Goal Setting: What it really means?
Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed to motivate and guide a person or group toward a goal. Goal setting can be guided by goal-setting criteria (or rules) such as SMART criteria. Goal setting is a major component of personal-development and management literature.
Studies by Edwin A. Locke and his colleagues have shown that more specific and ambitious goals lead to more performance improvement than easy or general goals.
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The goals should be specific, time constrained and difficult. Difficult goals should be set ideally at the 90th percentile of performance assuming that motivation and not ability is limiting attainment of that level of performance.
As long as the person accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.
The theory states that the simplest most direct motivational explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals. The essence of the theory is fourfold.
First, difficult specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best.
Second, holding ability constant, as this is a theory of motivation, and given that there is goal commitment, the higher the goal the higher the performance.
Third, variables such as praise, feedback, or the involvement of people in decision-making only influences behavior to the extent that it leads to the setting of and commitment to a specific difficult goal.
Fourth, goal-setting, in addition to affecting the three
mechanisms of motivation, namely, choice, effort, and persistence, can
also have a cognitive benefit. It can influence choice, effort, and
persistence to discover ways to attain the goal.
Goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance more than goals that are not. A goal can be made more specific by:
- quantification (that is, making it measurable), such as by pursuing "increase productivity by 50%" instead of "increase productivity",
- enumeration, such as by defining tasks that must be completed to achieve the goal instead of only defining the goal.
Setting goals can affect outcomes in four ways:
- Choice
- Goals may narrow someone's attention and direct their efforts toward goal-relevant activities and fromward goal-irrelevant actions.
- Effort
- Goals may make someone more effortful. For example, if someone usually produces 4 widgets per hour but wants to produce 6 widgets per hour, then they may work harder to produce more widgets than without that goal.
- Persistence
- Goals may make someone more willing to work through setbacks.
- Cognition
- Goals may cause someone to develop and change their behavior
Job vs Business - Your Answer (By Forbes)
Have you been job hunting but, haven’t found an ideal job that showcases your talents, education and interests? Let me ask you a question: Have you thought about starting your own business?
I have to warn you though, making the leap from employee to entrepreneur means changing not only your lifestyle, but also your mindset.
Before spending time, money and energy starting a new business, you should ask yourself: Do I have what it takes to own a business or, am I better suited to being an employee?
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Image Source: Pixabay |
1. Can you start and finish tasks independently?
Employee Mindset: The boss or manager gives you a task to be completed within a certain time period and you’re expected to complete the assigned task.
Business Owner Mindset: Business owners know how to, and even like to, work independently. They are willing to take full responsibility for creating and completing their own work schedules.
To take this one step farther, if you are thinking about starting a home-based business, you must also consider that there will be times when you’ll be spending hours working alone, without the company and support of others.
2. Can you set and achieve short and long term goals?
Employee Mindset: As an employee, you are working to achieve someone else’s goals.
Business Owner Mindset: A business owner takes on the responsibility for planning, marketing and overseeing the success of their business. Running a successful business means taking the time to formulate and implement a well thought out business plan.
You will need to write a concise mission statement, an innovative vision for your company, short and long-term financial goals and a feasible and effective plan of action.
3. Do you have the self-discipline and self-motivation to work for yourself?
Employee Mindset: A boss or manager sets and oversees your tasks and hours.
Business Owner Mindset: Successful entrepreneurs are masters of time management and multi-tasking. Self-discipline is a vital factor to growing a successful business.
A business owner must be consistently self-directed and self-motivated to do those things that will keep his/her business moving forward. Self-discipline is about doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.
4. Can you manage money wisely?
Employee Mindset: Someone else takes all the financial risks for building a successful and profitable business.
Business Owner Mindset: If you decide to start a business, how do you intend to finance your business? A key factor to starting a business is being prepared to handle the financial ups and downs of opening and growing a new business. Are you willing to take business classes, learn new money management skills and even hire professionals who can help handle your finances?
5. Do you know how to measure success?
Employee Mindset: Your boss sets the standard by which they measure and reward your successes – pay raises, awards, recognition, etc.
Business Owner Mindset: A successful business owner knows, almost instinctively, how to set his or her own internal and external “barometers of success.” As an entrepreneur you are responsible for setting your own standard of excellence.
It is important, even before beginning your business, to be fully aware and understand your “barometers of success” and how you professionally measure success. Do you measure success by money earned, recognition received, etc.?
6. Are you comfortable creating your own paycheck?
Employee Mindset: Your employer is responsible for your paycheck, benefits and other job related expenses. You can plan on getting paid regularly.
Business Owners Mindset: Business owners are responsible for creating their own paycheck, retirement plan, taxes, insurance, vacation pay, etc. There will probably be times when you won’t receive a regular paycheck. Being your own boss means taking risks and living with the financial uncertainty that often comes with owning a business. Are you willing to take financial and professional risks? Are you willing to live with the stress that often accompanies an uncertain paycheck?
7. Do you know your professional worth?
Employee Mindset: An employer tells and shows you how much you are worth by the amount they are willing to pay you.
Business Owners Mindset: As an entrepreneur, you determine your own worth!
After answering these seven questions, what have you decided – are you going out job hunting or starting a business?
Entrepreneurship: What it is? - According to Wikipedia
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, which may include other values than simply economic ones.
More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the
process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is
often initially a small business, or as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit."
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| Image Source: Unsplash |
The people who create these businesses are often referred to as entrepreneurs.
While definitions of entrepreneurship typically focus on the launching
and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a
start-up,
a significant proportion of start-up businesses have to close due to
"lack of funding, bad business decisions, government policies, an
economic crisis, lack of market demand, or a combination of all of
these."
A somewhat broader definition of the term is sometimes used, especially in the field of economics.
In this usage, an entrepreneur is an entity which has the ability to
find and act upon opportunities to translate inventions or technologies
into products and services:
The entrepreneur is able to recognize the commercial potential of the invention and organize the capital, talent, and other resources that turn an invention into a commercially viable innovation.In this sense, the term "entrepreneurship" also captures innovative activities on the part of established firms, in addition to similar activities on the part of new businesses.
Yet, the definition is still
narrow in the sense that it still focuses on the creation of economic
(commercial) value.
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