Specific and difficult goals produce higher performance than vague encouragement, provided the person is committed and the task is reasonably understood.
Locke and Latham's programme found a consistent linear relationship between goal difficulty and performance up to the limit of ability, with specific goals beating do-your-best instructions. The boundary conditions matter as much as the effect: goals work on tasks already understood, and on complex or novel tasks a difficult goal can reduce performance.
In practice
- A target of a specific number by a specific date outperforms an instruction to improve, and delivers exactly that number and nothing else.
- A team given a stretch goal on unfamiliar work performs worse than one told to work out how it should be done.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is direction and effort: a specific, difficult goal tells a person what counts as progress and how hard to push, which vague encouragement cannot.
- In its favour
- It is among the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, with a consistent relationship between goal difficulty and performance up to the limit of ability, across hundreds of studies.
- Against it
- The documented downside is that goals narrow attention, crowd out unmeasured work and invite gaming, which is the same failure Goodhart's law describes, and the effect weakens for complex tasks where the route is unknown.
- Standing
- Among the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, and with a documented downside: goals narrow attention, crowd out unmeasured aspects of the job, and can license unethical shortcuts.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- What gets in the way of good work