2+2=5 Team*WORKS

Reader: My manager keeps setting these unrealistic goals for our team. I’m sure that she learned somewhere the importance of setting high goals but when they’re unattainable, its suffocating knowing that we’ll never reach them.

Our Response: There’s no doubt that a team without goals is a team without direction. And we believe in setting goals high to drive the best out of a team or individual. But there is a delicate balance between setting extraordinarily high goals and setting unattainable goals. And when that line is crossed into the unattainable, it can be even worse than having no goals at all.

I am reminded of one of my favorite books, The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch. If you havn’t had the chance to pick this up, I strongly recommend it. In the book, Randy talks about giving a project assignment to one of his classes. The students went and worked on the projects for three weeks and when they came back to the class, they blew Professor Pausch’s mind. I remember him saying, “If I had given them all semester to complete this project, I still would have given them all A’s.” Troubled and not sure what to do, Randy Pausch turned to a colleague professor, asking for help. To which the colleague said, “Go back into class tomorrow and say, ‘You all did a good job but I know you can do better.’ ” To which he further explained to Randy, “you obviously had no idea where to set the expectation bar with your students and to set it anywhere would be doing them a great disservice. Push them further.”

I believe Randy Pausch’s story is a good example of walking the line between extremely high goals/expectations and unattainable goals. The best managers have a strong sense of where that line is. How do we know where the line is? Managers must watch the signs from their team members, both verbal and nonverbal and react to them by managing the line. My advice to team members who are feeling that there are unrealistic goals/expectations, manage these goals by setting individual milestone goals that you can accomplish along the way, it makes the end goal not seem so far away.