One of the most intriguing sections of chapter 9 was the section about goal setting. I was shocked to learn that 56% of working don't understand what their organizations goal is and 81% don't have clearly defined goals. How on earth are you supposed do work hard and do a job correctly if you're not sure what you are working towards? Employees who clearly understand what their organizations goals are know what strategic actions they need to take in order to be more productive and efficient. I also learned that there are two types of goal-setting methods, performance outcome goals and learning goals. Performance outcome goals target a specific outcome goal i.e. "we need to sell 10,000 reams of paper this quarter." Where as learning goals focus on learning and creativity, i.e. "Lets come up with new ideas on how to sell more paper." In doing more research on the two, I learned that both types of goal setting are used, just in different scenarios. "Outcome goals are used more when confronting a simple task, where as the learning goals are used to face complex tasks." This is mainly because when faced with a complex task, we don't always know what the outcome will be, so we try our best to learn from it.
http://gom.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/2/236. Latham, Gary
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It is definitely shocking how little some employees identify with (or even know) their company's goals, but it's not so much of a shock to me. To many, simply landing a position is the goal, and then a new goal is not set. In some cases, the office environment can stifle your dreams. If you live in a cubicle for most of your adult life, I can imagine that it could assassinate your dreams.
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