not surprised at the results. When we are treated unfairly or dishonestly by those in charge, we have no incentive to act in a fair or honest way toward them. Whatever happened to the Golden Rule?
Posted by: stephanie | June 4, 2009 10:49 PM
Setting unrealistic stretch goals is poor leadership. However, challenging people to a higher level of work and encouraging, supporting, and recognizing them can be incredible leadership. People who work hard and accomplish things they never felt they could have greater self esteem and higher job and personal satisfaction. So when is it unfair to have those stretch goals?
The foundation needs to be properly laid. If you can't hold someone accountable within the bounds of honesty and integrity, the goal should not be there. If a leader can't see that, he or she is leading ghosts, not people. And people are doing the real work, not machines.
Posted by: David Quigley | June 5, 2009 5:22 AM
Having had a very diverse career including the business world, military, and now education, I have observed this phenomenon in a multitude of settings, most recently with No Child Left Behind. While it is good to set goals asking schools to achieve results, the false premise that all children be "above the rim" has created ethical problems with test-prep, teaching for the test, and other assorted schemes. All this has been done in the name of meeting state and federal goals. A better way to measure students' progress would be to look at individual gains over a two- or three-year (or more) span and compare the students to themselves. Comparing different classes and students to other students does not reliably or accurately measure achievement by either the student or the educational institution.
Posted by: Bruce | June 5, 2009 9:33 AM
Henry Community is celebrating 10 years with CHARACTER COUNTS! Our board has a member on it who is 92. She can hardly see but is an inspiration to all of us. She believes in the program as much as the rest of us. We are a small town of 2,500.
We are planning a training from CC this year. I was getting discouraged thinking about raising money to make this possible. But today a teacher stopped to visit me. She shared with me how exciting it is to be able to give recognition to a child who isn't in sports or hasn't the best grades but gets recognized for good character. She says the look on that student's face is so exciting. So I came home, put on my HCCC shirt, and am going out looking for donations. There are so many exciting things happening because of CC. I have really started getting into your commentaries and enjoy them all. Our local paper is putting one of them in each week. I am 62 and hope I have energy like our "Louise" many years to come. Our children and communities need people like you. Thanks for all you do!
Posted by: Mary Ann Magnuson, Chrmn.HCCC | July 2, 2009 9:41 AM