3 Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid

In 2002, professors Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham published a summary of their 25 years of research on goal-setting, which could have been the final word in how to create goals. But many organizations don’t follow Locke and Latham’s advice. In fact, there are three techniques common in today’s organizations that go directly against their findings: SMART goals, cascading goals, and percentage weights that indicate relative goal importance. The SMART method (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound) encourages people to set low goals instead of demanding goals that generate the greatest levels of effort and performance. Cascading goals start with the president setting their goals, then the VP, then the directors, and so on, with each level supporting the one above. In practice, nobody can begin the goal-setting process until their boss has created their own goals, so the process drags on interminably. Assigning percentage weights to goals to indicate their relative importance is counterproductive because it’s impossible to accurately identify the relative importance of goals to a 5% level of granularity. This method also results in an overly mathematical approach to performance appraisals.