Reflection on Goal Setting
The reflection on goal setting engages with the rejected alternative goals. The basic question is: “What risk is there in the team/the individual team member in doing and aspiring to do exactly that which he does and aspires to (and who therefore doesn’t or can’t do something else)?” The reflection about what one has decided not to do or wish to do is often omitted and yet it is so important. Why is this?
To meaningfully make the guiding distinction, ‘Do we stabilise or change our goal(s)?’, one requires information about alternatives. Otherwise one just continues as before. One can gain this information either from weak signals, which point to the changed environmental factors or by the reflection (usually unreflected or latent) on discarded alternatives: One drives the optimisation of the existing product forward with fervour and overlooks that a substantial innovation necessity is not even in the picture.
You cannot win any prizes with the well-solved task if it is the inappropriate task. It is no good to solve a dysfunctional (wrong) problem well. The need to reflect on goal setting grows in a world in which it is increasingly unclear whether one has selected a meaningful focus!