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: The Buck Stops Here

The Problems of Goals

By Stuart Buck, Esq.

An interesting article from the Boston Globe on the pitfalls of setting goals. The primary problem with (some) goals, it seems to me, is the potential for distorting behavior, something that is more likely to occur if the goal is only a proxy for what you really want to happen. I'm not sure I buy the article's primary example of this, though: IN THE EARLY years of this decade, General Motors had a goal, and it was 29. Determined to boost its flagging profits and reverse a long, steady fall from postwar dominance, the automotive giant did the natural thing: it set a goal. The company pledged to recapture 29 percent of the American market, the share it had ebbed past in 1999. The number 29 became a corporate mantra, and some GM executives took to wearing lapel pins with the number emblazoned on them...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Buck Stops Here on April 15, 2009 (boomark / email).