Goal

A goal or objective is a desired result a person or a system envisions, plans and

commits to achievea personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of
assumed development. Many people endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by
setting deadlines.
It is roughly similar to purpose or aim, the anticipated result which guides reaction, or
an end, which is an object, either a physical object or an abstract object, that
has intrinsic value.

Goal setting
Goal-setting ideally involves establishing specific, measurable, attainable, realistic
and time-targeted objectives. Work on the goal-setting theory suggests that it can
serve as an effective tool for making progress by ensuring that participants have a
clear awareness of what they must do to achieve or help achieve an objective. On a
personal level, the process of setting goals allows people to specify and then work
towards their own objectives most commonly financial or career-based goals.
Goal-setting comprises a major component of personal development. A goal can be
long-term or short-term.

Short-term goals
Short-term goals expect accomplishment in a short period of time, such as trying to
get a bill paid in the next few days. The definition of a short-term goal need not relate
to any specific length of time. In other words, one may achieve (or fail to achieve) a
short-term goal in a day, week, month, year, etc. The time-frame for a short-term
goal relates to its context in the overall time line that it is being applied to. For
instance, one could measure a short-term goal for a month-long project in days;
whereas one might measure a short-term goal for someones lifetime in months or in
years. Planners usually define short-term goals in relation to a long-term goal or
goals.

Personal goals
Individuals can set personal goals. A student may set a goal of a high mark in an
exam. An athlete might run five miles a day. A traveler might try to reach a

destination-city within three hours. Financial goals are a common example, to save
for retirement or to save for a purchase.
Managing goals can give returns in all areas of personal life. Knowing precisely what
one wants to achieve makes clear what to concentrate and improve on, and often
subconsciously prioritizes that goal.
Goal setting and planning ("goal work") promotes long-term vision and shortterm motivation. It focuses intention, desire, acquisition of knowledge, and helps to
organize resources.
Efficient goal work includes recognizing and resolving all guilt, inner conflict or
limiting belief that might cause one to sabotage one's efforts. By setting clearly
defined goals, one can subsequently measure and take pride in the achievement of
those goals. One can see progress in what might have seemed a long, perhaps
impossible, grind.

Achieving personal goals

Achieving complex and difficult goals requires focus, long-term diligence and effort.
Success in any field requires forgoing excuses and justifications for poor
performance or lack of adequate planning; in short, success requires emotional
maturity. The measure of belief that people have in their ability to achieve a personal
goal also affects that achievement.
Long term achievements rely on short-term achievements. Emotional control over
the small moments of the single day makes a big difference in the long term.
One formula for achievement reads A= I*M[citation needed] where A = achievement, I =
intelligence, and M = motivation. When motivation equals zero, achievement always
equals zero, no matter the degree of intelligence. Similarly for intelligence: if
intelligence equals zero, achievement always equals zero. The higher the
combination of both intelligence and the motivation, the higher the achievement.

Goal management in organizations

Organizationally, goal management consists of the process of recognizing or
inferring goals of individual team-members, abandoning no longer relevant goals,
identifying and resolving conflicts among goals, and prioritizing goals consistently for
optimal team-collaboration and effective operations.

For any successful commercial system, it means deriving profits by making the best
quality of goods or the best quality of services available to the end-user (customer)
at the best possible cost. Goal management includes:

Assessment and dissolution of non-rational blocks to success

Time management

Frequent reconsideration (consistency checks)

Feasibility checks

Adjusting milestones and main-goal targets

Morten Lind and J.Rasmussen distinguish three fundamental categories of goals

related to technological system management:[citation needed]
1. Production goal
2. Safety goal
3. Economy goal
An organizational goal-management solution ensures that individual employee goals
and objectives align with the vision and strategic goals of the entire organization.
Goal-management provides organizations with a mechanism to effectively
communicate corporate goals and strategic objectives to each person across the
entire organization. The key consists of having it all emanate from a pivotal
source[citation needed] and providing each person with a clear, consistent organizationalgoal message. With goal-management, every employee understands how their
efforts contribute to an enterprise's success.
An example of goal types in business management:

Consumer goals: this refers to supplying a product or service that the

market/consumer wants

Product goals: this refers to supplying a product outstanding compared to

other products[citation needed]perhaps due to the likes of quality, design, reliability
and novelty

Operational goals: this refers to running the organization in such a way as to

make the best use of management skills[citation needed], technology and resources

Secondary goals: this refers to goals which an organization does not regard
as priorities

Goal Displacement

The process by which the means used to achieve a goal become more important than the goal itself. For
example, runners who perform time trials in preparation for a competition may expend more energy on
the trial than the actual competition.
Losing sight of or being deflected from your original goals.
Imagine that you plan to teach children to dance or
develop their sporting skills but the only funds available
are to reduce obesity in children via exercise and
healthy eating.Perhaps you believe this is a realistic
compromise but it wasn't your original intention.
Your goals have been displaced by economic pessures.

Integration of goals and effectiveness when team building

The extent that individuals and groups perceive their own goals as being satisfied by the
accomplishment of organizational goals is the degree of integration of goals. When organizational
goals are shared by all, the term goal congruence can be used. (Read this case study.)
To illustrate this concept, we can divide an organization into two groups, management and
subordinates. The respective goals of these two groups and the resultant attainment of the goals
of the organization to which they belong are illustrated in Figure 1.

In this instance, the goals of management are somewhat compatible with the goals of the
organization but are not exactly the same. On the other hand, the goals of the subordinates are
almost at odds with those of the organization.
The result of the interaction between the goals of management and the goals of subordinates is a
compromise, and actual performance is a combination of both. It is at this approximate point that
the degree of attainment of the goals of the organization can be pictured.
This situation can be much worse when there is little accomplishment of organizational goals, as
illustrated in Figure 2.

In this situation, there seems to be a general disregard for the welfare of the organization. Both
managers and workers see their own goals conflicting with those of the organization.
Consequently, both morale and performance will tend to be low and organizational
accomplishment will be negligible. In some cases, the organizational goals can be so opposed
that no positive progress is obtained.
The result often is substantial losses, or draining off of assets (see Figure 3). In fact,
organizations are going out of business every day for these very reasons.

The hope in an organization is to create a climate in which one of two things occurs. The
individuals in the organization (both managers and subordinates) either perceive their goals as
being the same as the goals of the organization or, although different, see their own goals being
satisfied as a direct result of working for the goals of the organization.
Consequently, the closer we can get the individual's goals and objectives to the organization's
goals, the greater will be the organizational performance, as illustrated in Figure 4.

One of the ways in which effective leaders bridge the gap between the individual's and the
organization's goals is by creating a loyalty to themselves among their followers. They do this by
being an influential spokesperson for followers with higher management. These leaders have no

difficulty in communicating organizational goals to followers and these people do not find it difficult
to associate the acceptance of these goals with accomplishment of their own need satisfaction.

Goal setting in business

In business, goal setting has the advantages of encouraging participants to put in substantial
effort; and, because every member has defined expectations set upon him or her
(high roleperception), little room is left for inadequate effort going unnoticed.
Managers cannot be constantly able to drive motivation and keep track of an employees work on
a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers since goals have the
ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that acquires an employee a certain amount of
guidance Shalley, 1995[3] and Locke and Latham (2002)[4] have distilled four mechanisms through
which goal setting is able to affect individual performance:
1. Goals focus attention towards goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant
activities.
2. Goals serve as an energizer; higher goals will induce greater effort while low goals induce
lesser effort.
3. Goals affect persistence; constraints with regard to resources will affect work pace.
4. Goals activate cognitive knowledge and strategies which allows employees to cope with
the situation at hand.