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Throughout this blog, if you see the word goal change it to the word outcome.

We edit (and tell you it’s an edited version), as things change, perspectives and new knowledge come to light, new studies and research and the way we interact and connect with our own content change too. It reminds me of the Future Institue (and my new mantra)

“Strong opinions, lightly held”

The neurological impact of this word change is positive, if we reframe the word goal to the outcome we remove the stigma, the worry, the blame, and the issues and reset ourselves to focus that's open, and flexible. Having a pre-planned outcome allow your brain to see other elements, and opportunities and create a dynamic way of doing stuff you want to do .

We all have goals. Yes? No? We get told we must have goals. We must have professional and personal growth in our lives. Told it’s a necessity, essential to getting clients, promotions, achieving, just being?

I believe we all have goals in our everyday lives, even when we may not name them “goals” - a goal may be as simple as arriving on time for an event. Or being kind to everyone you meet, (candidly this should be everyone’s goal), so a goal is a conscious thought and action.

We are a coaching business, we are coaches surely as coaches we would embrace the goal activity. Isn’t it after all that we do, coach people, to achieve? Well, that’s where we challenge the norm, want to make a difference and not a point. Our perspective is what it is and how it works for us too is that goals are not the drivers of the outcome.

We embrace the culture of coaching, self-awareness, business awareness, candour, ability to self-assess, critique (without negative undermining), and understanding the why first before you get to the what, how and what-if scenarios.

As a coaching business that works with businesses, we coach the individual first to impact and influence the business. This approach is what makes us challenge the current focus on goals and refocus to ouctomes.

Why do we set goals?

Understanding this is key to the individual. If it’s to beat others, compete with self, stop failing , based on inadequacy not improvement then setting goals surely is detrimental? Yet we chose goals for these very reasons. This way of setting goals means we focus on the outcome and not the steps, results, mini achievements along the way. From a personal perspective I am not motivated by having goals so I don’t set them.

What do the goals do?

The literal dictionary definition of goals definition is “the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result” . If this is the case then a goal is about the process and the outcome is not the focus? Yet the majority focus is on what outcome not the aim. Desired also means not a given, yet we also explain goals as definitive. A complete final result. From our perspective the finality is potentially the reason most goals aren’t achieved or successful. A goal is a movable target is it not?

How do understand the goal?

Being aware why and what the goal is and appreciating the now position (gratitude and acceptance) is that if a goal (by definition desired outcome) is one that each step gets recognised through a supporting process. If its detrimental and not seeing the process , step by step achievement to get to the goal then reflection and reassessment are needed.

Goals and setting them - what is it really?

Let’s talk about the lie that sits alongside goal setting first- we set goals and don’t do anything with them. We then get demotivated, undermine ourselves and feel lost or unstuck. We have a negative take of goals driven by human actions or perceptions that we must change ourselves to be better, for example setting a goal on weight loss, materialistic outcomes, or surpassing others to the detriment of all good. The positive is that they can motivate and achieve great things, studies show that this is the exception rather than the rule.

The lie in goal setting is that we make them something they are not. A goal is a commitment, a desire, an achievement with a conscious outcome that should create a positive action to benefit you and others. We get down on goals and we shouldn’t.

We want to challenge the current goal-setting perspective of starting with what does everyone else think? Yes, we do. Look at goal setting differently and see them as a conscious action thought to be part of our every day- linked to a value, a belief even a framework. Throughout this blog, we look at how we can make them do what we really need them to.

We have “goals” in all aspects of our lives the biggest area of contention for us is the labelling of goals. Goals by default add pressure, expectation, confusion and can be completely disconnected from what we want to achieve.

Professional goals are the most disconnected as they get called KPI,’s OKR’s, RAGs, PIGEX, Objectives, Targets, none of these “labels” being goals as they are measurements of success on the way to achieving a goal NOT the goal itself- confused see told you.

Personal goals then get added in and we start talking about ambitions, aspirations, inspirations, comparisons of others all are a delightful mix to skew goal setting and remove any desire to achieve them.

The final part of goal setting and why it’s so flawed is the language it creates (after you’ve got past the terrible labelling of goals that aren’t goals- anyway!). We say things like:

We should/could/ might...achieve this goal
This goal means we are successful
Doing this goal makes us look good for the shareholder’s
This goal isn’t customer-centric, yet we need to do it anyway
·This goal isn’t part of the plan however we are going to focus on it

We’ve heard them all and some much worse. The challenge with goal setting starts with why and it’s very rarely asked- why is this goal important to us right now in our business? Or a personal why - I will achieve this goal as it will benefit my health and I can enjoy being active with my family more. We actually say I must lose weight because I am fat- the issue here is not what, not how or benefit it’s a statement, not a goal.

Struggle setting goals, and keeping them?

The reason for not achieving our goals is that they aren’t linked to anything that’s relevant to us- its not a reality. We share a few ways to set goals that you WANT and WILL achieve.

Test your outcome-setting skill.

When you are setting out a goal, or a future outcome in your life there is an important set of simple questions we can ask. A simple 4 step process to test your goals:

What is it you want?
Where are you now?
What is the size of the gap between here and now?
Does it pass the goal ecology test?

The importance here is that we are basing outcomes on values, beliefs, wants and RELEVANT elements that we have complete control of in our life. If we are applying this in a business/professional capacity the action is the same.

1. WHAT IS IT YOU WANT? THIS IS THE BIG OUTCOME QUESTION

What is it you absolutely want to achieve?

This question is the one that needs you to be ready to deal with the answer! It’s the one we avoid. If you are prepared to be raw and honest then do this exercise. Draw, 3 columns - in each column fill as follows :

Now tick the ones you want to keep, and keep working on. This is the start of the “goal” want. Keep doing it till you have a singular focus. This is your OUTCOME. REAL, RELATABLE and RELEVANT.

2. WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

What is the truth, of your current situation? First, you must be able to describe and be specific about what is your current situation.

Examples-

(1) We have a business that isn’t getting enough sales. We need 10 sales a day and we are getting 4. We are losing money as our outgoings are £4,000 more than our incomings. We are losing money and motivation to continue.

Or

(2) I am 20 lbs heavier than I have been I feel uncomfortable and unhealthy. I am less active than I have ever been, and I am feeling low and demotivated I then choose to eat the wrong things to satisfy my lack of doing anything about it.

Or

(3) I have a team around me that are unproductive. They are producing less than we ever have we sued to be able to clear 15 accounts a week and we now are doing less than 6. We are having more customer complaints – currently, 1 per week which is unusual. I am telling them what we need, and it isn’t helping.

The second part of where are you now is to list the things that are in the way of it and those that enable it.

Be aware that you need to have a reality check. Self-candour is not an internal voice undermining you - it’s the honest assessment of where am I right now being asked.

The outcome of this exercise of listing out the current situation, what obstacles are in the way and what is enabling the current situation. They assist the brain in establishing reality versus perception, removing BS, and ignoring the things that are occurring not the ones we can hide behind.

3. WHAT IS THE SIZE OF THE GAP BETWEEN HERE AND NOW?

How far away are you from your desired outcome? How close can you get towards it by a list of small actions?
The quickest way is drawing a line (in your head or on paper)

Write the outcomedown
Put 0% on one end of 100% at the other end of the line
Put a mark on the line of where you are now.

Where are you? 5% of the 100%. Less more?

This activity allows you to see the gap, focus on small actions (goals) steps to take to keep moving forward..

4. DOES IT PASS THE ECOLOGY TEST?

GREEK OIKOS = HOUSE; LOGOS = STUDY- YOUR STUDY OF YOUR HOUSE; YOUR LIFE

This means, does it sit right with your values, ethics, beliefs?

For example, if you say you want your family around you - and you set an outcome to move to the other side of the world, this will fail the ecology test, the test is the question - does it align with your deeper motivations.

Remember we can deceive ourselves on goal setting because of the way we may have looked at them previously. Don’t let that lie steal you away from setting great goals that can really transform what and how you live your life.

There’s a science bit that exists in goals versus outcomes

The science bit is all about how we predict and how our brains create new neural pathways. Neuroscience matters in goal setting as many studies demonstrate that we get misguided and have a lack of awareness when choosing, defining a goal. More specifically we struggle to achieve goals when we connect to a specific timeline to achieve – you know the ones I must lose weight by the time I go on holiday. Or we must achieve this % growth by next month or else!

The neurological and cognitive studies discovered that we are poor at predicting our own time, planning for goal {1}, therefore not achieving the outcomes- an aside we convince ourselves we are better at predicting goals for others – think leaders and managers deciding what your goal is without any discussion or awareness about your/business/situation etc.

Goals fail due to the lack of focus on relevant past experiences (more about the task and not our own skill or competence!), and even more interesting the lack of achievement of goals is linked to having more experience.

Our brains and emotions function on prediction {4} ultimately meaning that we don’t create new memories, or actions instead our brain finds a prediction of experience or connection. For example, if you are scared by someone knocking on your door late at night, your heart speeds up (predicative response) it will find the last time and previous times you experienced a scary situation and predict outcomes for you to respond to. What’s amazing is this can be from anything you reference as scary from a movie or a real situation you may have experienced, a story told to you even)

Predictions come from our learnings, culture, experience, from reading, watching, listening all that we absorb in any form. Brains create predictions (no right or wrong impact just predictions). Understanding this means we get to connect why goals may not be achieved or are achieved. Why you are setting them or not, whether the semantics are relevant or not- all based on your personal predictive neurology.

The joy in this is we can change and build new predictive neural pathways so we can impact and influence ourselves to achieve, succeed or fail, miss, regret, ignore too.

So changing the word from goals to outcomes itself is a positive step to creating new positive neural pathways

Goals don’t make you happier! Outcomes can!

Is what’s missing when we set goals that we disconnect from what we already have?

The perpetual focus on achievement deletes the focus on acceptance. Acceptance in this context is what is right now.

An outcome is accepting what is, is right now the goal contradicts this.

What you have- tangible, the stuff in your life at this very moment. Acceptance is also defined as defeat- think about how you might focus on wanting more, something new, replacing something that doesn’t need replacing. Our societal influences are strong to fit in, conform, and compare- all depleting our acceptance of what is. Consider this right now we have a global first-world mental health epidemic (as well as the COVID crisis) and when we look at what’s causing “this lack of” acceptance is a key part. “I have got to be slimmer/fitter/richer/better” mentality is we are missing what we have got already. The 21st century has a better standard of living than ever before, (disparity and equality not being discussed here). Yet we are more miserable than ever before.

Oversimplification is we lack acceptance of the now. We dismiss being present. We devalue what we have right now.

We have a trillion of self-development books, and courses, yet these “so-called experts are not helping, healing, or making you happy. There is a big contradiction when it comes to gratitude, lack of acceptance and goals. We talk about it, read about it, know about it yet still don’t do it?

““....Happiness is contingent upon achievement. If you expect to find happiness by attaining something, changing something, or being someone else, you’re experiencing “arrival fallacy” coined by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar.”

— Rene Reardin

Dave and I have had many a full discussion around our thoughts on what goals mean to us and the reason we discuss outcomes now instead of goals. We explored so many facets of personal need, desire, motivation, mostly that many people we coach are initially driven by external first goals- meaning recognition for others, thinking it’s what they should do not what they want to do, societal impacts and expectations.

We coach and ask the difficult and uncomfortable questions around

“What do you want, really want? “ We challenge the vanilla first response - “I want to be happy” I want to be secure” I want to achieve success” This focuses on internal (the world within) actions which are truly what matters.

Deleting the BS in goals

Another reflection is that many “goals” are distinctly lacking congruence when we set them. Congruency is that thing that connects something to us, the things that matter. Values, beliefs fit in here it’s also the link to what we say and then what we do. Most people are incongruent, as humans we are exceptionally good at telling others what they should be doing, what’s right and wrong and then doing the opposite ourselves?

If we look at goals and congruence, what do we mean? Let us share an example. A client had set a goal for financial security and was getting very annoyed that they were not achieving it, even more so were so deflated that they were worse off than before they set the “goal”.

As a coach, the question we asked is “what have you done towards attaining this financial security? “

How are you currently spending, saving, and planning your financial security to achieve your goal?

t turned out they were spending more on outgoings than before, buying new items for their office and home, underbudgeting and overspending- the goal and actions were incongruent and therefore the goal becomes the issue - the fallacy is the goal was never the issue the setting of the goal and the ensuing actions were the issue.

Another example was another client who said their goal was to spend more time with their family, a balanced lifestyle and then they took a promoted job role working away from home for 3 days a week because it paid more money and had a better title?

Their goal was incongruent again and the issue is that the goal gets blamed. We say well I set the wrong goal as if it was the goal's fault or was unattainable when the decision was incongruent, their own BS filter was missing.

BS Goal example: If your goal is financial security (change this to outcomes and see the difference),and you have no savings, have lots of debt, yet keep buying things then you must “reality check” the goal. If you don’t need “stuff”, and just keep buying (because you can), being candid, you need to make lunches, stop buying your daily 4 coffees from the coffee shop, reduce the number of subscriptions you don’t use etc

The reality check is doing the work of being honest about what you want and then choosing to do about it.

How to set great financial security outcome is. Before ANY purchase (no matter how small)- Ask do I need this now.

Don’t buy it.
Leave it for 48 hours.
If you still don’t need it now.
Move on.
Put the money you would have spent in a savings account - you will be amazed at how much you save in a month.

Creating outcomes that work.

We now understand that it’s not just about you setting an outcome there’s a lot of actual “stuff” behind making it a reality and achieving it. Words matter too in how you write your desired outcomes- think back about the science bit- if our brains function from the prediction (real or imaginary) we can actually create a prediction of achievement. Winner! In goal setting and achievement, we can then have a hack to help us. This outcome hack is useful and it’s a part of outcomes, and a helpful one for sure- yet as with everything a caveat must be issued- outcomes are achieved when you do something about them! Irrespective of how many hacks or knowledge we give you to help. Desired outcomes need you to do something and it is always something different than you were doing before!

Now before we get to this amazing goal hack, we must share another little BS filter tool to help you get the goal right in the first place. This is a quick BS check into what goal you are setting.

1. Ask Yourself

2. Beliefs Check

3. Committed Actions

4. Name the result

STEP 1: ASK YOURSELF:
START THINKING: What does your picture of success look like?
What does it look, sound, and feel like?
Stop and create the outcome in your imagination and then write it down.
STEP 2: BELIEF CHECK
CHECK: What beliefs do you have about the likely success of your goal?
Do any beliefs need to be changed? Are they limiting?
What beliefs do you need to display to your team or business?
What is your core belief about the whole outcome?
STEP 3: COMMITTED ACTION
DECIDE: What actions are you willing to commit to with each goal and see through to completion?
Decide at least 3.
STEP 4: NAME THE RESULT
DETERMINE The results you want.
List them- be very detailed. Facts, figures, details, specifics (also refer to Fast Forward)

And with any goal set some boundaries- another super simple way to do this is to have specific outcomes you want from the minimum level of success to the maximum.

· Push: Your best outcome. The one that truly requires huge push actions.

· Pull (Stretch): An outcome. The one that requires much effort.

· Basic (Essential): What must you achieve, as a minimum. The least effort yet a positive outcome.

Outcomes must be agile, flexible, and moveable that removing the potential impact of the “arrival fallacy” I should attitude. This gives you a predictive element again boosting the opportunity for the brain to be making those new neural pathways for more success.

Back to the outcome hack. This is simply earning to write your outcomes in the past tense. Yep, that simple. Because simple works. This NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming - a bit more science and more brain stuff) technique is how we can create a positive predictive neural change.

This is how it works we call it at RLC Fast Forward, as that’s what we are doing taking our brains and fast-forwarding into the future, creating achievement before we have done it.

When is an outcome achieved?

If we go back to the neurological studies completed, we see that the outcome is very rarely achieved and that we then take divisive and destructive decisions that sabotage and impeded achievement- the whole paradox of goal setting versus outcomes in the first place. Having a goal can motivate some and demotivate others, having an outcome is universal. Goals can pressurise some and focus others and it leads us to have the outcome as a focus and as we talked about setting clear boundaries to expectations of achievement- allowing you to impact and motivate the many and not just a few.

When do we stop setting outcomes?

I suppose we need to look at goals and maintain our results. If we look at a business that has seen exponential growth and is setting sales goals to increase each month and continues to grow 25% month on month because that is what they had been achieving we know that burnout of their teams happens, poor behaviours are demonstrated, people take risks that aren’t needed.

“If we continue this pattern, setting goal after goal, we could end up spending our whole lives in a perpetual purgatory of unachieved ambitions”

— Jack Wiseman GB Basketball Coach

As a retail regional manager many years ago, I was told to keep setting higher and higher targets so that we got somewhere in the middle. What happened was we started getting people breaking rules to achieve the results, not following a process that worked as they were under duress to get the bigger and bigger number, customer experience got worse, not better. We lost sales did not grow or didn’t maintain a steady profitable outcome.

We need to put outcomes in context.

This takes us back to the 4-step goal setting. Being specific and reviewing the questions and answers add context. You will be able to add context from anything that is happening is it seasonal trading, economic situations, people, process, geography, even a pandemic! What is good? Why is that good?

What’s the point, really?

Ultimately is it semantics?

It’s definitely one part of it. How we chose to use the word goals to motivate to take action. We know that academically that goal(s) are core motivational constructs that influence behaviour (Locke & Latham, 2013). The definition of any construct is we made it up to suit ourselves so semantics is very relevant in anything goal-related

We advise caution in self language when you choose to focus on goals. You can do whatever you choose, of course, this is our perspective and we are using our years of coaching and results that when goals become external or opinion based they become dismissed and then the goal is blamed when a better reflection of self (or your business) is required. Congruence (see below) and also not intrinsically linked to happiness you will create better results from a better focus on what you really want.

What does this all mean- are goals necessary or focus only on outcomes?

To summarise, if you look at how many books are written on achieving goals, it makes us squirm as goals are being used as a methodology, a metric of success, a comparison of look what I can do – can you? Goals are about the individual be it a person or a business.

The language (semantics) are relevant to the individual
The motivation is relevant to the individual
The experience is relative to the individual
The impact and achievement are relevant to the individual (person or business) in any one given moment.

Life shifts, we experience change every day intentionally or not.

We’ve also got to remember how our brains function and work the best and that is through single-tasking, single-focused and single goal. There are some great studies on the impact of having singular goals and multiple goals in reality,{2}. We all understand that multiple things going on at the same time be it goals, tasks, actions, must do’s, mandatory, obligatory, a to-do list or specific goals of the desired outcome. Being single goal focussed can create better results and that’s what we all want.{3}

Positive outcomes come from some maths!

THINKING + BELIEFS + ACTIONS = RESULTS

Your life will be the output of great thoughts, great beliefs, and the actions that you take. Creating a life experience and result that you want. Remember to take the actions on the things that help you with your outcome and apply real intentional focus in business or your life.

Focusing on the overall outcome may seem obvious yet it’s the one that’s neglected the most.

Be specific by asking yourself regularly:

Why do you want that outcome? Why is it relevant? Why does it matter? Why is this goal relevant? Why am I not doing this already? Why have I not valued this outcome before?
What will my outcome be by achieving this? What relevance has this to me right now? What impact does it have on my goals? What can I apply/change or transform by setting my focus on this outcome? What is stopping me? What is my personal growth? What does it look and feel like?
How can I make this an outcome now? How do I start? How does this affect me/others? How much time do I need to allocate? How will I be consistent in achieving the outcome? How does the outcome connect to my values or beliefs? If not, why not? How do I know I am achieving personal growth? How will I measure it?
What if I believed in this outcome? What if I experience change? What if I see the benefits? What if I don’t achieve my outcome? What if owned and took full accountability for the outcome? What if I measured my personal growth?

Our final “call-in” is probably the most significant. When we set goals, we get so fixed on the result we miss the MOST important parts of goals- the steps and experience to getting to the goal (or near it). We ignore the achievements, the micro improvements, the internal growth or learning, the collaboration or support systems you’ve used. We ignore the skills that have been applied, the conversation had to achieve where you are now.

Looking back at the 4-step outcome-setting approach what is it you want? Where are you now? What is the size of the gap between here and now? Does it pass the goal ecology test- your values and beliefs? Using this as a review, reflection on what’s been achieved so far is essential to making your goals relevant.

When we study the neurological impact that we get stuck and do not distinguish {3} or recognise the outcome anymore we truly dismiss what we are achieving. We, coach clients, to do many things from journaling, reviewing, and reflecting monthly, weekly, quarterly using their RLC Business Framework and then looking at what works and what doesn’t- why- how will it take you towards your goal or outcome- why-. How far have you come from when you started? -Why-

If we consider the 1% incremental monthly growth on customer sales transforms a business forever and understand through each step what is being achieved, we see goals as supports to achieve not defined as nirvana- options and actions we can take.

An outcome is not achieved without action. An outcome needs context. Growth is happening with or without intentional action. You achieve an outcome with or without action- it’s may just not be the outcome you wanted.

Ultimately it’s about what is relevant, if you want it enough, it’s congruent and benefits you wholly through satisfaction and the desire is enough.

Research, References and Resources

{1}https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/biases/67_J_Personality_and_Social_Psychology_366,_1994.pdf

{2} Meta Studies and related studies on multiple goals vs singular goals. PLus studies of Jingle and Jangle theory. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/92655/1/Unsworth%20Yeo%20Beck%202014%20Multiple%20goals%20review%20and%20derivation%20of%20general%20principles.pdf, Developmental (e.g., Hofer, 2010) and Educational Psychology (e.g., Berger, 2012), Experimental Social Psychology (e.g., Koo & Fishbach, 2008), Industrial/Organizational Psychology (I/O psychology: e.g., Vancouver et al., 2010), Management (e.g., Ethiraj & Levinthal, 2009), Marketing (e.g., Dalton & Spiller, 2012), Organizational Behaviour (OB: e.g., Bateman, O'Neill, & Kenworthy U'Ren, 2002), Social Psychology (e.g., Sheldon & Elliot, 1999), and Sports Psychology (e.g., Carr, 2006). R

Blog post by fitness person (don’t know them found it researching) Julian Arana https://www.wearebfit.com/post/the-fallacy-of-goal-setting this is succinct and clear of the fallacy of goal setting when applied to self and weigh loss, exercise etc. yet his business is set up on people achieving their goals! Love an oxymoronic perspective (I love them!)

Another sport person Jack Wiseman (another name I have never heard before- GB Basketball Coach) https://medium.com/@jack.wiseman/the-fallacy-of-goal-setting-and-an-alternative-approach-1f997fa4a5b6

Goals and happiness are not connected https://www.besthealthmag.ca/article/arrival-fallacy/, also

{3} The human ability to connect and rationalise, gaols and other things without bias and our cognitive (or not) ability to do so is studied here https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00797/full

{4} Meta studies and research on emotions and brain neurology based on prediction https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5669377/ also https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5390700/ a great read and exploratory paper https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00401/full and also Lisa Feldman Barrat’s work

Setting goals and not doing them? Is this you?