"The strange life of goal setting"
Every time I’ve worked with goal setting as part of performance management, the same pattern repeats. At the start of the year, everyone carefully writes down their goals. Then the “real” work begins. The goals fade into the background while people focus on shipping features, fixing outages, keeping customers happy. Months later, review season arrives. Suddenly the goals resurface. But now they’re backwards-engineered, reinterpreted or tailored to fit the work that already happened. It makes you wonder:what are we really measuring? The intent of the goals, or our ability to retrofit a narrative? This doesn’t mean goals are useless. But it does mean you should treat them with skepticism. The written objective isn’t the driver of behavior, the day-to-day pressures and interactions are. Until next time, ✉️ Enjoying The Messy Middle? If someone sent this email your way and you’d like to get it direct, you can sign up here. |