Vague aims are claimed to be unachievable, and specifying the goal precisely is claimed to be most of the work of reaching it.
Ziglar's version travelled far further than Locke and Latham's, which was published around the same time with evidence behind it. The maxim is right about specificity and silent about everything that determines whether specificity helps, including whether the person is committed and whether the task is understood well enough for a target to be meaningful.
In practice
- A target of a number by a date outperforms an instruction to improve, on work the team already knows how to do.
- A precise goal set on unfamiliar work locks in an approach before anyone knows which approach is right.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is direction and feedback: a specific goal tells a person what to do next and whether they are on course, which vague aims cannot.
- In its favour
- It is the popular restatement of goal-setting theory, one of the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, and specificity does outperform do-your-best instructions.
- Against it
- The maxim drops the boundary conditions that the research adds, including commitment, feedback and task complexity, and says nothing about goals that narrow attention or invite gaming.
- Standing
- The popular restatement of goal-setting theory, which supports specificity and adds the boundary conditions the maxim drops: commitment, feedback, task familiarity, and a documented downside on novel work.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- The success literature and its sceptics