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How do you achieve incredible business results AND build a team for sustainable success?
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When it comes to setting the goals in your business, how do you go about it?
If you simply inflict or force goals on your team, they will likely resist. They may push back and, in extreme cases, may actively work against the goals you have set.
Take your team with you on the goal journey, and you are not only likely to achieve more than you expected, but you will have an engaged and motivated team focused on meeting the goals you and they have set.
Setting goals works, not only in business, but in your personal life as well. Goal setting matters because it provides clarity, direction and motivation, ultimately leading to increased focus, productivity, and achievement.
So, think about the goals you have for your business and ask yourself this one question
STOP treating goal setting as just another annual planning exercise.
START using ambitious goals to regularly stretch your thinking, stretch your people and stretch your creativity.
The one ‘BREAKTHROUGH QUESTION’ you must ask to help yourself…
Setting ambitious goals for your business and gaining full support from your team involves several key steps:
You MUST involve your team: It is vital that you take your team on the journey with you. You must ensure active participation from your team members in the goal setting process. Being involved will give them a sense of ownership and commitment. Hold regular, collaborative meetings on the progress of the goal, share the milestones and the achievements attained so far and, if things aren’t going to plan, discuss the solutions and allow everyone in your team to contribute ideas and insights.
Set clear objectives: Define specific and ambitious objectives that align with your business vision and strategy. Communicate and discuss openly the purpose behind each goal and the potential impact it can have on the growth of the team and the business.
Break down the goal: Break down the ambitious goals into smaller, achievable milestones. This helps prevent your team from feeling overwhelmed and allows for steady progress, boosting morale along the way. Meet regularly to celebrate the milestones.
Communicate regularly and effectively: Share with your team, not just the goals themselves, but the expectations for and the rationales behind them. Ensure that each team member understands the importance of their role in achieving these goals and how their contributions matter.
Ambitious and Attainable
“… if a future hard goal undermined a person’s motivation, breaking the goal into sub-goals resulted in greater initiative and confidence around continuing to pursue the goal.” – Caroline Adams Miller, Big Goals
Ambitious and attainable goals are not mutually exclusive.
Research shows that ambitious (hard) goals result in higher performance in the workplace. However, for ambitious goals to truly work, there are 4 key elements.
Taken from their book, New Developments in Goal Setting and Task Performance, Locke and Latham identify these elements as:
1. Specific
Ambitious goals work best when they’re clear and precise, not vague.
Instead of “grow the business,” a specific ambitious goal would be:
“expand into three new markets and achieve £10M in additional revenue within two years.”
The specificity gives people a target to aim for, and the more challenging the target, the more motivating it can be.
2. Attainable (but Difficult)
Ambitious goals are stretch goals – hard, but not impossible.
Locke and Latham’s research shows that the sweet spot is where people see the goal as challenging, yet believable, given effort, skill, and resources.
Example: Asking a sales team to double revenue in three weeks would not be attainable. Asking them to increase revenue by 25% over the year with a new product strategy could be both ambitious and attainable.
3. Committed To
For ambitious goals to work, people must be personally invested.
Commitment is strengthened when:
- The goal is seen as important and aligned with their values.
- The team have been involved in setting it (participation builds ownership).
- Progress is visible, so motivation doesn’t fade.
Example: A leadership team co-creating an ambitious goal (“become the number 1 brand in customer satisfaction by 2026”) will generate more buy-in than if it’s dictated top-down.
4. Supported by Feedback
Feedback is essential for ambitious goals because these often take time and involve uncertainty.
Regular progress checks help people:
- See how far they’ve come
- Adjust strategies when they fall behind
- Stay motivated even if the finish line is far away
Example: A quarterly progress review showing that a team is 15% ahead of schedule can fuel continued commitment to a difficult stretch goal.
Outcome and Process goals
"Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal. Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.” – Mario Andretti
Ambitious goals get the best out of your team. To help with this, it's key that you focus on 2 types of goals – Outcome goals and Process goals.
Outcome and Process goals are commonplace in the sporting world.
The outcome is often easy to define – to win a gold medal, break a record, win a league, or beat a team.
Process goals help the coach, the team, and the individual break down the path to this ambitious goal.
Outcome goals are concerned with the end result or achievement desired. They typically involve reaching a specific performance level, winning a competition, or attaining a particular outcome. Outcome goals may be influenced by factors beyond the individual's control, such as a competitor’s performance or market conditions.
Examples of outcome goals:
- Winning a championship or competition
- Achieving a revenue target for the quarter
- Attaining a specific academic grade or degree
- Running a 5K or 10K
Process goals focus on the actions, behaviours, or steps that need to be taken to achieve a desired outcome. They are within the individual's control and are typically related to specific tasks or activities. Process goals are often about improving skills, developing habits, or refining techniques.
Examples of process goals:
- Completing a certain number of customer calls or visits each day
- Practicing a particular skill for a set amount of time each week
- Following a specific workout routine consistently
- Revising for two hours a day
- Regularly walking around the block, adding a little bit extra each time
When you apply the SMART criteria to goal setting in your business, you create objectives that are well-defined, actionable and conducive to success.
While both types of goals are important, they serve different purposes and will generally complement each other.
Outcome goals provide a clear target for which to strive and can serve as sources of motivation and inspiration. They will help your team define what success looks like and provide a sense of accomplishment when achieved.
However, it's essential to recognise that outcome goals are subject to outside forces (think about Covid), so be sure not to focus on them in isolation as this can lead to frustration and disappointment.
Process goals provide the roadmap and direction for achieving success. They will help your team focus on the actions and behaviours that will lead to the desired outcomes. Process goals will be especially helpful when it comes to maintaining motivation for your team and ensuring they stay on track during the journey toward the end goal.
Therefore, process goals should be used alongside outcome goals to ensure a balanced approach to goal setting and achievement.
Learning and Performance goals
“When the necessary knowledge and skills are available, performance goals maximize motivation and performance. When they are not, learning goals are more effective because they focus attention on discovering strategies and acquiring the knowledge needed to perform the task.” – Locke and Latham, New Developments in Goal Setting and Task Performance
Performance goals and Learning goals are different.
Performance goals direct attention toward achieving a specific outcome or standard of performance. They are especially effective when the person already has the knowledge, strategies, and skills needed to accomplish the task.
Examples: Cleaning a hotel room; driving to a destination; running a meeting; giving a presentation; making a coffee; carrying out an appraisal or one-to-one.
Learning goals direct attention toward developing knowledge, skills, or strategies that a person does not yet have. They are especially effective when the task is novel, complex, or uncertain, and the individual needs to acquire new competencies in order to succeed.
Examples: Cooking a new recipe; learning to drive; learning a language or how to play a new instrument. Becoming a parent is probably the scariest of learning goals, but managing a new team for the first time or starting a new job are up there too.
The key difference is:
- Performance goals focus on results
- Learning goals focus on process and capability-building
In their book, Locke & Latham explain that “if people lack the necessary knowledge or skills, assigning only performance goals can actually backfire (causing frustration or failure). In these cases, learning goals are better because they promote exploration, strategy development, and mastery. Once competence is built, performance goals become more useful.”
Here’s a quote from Caroline Adams Miller from her book, Big Goals, that beautifully illustrates the distinction between performance goals and learning goals:
“For me, it [writing the book] is what I call a performance goal, what Locke and Latham call a performance goal. … Performance goals are checklist goals. You’ve done them before. …
“The learning goal was how do I use this new artificial intelligence to make the book more excellent? … Learning goals are things you’ve never done before, the world’s never done them before, and performance goals or checklist goals are things that you have done before that are like recipes…”
In her book she describes the difference between performance and learning goals as follows:
- A performance goal is something familiar – like writing a book according to a tried and tested process or checklist.
- A learning goal is about mastering something new, such as integrating cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools for research, a novel step in her process.
Think about the distinct differences between performance and learning goals when working with your team.
Here are some examples of how these different types of goals can be used in your business:
Performance Goal: “Increase customer loyalty by 10% in the next quarter.”
Learning Goal: “Build a CRM database to identify your clients, focus marketing and regular contact on the loyal ones, and spot churn risk earlier.”
The learning goal builds the capability needed to hit the performance goal.
Performance Goal: “Reduce production errors and waste to less than 2% by year-end.”
Learning Goal: “Learn and implement process improvement and lean methodology to identify root causes of defects.”
Performance is the measurable outcome; learning provides the method to achieve it.
Performance Goal: “Expand into two new international markets in 12 months.”
Learning Goal: “Learn regulatory and cultural differences in the target markets.”
Without the learning goal, the expansion could fail due to blind spots.
Use performance goals when the process is well understood and the challenge is execution.
Use learning goals when the task is novel, uncertain, or requires new capabilities.
Pair them together and the learning goal provides the foundation to reach the performance goal.
The GE Orange Exercise
“Don't ever settle for mediocrity. The key to stretch is to reach for more than you think is possible. Don't sell yourself short by thinking that you'll fail.” – Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO of GE
GE’s extraordinary success, growing revenue from $12billion to $280billion in 20 years, is partly thanks to their focus on ambitious, or stretch, goals. Stretch goals often challenge people because they may feel unachievable. People are reluctant to commit to stretch goals because they are afraid they may be committing to something that will fail.
To demonstrate the power of ambitious goals and to get the buy-in of managers, GE ran an exercise at a series of innovation days.
You can use this simple exercise to help demonstrate the power of ambitious goals.
Give a team of 6 or 7 of your people one orange.
Challenge them to all touch the whole orange one at a time, as quickly as possible; the first person to touch it must also be the last.
Tell them they can pass it, throw it or do what they like to achieve the task as quickly as they can.
When they are ready, time their efforts with a stopwatch (or use your phone).
Whatever time they achieve, ask them to have another go, but make it faster this time (this works even better if there is more than one group – suggest they are competing with other groups).
Whatever time they achieve the second time, ask them to have another go and tell them they should be aiming to do this in less than 1 second (which is what other groups have achieved).
If they struggle with this, ask them to review what has to change for things to speed up – for example, distance between hands or speed of the orange – and ask them what they can do to influence these variables.
Solution – The group members stack their palms one on top of another almost vertically and let the orange fall from the first person’s left hand (top of the stack) to the first person’s right hand (bottom of the stack), whilst passing over everyone else’s hand in between. This should take less than a second.
Key insights from knee or hip replacement patients
“Begin with the end in mind.” — Stephen Covey
Knee and hip surgery involve sawing through bones and severing joint muscles. When recovering, even the smallest movements (shifting in bed or flexing a joint) can be excruciating. To recover well, patients must start being mobile as soon as they wake from surgery.
If they don’t quickly start stretching their muscles and skin, scar tissue will clog the joint, destroying its flexibility. But this movement is very painful, so it’s not unusual for people to skip out on rehab sessions, especially those who have been experiencing pain for an extended period already.
But this is not the case with everyone.
In 1992 a research study inside two of Scotland’s busiest orthopaedic hospitals provided stark evidence that goal setting works.
The researchers, Sheina Orbell and Paschal Sheeran, gave the patients a booklet outlining their rehabilitation schedule.
The booklet also included 13 mostly blank pages with the following instructions:
“My goals for this week are...?”
“Write down exactly what you are going to do. For example, if you are going to go for a walk this week, write down where and when you are going to walk.”
In 13 weeks, patients who had written plans and followed them started walking again almost twice as fast as the ones who had not.
Patients following their 13-week recovery plans were getting in and out of chairs, unassisted, almost three times as fast.
The successful patients completed the 13 pages with recorded goals and plans, often in mundane but very specific detail. It was this group that were able to start walking again twice as fast as those who didn’t think about and record their goals.
Here are two typical remarks found in the patients’ booklets:
“I’m going to walk and meet my wife at the bus stop at 3.30 in the afternoon. If it’s too painful I’ll take extra painkillers, and I’ll take my raincoat if it’s raining.”
“I’m going to get out of my chair and walk to the bathroom on my own. I’m going to take two steps the instant I’m stood up so that I don’t sit back down again because of the pain.”
This is REALLY important…
The successful Scottish patients anticipated where they might fail – “it might be too painful”.
They then wrote down what they’d do to handle the difficulty – “I’ll take more painkillers”.
When you write down your stretch goals, be sure to include your expected source of pain, challenge, or difficulty. Then write down your plan to overcome this difficulty.
It’s important because BELIEF is important...
During training in sport, there’s a constant flow of feedback and encouragement from both coaches and teammates. In business, this can be less obvious or transparent and can happen less often.
The hip replacement patient who walked to the bathroom on his own acknowledged his achievement by rewarding himself with M&Ms when he got back to his chair. Whatever gets you there…
Recognition, rewards, and feedback are all important. Think about how a baby is encouraged to walk, speak, or eat by themselves. They get a constant flow of feedback and encouragement.
Anticipating and planning for difficulties raises expectations, belief, and confidence in achieving goals. If you fail to work on building belief, you are likely to just say “what the heck, it’s impossible anyway!”
Because you are managing in advance how to tackle the likely challenges, you are less likely to become derailed and more likely to follow through – just as the successful knee and hip replacement patients did.
KEY INSIGHT: Having challenging, ambitious goals helped these successful patients anticipate what might go wrong, giving them a chance to work out a solution in advance. Rewarding themselves made the stretch goal worth it.
The goals wheel exercise
“There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.” — Michael Phelps
The goals wheel is a visual way of setting goals and it’s definitely something you can do for yourself. You’ll find a blank wheel on the last page of these supporting tools, so please print it out and run through the process outlined below.
The coloured wheel below has six segments. Each segment has a label – you choose the labels for your own wheel.
Assume this is my goals wheel and that I’m looking at a 12-month timeframe.
- I’m happy the segment labels are appropriate for me
- I’ve drawn on the wheel a black line that represents where I am now compared with where I want to be in 12 months (100%)
As you can see from this wheel, I’m doing well with my finances and family. On the other hand, it appears that I could do something more for my community, spend more time with my friends and work out a bit more.
What’s in serious need of attention is the orange segment – work.
- I’ve drawn a purple line to show where I want to be in the next 8 weeks. This requires a significant stretch and improvement
- Action is necessary, so I’m going to do three things: I’m going to talk to my work colleagues about the excessive hours I’m currently working to determine what I can delegate or stop doing; I’m going to commit to seeing all the games my daughter plays after school; I’m going to leave my laptop at work on a Friday evening
Thanks to the knee or hip replacement patients, I know I need to anticipate challenges and have a solution ready.
- My work colleagues are also under work pressure and may be unable to take work from me – if so, I’ll investigate hiring a part-time or virtual PA
- Customer pressures might prevent me from leaving on time to see my daughter play – so I’m going to block off 90 minutes the morning after my daughter’s games to deal with any pressing customer issues
- If I’m traveling to a customer on Monday and need to take my computer home on Friday, I’ll give it to my daughter for safekeeping (so she can hide it)
The goals wheel exercise will enable you to practice setting ambitious and attainable goals.
Alternatively, please click here for a link to a spreadsheet where you can complete the goals wheel exercise and update your own goals wheel, watching it change based on the information you put into the spreadsheet.
Simply enter the information for each area, based on where you are now and where you want to be, and you will be able to see the gap on the wheel on the right-hand side and the bar chart.
Then use the table and focus on 3 areas – your biggest gap, your most important area and the easiest area for improvement.
Choose your goal and write down what you are going to do to achieve this goal over the next 13 weeks. Make sure you also anticipate the challenges you will face and prepare for them.
Remember, the knee or hip replacement patients who set and tracked their goals over the 13-week recovery period were twice as successful as those who didn’t. Give it a try and let us know how you get on.
The book and other resources
Developments in Goal Setting and Task Performance
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham
For those involved in goal setting, whether personally or professionally, this book supplies the science behind the art. This book is essential for anyone in a management or leadership position . . . it will very likely change your operational procedures for the better!
What people are saying about this book:
"Locke and Latham have enlarged the context of goal-setting theory, offering readers a deeper, richer understanding of new discoveries in many different areas since 1990. Contributions from more than 70 authors and co-authors offer convincing evidence that goal setting is one of the best-established findings in behavioral science." – Wayne F. Cascio, Robert H. Reynolds Distinguished Chair in Global Leadership, University of Colorado; Senior Editor, Journal of World Business
Big Goals - The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them and Creating Your Best Life
Caroline Adams Miller
A fresh, science-backed guide to turning ambition into action, this book distils 15 years of positive psychology research and Miller’s expertise as an executive coach into an accessible framework for success.
The book features:
The BRIDGE methodology (Brainstorming, Relationships, Investments, Decisions, Grit, and Excellence) – a step-by-step “how” to bridge the gap between setting Objectives (OKRs) and achieving measurable results (KPIs).
Integration of Locke and Latham’s Goal Setting Theory, updated for modern challenges with insights on mindset, resilience, artificial intelligence, and gender dynamics.
A wealth of practical tools, including unique worksheets, case studies, and coaching strategies tailored to all walks of life – whether you're just starting, recovering from setbacks, or aiming higher in personal or professional pursuits.
What people are saying about this book:
“This is the best goal-setting book ever written. Period.” – Brian Johnson
“A superb translation of academic theory into practical, everyday language”. – Dr. Gary Latham, co-developer of Goal-Setting Theory
“A practical guide packed with specific suggestions and real-world examples.” – Angela Duckworth, author of Grit
“The best and most timely book, linking goal-setting and well-being” – Sonja Lyubomirsky, Distinguished Psychology Professor
If you want to know more about Caroline Adams Miller, please check out this John O’Leary Live Inspired podcast. For more than three decades, Caroline Adams Miller has been a globally recognised expert in goal setting, grit, happiness, and success.
And yet, as a Harvard graduate, black-belt martial artist, and author of eight life-changing bestselling books, Caroline’s path, from overcoming bulimia to inspiring millions, embodies resilience and determination.
In this podcast, Caroline shares her story of transformation, the science behind effective goal setting, and her groundbreaking BRIDGE methodology for achieving lasting success. She will explain why conventional strategies (such as SMART goals) frequently fall short, and how crafting intentional, purpose-driven goals can lead to meaningful change.
The blank goals wheel
Instructions
- choose your labels for your segments – create a 7-, 8- or 9-segment wheel if you wish
- draw a line that shows you where you believe you are now compared with where you’d like to be
- draw another line to represent where you want to be on one segment – your stretch goal
- work out specific actions with timescales that you will take to achieve your stretch goal
- work out what might get in your way
- work out a possible solution to your anticipated challenges
- work out your reward, recognition and feedback
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