At the turn of the millennium, GM set a bold goal: the company would recapture 29% of the American car market. The plan didn't just fail--it backfired. Here's why you should think twice about setting goals.
If you’ve ever read a popular book about the importance of planning for the future, you will almost certainly have encountered a reference--and quite possibly several--to the Yale Study of Goals. This is a now-legendary finding about the importance of creating detailed plans for your life. The essentials of the study are as follows: in 1953, students graduating from Yale University were asked by researchers whether or not they had formulated specific, written-down goals for the rest of their lives. Only 3 percent of them said they had. Two decades later, the researchers tracked down the class of ’53, to see how their lives had turned out. The results were unequivocal: the 3 percent of graduates with written goals had amassed greater financial wealth than the other 97 percent combined. It is a jaw-dropping finding, and a powerful lesson to any young person thinking of just drifting through life. It isn’t surprising, then, that it achieved the status of legend in the world of self-help, and in many corners of corporate life.
The only problem is that it is indeed a legend: the Yale Study of Goals never took place.
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