A good friend of mine and I were recently talking about creating goals to achieve certain results.
Creating and setting goals is a great practice in many cases: losing weight, getting good grades, buying a new car. Those are all great examples of goals that can be easily achieved through a methodical process. However, the waters start to get muddy when you start setting goals and benchmarks in business. Shooting for 10% growth, a 25% reduction in overhead, a 30% increase in productivity, they are all great benchmarks for you to aim for, but they can end up limiting your potential.
Photo Credit: CarbonNYC
Why setting goals limits potential
It is human nature for us to strive to meet specific goals and benchmarks that we have established, and that once those goals are met we tend to celebrate victory and continue on cruise-control until the next goal is created.
Example with specific goals:
Your goal: Reduce expenditures by 15%.
Your actions: You do whatever is possible to reduce expenditures down 15%.
Results: A 15% decrease in expenditures.
Example with broad goals:
Your goal: Reduce turnover.
Your actions: You work hard taking whatever means necessary to reduce the overall expenditures.
Results: A 27% decrease in expenditures.
You can see by the second example that not limiting yourself to a specific number helped you realize an additional 12% savings.
