Optimal (Sub) Goal Setting for Superior Project Outcomes
By Russell Jay Hendel
The Stepping Stone, March 2024
Introduction
So, you have a project. How do you break it up into subtasks to optimize outcome quality, efficiency at achieving the outcome, error rate during learning and training, motivation of those involved, and—as a consequence of the items just listed—amount of money and time spent on the project?
Goal setting refers to the way individuals and teams approach projects, more specifically, how they break up the project task into subgoals and intermediate steps. Because optimal goal setting significantly saves money and time, there is a large literature with literally hundreds of papers and experiments discussing the optimal way to approach a project goal.[1, 2, 3] However, the literature frequently omits key components of optimal goal setting. Additionally, the terminology is often ambiguous, leaving the reader with doubts as to the best way to proceed.
This article presents optimal practices by reviewing two nicely done experiments, which afford an opportunity to present principles with contrastive examples, some of which implement the principles and some of which do not. The contrast of examples facilitates a clearer understanding of the principles enabling readers to more quickly apply these principles to their own situations.
Dart Throwing
Four beautifully written papers[4, 5, 6, 7] present five progressive treatments of goal setting as applied to dart throwing, that is, five ways of breaking up a terminal goal of achieving the highest percent of dart throws hitting the bullseye.
Treatment 1: no goals. One group was simply instructed about dart throwing without breaking it up into component skills. There was no instruction to try and achieve anything specific. It shouldn't be a surprise that this method achieved the lowest scores.
Treatment 2: do your best. With the second group, although the task of dart throwing was not broken up into subtasks, the group members were instructed to “try and do your best.” While this group did do better than the group without goals; they performed poorer than the other three treatment groups presented below.
Treatment 3: grip, position, sight, throw, follow-through. The third treatment consisted of training group members in a 5-step process. First, they were taught how to grip the dart; second, they were taught how to position themselves for throwing; third, they were taught how to sight the target goal; fourth, they were taught how to execute the throw using this grip, throwing position, and sighting; finally, they were taught how to follow-through after throwing the dart. This treatment achieved a significantly higher score than Treatments 1 and 2.
There are several ways to understand the success of Treatment 3 over Treatment 2.
One popular formulation found in the literature is “measurability”[8]. There were five subgoals, however, the fiveness (or any number) doesn't really capture the reason for success.
Other formulations use terms like “clear” and “specific.” However, clear and specific does not adequately differentiate between Treatment 2 and Treatment 3. The instruction in Treatment 2 to “do your best by having all darts hit the target” is certainly clear and specific; thus, the terms clear, specific, and measurability do not appear to adequately explain why Treatment 3 had a better performance than Treatment 2.
The difference between Treatment 3 and Treatment 2 can be explained using the concepts immediately presented below.
Uniform, unambiguous: The instructions given in Treatment 3, for example, “your throwing stance should be with your shoulders straight, feet hip-width apart, and your dominant foot turned towards the center of the dartboard, ”are unambiguous, and instantly implementable in a uniform manner by any person without the need for further clarification. Contrastively, the advice in Treatment 2 of telling students “do your best” does not create uniformity; different people will approach being best differently.
Atomicity: Atomicity refers to a skill that cannot be broken down further. The skill of dart throwing can be broken down into several skills: gripping the dart, correctly positioning oneself, sighting the target, throwing the dart, and following through after throwing. Therefore, dart throwing is not an atomic skill. Contrastively, achieving a throwing position is an atomic skill that cannot be further broken down.
We can summarize our formulation by referring to the popular mnemonic S.M.A.R.T.[8] which says that optimal goal setting should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant or realistic, and timely achievable (or time-bound). We have replaced specific with unambiguous and uniform; we have avoided measurable since the fact that something can be counted does not really make it measurable; we have replaced attainable and timely achievable with immediately executable by a new staff member or trainee without the need for further clarification.
We have further introduced atomicity as a means to clarify whether specificity and lack of ambiguity have been achieved. For example, if the only subgoal was the general goal of dart throwing, and if a dart instructor finds himself sometimes correcting trainees’ throwing stance, sometimes target sighting, and sometimes actual throwing, then the instructor becomes aware that dart throwing is not atomic which will lead to creating more subgoals—each of which is more atomic. Similarly, if trainees can master each of the component skills (grip, position, sight, throw, follow through) quickly and accurately but have trouble integrating them, so that sometimes the instructor might correct a trainee that such and such was missing, then the lack of need to further break down the component skills of grip, position, sight, throw, follow through confirms that specificity and lack of ambiguity have been achieved in subgoals.
Treatment 4: immediate feedback. In addition to being taught grip, position, sight, throw, and follow through, the fourth group were given feedback by mentors immediately after each attempted throw. Feedback could be any of the following: i) you did all five stages (gripping, positioning, sighting, throwing, and following through) correctly; ii) you approached the throwing with correct positioning but did not take time to sight; iii) you did not perform all steps of the positioning. People receiving Treatment 4 achieved higher scores than those with Treatments 1, 2 or 3.
The immediate feedback treatment ties in neatly with management theories emphasizing initial support for staff members until they achieve proficiency and no longer need it[9].
Treatment 5: method-outcome (or process-outcome). The fifth group were encouraged to “do your best” (that is, emphasis on a high score), only after they had achieved mastery of the grip, position, sight, throw, follow throughtreatment. Those receiving Treatment 5 achieved the highest scores, had the lowest error rates, and the most personal satisfaction of all treatments.
Treatment 5 can be formulated in terms of the difference between emphasis on method (or process) and outcome. Emphasis on outcome prior to achieving a satisfactory method is not optimal (Treatment 2). However, method by itself (Treatments 3 and 4) is also not optimal. The best approach is to require attempts at superior outcomes after successful method and performance has been achieved (Treatment 5). An important point of this formulation is that it is oversimplistic to identify either process or outcome as deserving primary emphasis. The correct formulation is that each is primary at the appropriate time and level of development.
The Goal Setting Paradox
The principles of goal-setting implied by the five treatments listed above are not sufficient for optimal goal setting. The following experiment[10] illustrates a paradox in the attempt to formulate principles of optimality.
The goal was to teach people how to create chess combinations, which are a sequence of moves in the game of chess involving sacrifice of material to achieve a win. To avoid prior exposure, the participants did not know anything about chess. Then to assess mastery, chess positions are presented to the trainees, their goal being to find the sequence of moves that produced a win.
Two different methods of teaching combinations were presented. In Treatment 1, easy combination exercises were presented to Group 1 participants in Week 1 (on which they scored very high) followed by a presentation in Week 2 of a mixture of easy, intermediate, and challenging chess combinations. Contrastively, in Treatment 2, hard combination exercises were presented to Group 2 participants in Week 1 (on which the group performed poorly) followed by a presentation in Week 2 of a mixture of easy, intermediate, and challenging chess combinations.
The paradox of the experiment was that even though in Week 1, Group 2 was given problems impossible for them to solve, they still outperformed Group 1 during Week 2 when both groups were given the same collection of easy, intermediate, and hard chess problems. The paradox can be succinctly summarized by observing that optimal goal setting with significantly superior performance is achievable through initially giving problems with expected low performance.
There is no method (or more precisely there couldn’t be a method) that simultaneously gives realistic subgoals achievable in a reasonable amount of time and that are also not attainable. This balance between challenge and attainability requires a feel rather than an algorithm and is what makes goal setting an art vs. a science.
Summary
The goal-setting paradox is rarely mentioned in popular accounts of goal setting. Most articles mention the S.M.A.R.T. approach. Locke[1, 2, 3] formulates good goal setting using another five attributes—clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback, and task complexity. While he does discuss complex tasks, there is no attempt at resolving the goal setting paradox. However, we believe a resolution can be achieved using the process-outcome distinction introduced in Treatment 5. We therefore summarize a complete set of principles of goal setting as follows:
- Recognizable outcome levels: The goal itself should have recognizable levels of outcome. This is easiest to achieve through something measurable, but the unambiguous recognizability is what is important.
- Atomic subgoals: The goal should be broken up into subgoals, each of which is atomic—that is, the subgoal should not involve a collection of skills but be unitary.
- Uniform and unambiguous: The subgoals should each be uniformly implementable without ambiguity. A test of this is whether a new trainee or staff member is able to execute the subgoal without the need to ask questions or receive further guidance.
- Timebound, attainable timely: Each subgoal should be something accomplishable in a reasonable but small amount of time.
- Immediate mentor feedback: During the initial stages of learning, a mentor should provide immediate feedback after the practice of each subgoal. Feedback need be neither critical nor reflect further improvement; it might, for example, be positive feedback noting the success of the trainee.
- Method-outcome (process-outcome): Upon mastery of all process subgoals, trainees and staff members should be encouraged to maximize the level of outcome.
- Challenge: Accompanying the stage of outcome focus, there should be alternating periods of outcomes that are impossible to reach as well as outcomes with a variety of levels (easy, intermediate and challenging).
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.D., ASA, is a member of both the Leadership and Development Section Council and the Investment Section Council. He is adjunct faculty III at Towson University, where he assists with the Actuarial Science and Research Methods program. Russell can be reached at RHendel@Towson.edu.
Endnotes
[1] E. Locke, “Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives,” Organizational Behavior & Human Performance 3(2) (1968): 157–189.
[2] E. Locke, K. Shaw, L. Saari, & G. Latham, “Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980.” Psychological Bulletin 90(1) (1981): 125–152.
[3] E. Locke, and G. Latham. A theory of goal setting and task performance. (Englewood Cliffs: Pearson College Div., 1990).
[4] A. Kitsantas and B. Zimmerman, “Self-regulation of motoric learning: A strategic cycle view,”
Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 10(2) (1998): 220–239.
[5] A. Kitsantas and B. Zimmerman, “Comparing self-regulatory processes among novice, nonexpert, and expert volleyball players: A microanalytic study.” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 14(2) (2002): 91–105.
[6] B. Zimmerman & A. Kitsantas, “Self-regulated learning of a motoric skill: The role of goal-setting
and self-monitoring,” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 8(1) (1996): 60–75.
[7] B. Zimmerman & A. Kitsantas, “Developmental phases in self-regulation: Shifting from process
goals to outcome goals,” Journal of Educational Psychology 89(1) (1997): 29–36.
[8] A google search on the term "S.M.A.R.T goal setting," "goal setting techniques" or similar phrases results in several dozen pages many with good references.
[9] Ken Blanchard, Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations, 3rd Edition (New Jersey: FT Press, 2018).
[10] D. Campbell and D. Ilgen, “Additive Effects of Task Difficulty and Goal Setting on Subsequent Task Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 61(3) (1976): 319–324.