Reassessing your Goals with STOP: Stop, Think, Organize, Plan

The goals you set for your objectives are there to serve them. They’re the means, not the end; don’t overfocus on them. 

Google’s Chief Decision Scientist, Cassie Kozyrkov, shares a great example of the perils of putting your goals before your objectives in her Advanced Manual of Self-Improvement (Definitely worth a read, as it discusses goal-setting beyond sales management):

“If your goal is to look your best, the point isn’t how many ounces of chocolate you do or don’t eat each day (process goal/initiative). 

The point isn’t what the scale says tomorrow morning (performance goal/key result). 

The point is how you look in the long run (outcome goal/objective).”

*Objective, Key Result, and Initiatives come from the OKR framework

Goodhart’s Law states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” When people or organizations are incentivized to meet certain targets or metrics, they may alter their behavior in ways that distort or manipulate those measures, undermining their usefulness as indicators of success or performance. The Cobra Effect is a real-life anecdote illustrating how metrics used to guide decision-making can lead to unintended consequences if not carefully managed

During British colonial rule in India. To control the population of venomous cobras, a bounty was placed on each cobra killed. Initially, this led to a decrease in the cobra population. However, people began breeding cobras to collect more bounties, rendering the initiative ineffective. When the government realized this and canceled the bounty program, the breeders released the now-worthless cobras into the wild, resulting in a higher population than before. A similar situation also occurred in the 1902 Great Rat Massacre of Hanoi, which even led to an outbreak of the bubonic plague, claiming the lives of over 263 people.

Never pursue your Key Results for their own sake, continuing Cassie’s example:

“Imagine that your outcome goal (objective)is better health and your performance goal (Key Results) is your weight. At first, you’re cutting out junk food, but as the days go by you notice that you’re able to get an even better score in the game of Weigh Yourself by drinking less water, taking diuretics, making yourself sweat, and eating all kinds of non-nutritive chemistry experiments. When you see the scale, you’re chuffed… but what about that overall outcome goal? Your health will be a wreck if you keep this up. Clearly, the scale has ceased to be a good measure of your health since you’ve started gaming it in a way that’s destructive to your overall goals.”

It’s okay to change your objectives too if they are no longer appropriate for serving you and your organization. Don’t fall prey to sunken cost fallacy: the cognitive bias that occurs when individuals continue to invest resources (such as time, money, or effort) into a project, endeavor, or decision solely because they have already invested a significant amount, despite the fact that the investment is unlikely to yield favorable outcomes in the future. 

It happens because individuals often feel emotionally attached to their past investments and are reluctant to abandon them, even when doing so would be the most logical choice. Try not to let past investments influence your decisions about whether to continue investing more resources.

A simple example of this is how many of us are inclined to continue watching a bad movie or TV series simply because we’ve already invested money in buying the ticket or time watching a portion of it. In sales, this could also manifest as an unwillingness to abandon certain prospects or campaigns because of prior investments in them.

Set up regular reminders to STOP and reflect (monthly, quarterly, yearly). Review results, evaluate if you’re measuring the right things and making progress in the right direction. As they should be serving the ends, not your means, course correct if your actions/initiatives aren’t contributing towards your goals or if your goals are no longer contributing to your objectives. Changing your approach does not mean that you have failed.