I somewhat disagree with your take on goals. Vague goals often lead to vague results. The wrong goals can make things worse.

– “Begin with the end in mind.” – Stephen Covey “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

– Companies introduce these programs under the false assumption that if they carry out enough of the “right” improvement activities, actual performance improvements will inevitably materialize. At the heart of these programs, which we call “activity centered,” is a fundamentally flawed logic that confuses ends with means, processes with outcomes.” – https://hbr.org/1992/01/successful-change-programs-begin-with-results

– “You shouldn’t be doing well what you shouldn’t be doing at all.” – From an article our upper echelon HQ passed out to subordinate commands

– “…productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive.” – Elihu Goldratt, “The Goal”

– “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.” Dave Pelz, “Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible, p 377

How do you evaluate things? Compliance doesn’t equal effectiveness.

Example #1:

In July 1976, I was in Corpus Christi, TX, for training. We were running the obstacle course in Texas heat and humidity. We had to run it a few times. By the second time, I was really dragging.

One of the obstacles was a wall that slanted toward you. You had to go over the wall. The wall had supports on each side. The officer-in-charge was from my NROTC unit which added a lot of pressure. There was a Marine Gunnery Sergeant taking notes on who made it over and who didn’t.

When I got to the wall, I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up over it. I asked if I had to go over the wall (Yes). I asked if it mattered how I got over the wall (No). So, I walked up the support beam, stepped over the wall and slid down. I looked at the Gunny and he gave me a Thumbs Up. People behind me who saw me started doing it.

As I jogged off, I heard him say to the Lieutenant, “I must have seen 5000 people go over that wall in my time and he’s the first person who ever did that.” They noted it in my performance appraisal.

The goal was to get over the wall. The assumption was you had to pull yourself over.

Example #2:

In 1980, I was in New London, CT for submarine office training. One of the classes was leadership and management. It included understanding and setting goals.

One exercise was a ring-toss game. Points were in “ring feet,” which was the number of rings X the distance in feet the ring was tossed from. For example, 1 ring on target tossed from 2 ft was 2 ring feet.

Most of us went for the big score, standing pretty far away. The best guy had 8 ring-feet. The instructor repeated how points were awarded. He went to the 3 ft line, stacked all three rings together, leaned over and dropped them on the post for 9 ring-feet. He said, “I win.”

The point of the exercise was to understand the goal and how best to achieve it. I never forgot that lesson.

Example #3:

Years ago, they introduced a new work management system. It had a lot of bugs that caused work stoppages. A work around was developed to allow work to continue while the permanent fix was implemented.

A guy that formerly worked for me was put in charge of training everyone on the work-around. I asked him how we were going to define success and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed short-term fix. He said success was when everyone was trained on the new system.

I told him he was wrong. The goal wasn’t to train people, it was to eliminate the work-stoppages. By his definition, what he trained could make the problem worse but if he trained everybody, he was successful. He told me to get out of his office.

The points:

– Resolutions are more than goals but goals often are part of resolutions.

– Goals are good, if they’re good goals. If you can’t evaluate a goal, you should re-define the goal until you can.

– Bad goals or no goals can give you bad results.

My main objectives for 2022 are
1. to do the hardest part of my job first thing in the morning everyday – the “eat the frog mentality”. Larger goal: keep moving up in my career.
2 to read one book a month. Larger goal: reading helps me to enjoy life
3 to remain in NC with my LO. Larger goal: recover and continue to respect myself enough to stay away from the bad situation and avoid others like it in the future.

Would like to set other behavioral resolutions but know I won’t have the energy to do them, so they’ll be on the back burner for now.