Goal setting has been an effective human behavior theory of motivation in workplaces that I have managed. I have used the four principles in the book The Four Disciplines of Execution (Covey et al., 2016) to achieve goals with the organizations that I have led. The book outlines a system to achieve goals through four disciplines. Covey et al.(2016) says those disciplines are 1. Focus on the Wildly Important Goal (called a WIG), 2. Act on Lead Measures, 3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard and 4. Create a Cadence of Accountability.
In my organization each October we set one big goal (or a WIG) Covey et al.(2016). We set the goal in October for the upcoming year. We do this so that we can start to act on our lead measures. Acting on these lead measures give us an indication of how well we succeed. For example, in my business of real estate our one goal could be office profitability. We know that closed units (or home sales) lead to profitability. Lead measures of closed sales would be listings taken (or how many homes we have we listed for sale) and contracts written (how many buyers do we have under contract to purchase). This is an example of Discipline 2. Act on Lead Measures (Covey et al., 2016) . We implement Discipline 3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard and 4. Create a Cadence of Accountability (Covey et al., 2016) by breaking the number of sales we need down by month. Each week I meet with my team to see where we are in relation to the goal. We use a shared document amongst the team that shows clearly where we are and where we need to be. Each week the team members discuss their specific activities that lead to the ultimate goal and the teams and individuals commit to an action plan that correlates with their role and how it can achieve the ultimate goal.
The Four Disciplines of Execution (Covey et al. ,2016) reminds me of the four elements of goal setting outlined in this chapter. Those elements include goal acceptance, specificity, challenge and performance monitoring and feedback (Newstrom, 2015).
The first element, Goal acceptance is best achieved when employees participate in the setting of the goals. "Simply assigning goals to employees may not result in their commitment to those goals, especially if the goal will be difficult to accomplish' (Newstrom, 2015, p. 140). The way that we set goals in my organization is that the team looks at the goals from the year prior, we also consider what the employees want to achieve both personally and professionally and set a goal that satisfies the organization's objectives and meets the employees' desires. This is only accomplished when the leadership takes the time to find out what drives each member of the team. We do this through something we call a motivational interview conducted twice a year. This one on one meeting addresses each team member and ties their personal goals to