The Counter-Intuitive Leadership Philosophy That Changed My Approach to Goal Setting
It was the quarterly business review meeting. The product leads were reviewing the business progress with the cross leadership team that had Product, Engineering and Marketing heads from across the organization. My Product lead was particularly nervous going into this review because of our progress till date towards this important goal. The review was on and our Product manager provided callouts specifically addressing the friction with adoption of the product and how it was hurting the goal. “Goals are just a means to an end. You'll fail if you build your product around it.”- one of the leaders remarked. This was the first time I heard this idea. I was visibly confused. "What does that even mean? We often spend an entire year chasing goals and suddenly they are not important?" - I thought to myself. You set goals as a leader to help your teams execute with focus. So, how could you not suddenly set them. The leader had my full attention. As I continued to listen and reflect upon it, it made more and more sense. It is one of those counter-intuitive leadership philosophies I’ve taken to heart and practice to this date with a lot of success. Let me explain what the leader meant and why it is important.
Goals are undoubtedly important, but they are just a means to an end. The end goal is to create a product or service that meets the needs of your customers and drives the success of your organization. Focusing too much on specific goals can cause leaders to lose sight of the larger vision. For example, if your goal is to increase revenue by 10%, you might be tempted to prioritize short-term sales over the long-term health of your business. This could result in decisions that damage your brand reputation, decrease customer loyalty, and ultimately hurt your bottom line.
I’ll use a common metaphor here to explain this. Setting goals is like using a compass on a journey. A compass helps you stay on track and ensures that you are moving in the right direction, but it doesn't tell you everything you need to know about your journey. Similarly, goals help provide direction and a sense of progress, but they don't necessarily tell you everything you need to know about achieving your larger vision.
On the contrary, setting goals without a larger vision is like building a house without a blueprint. You may have a general idea of what you want the house to look like, but without a detailed plan, you may end up with a structure that doesn't meet your needs or fails to take advantage of key features of the site. When goals are properly aligned with a larger vision, they can be like a jet engine propelling a plane towards its destination and reach high speeds and overcome obstacles.
By now, you probably understand what he meant when he said goals are just a means to an end. His advice helped us make high judgement decisions instead of blindly pivoting from our planned initiatives. We made some tactical changes to drive short-term results without compromising too much on our long-term objectives.