You assert "Boyd’s First Law of Goal Setting™: do not take as a goal something that you are not in control of achieving.". As a person who does assert goals like this on a regular basis, I struggle with this "law." It's a goal, because achieving it would be highly desirable, and the act of articulating the goal hopefully leads to a productive dialog around the risks and challenges to getting there. Does not every ball team start every game with the goal of scoring runs, despite not being in control of who's pitching and how nasty their slider is?
It’s a good point. And my take is certainly…imperfect.
But let me extend your baseball metaphor a little to try to get at what I mean. Team management of course has a goal of “win the game.” Makes sense to cascade THAT goal down to everyone. However, implicit (or maybe explicit, as you point out), therefore, are the goals of “score runs” and “prevent the other team from scoring runs.” Cascading THOSE goals to everyone on the team -- without distinction -- is way more problematic. For example, if I’m the closing pitcher, I really shouldn’t have to take “score runs” as a goal: I will never bat! Similarly, if I’m a designated hitter, forcing me to cascade the defensive goal is meaningless since I will never play defense. Obviously each of us only succeeds if the team is winning, but good management will ultimately try to ensure that reward and/or accountability are assigned based on actual expected contributions. Lazy (or arrogant) management will just insist on one-size-fits-all.
And more important, what I was trying to get at with my example was that “ship project on time” is a great goal for the leadership -- it’s leadership’s responsibility to coordinate all the moving parts to ensure that goal is hit. But it’s a terrible goal to cascade down, since no individual part of the team has control of that themselves. (I guess we could argue that “don’t prevent the project from shipping on time” might work as a goal, but, oof. That’s not much of a motivator.) My frustration -- even as a leader myself -- is with leadership that doesn’t understand which part should be leadership’s responsibility, and which part should be cascaded down. It’s pretty rough to saddle a contributor with a leader’s goal.
You assert "Boyd’s First Law of Goal Setting™: do not take as a goal something that you are not in control of achieving.". As a person who does assert goals like this on a regular basis, I struggle with this "law." It's a goal, because achieving it would be highly desirable, and the act of articulating the goal hopefully leads to a productive dialog around the risks and challenges to getting there. Does not every ball team start every game with the goal of scoring runs, despite not being in control of who's pitching and how nasty their slider is?
It’s a good point. And my take is certainly…imperfect.
But let me extend your baseball metaphor a little to try to get at what I mean. Team management of course has a goal of “win the game.” Makes sense to cascade THAT goal down to everyone. However, implicit (or maybe explicit, as you point out), therefore, are the goals of “score runs” and “prevent the other team from scoring runs.” Cascading THOSE goals to everyone on the team -- without distinction -- is way more problematic. For example, if I’m the closing pitcher, I really shouldn’t have to take “score runs” as a goal: I will never bat! Similarly, if I’m a designated hitter, forcing me to cascade the defensive goal is meaningless since I will never play defense. Obviously each of us only succeeds if the team is winning, but good management will ultimately try to ensure that reward and/or accountability are assigned based on actual expected contributions. Lazy (or arrogant) management will just insist on one-size-fits-all.
And more important, what I was trying to get at with my example was that “ship project on time” is a great goal for the leadership -- it’s leadership’s responsibility to coordinate all the moving parts to ensure that goal is hit. But it’s a terrible goal to cascade down, since no individual part of the team has control of that themselves. (I guess we could argue that “don’t prevent the project from shipping on time” might work as a goal, but, oof. That’s not much of a motivator.) My frustration -- even as a leader myself -- is with leadership that doesn’t understand which part should be leadership’s responsibility, and which part should be cascaded down. It’s pretty rough to saddle a contributor with a leader’s goal.