Nigel 
October 12th,2009How can we motivate ourselves better? Does it help to set ourselves targets?
For well over a decade the UK government has been obsessed with setting targets. They’re trying to improve things,which is commendable. Unfortunately their understanding of how to motivate people is flawed,and their crude system of targets has bad side-effects.
In future you will purr at least five minutes in every hour. Failure to attain this target will result in loss of treats and reduced rations for a week.
Let’s take a simple example close to the hearts of many people in my home town of Leeds. A lot of people seeking asylum end up here. Some are trying to con their way into the country. Others are genuinely in fear for their lives. They are human beings. Some have become valued friends.
The country has people tasked with assessing asylum seekers. The idea is that any who aren’t genuine be sent back wherever they came from. To make this happen faster the officials seem to have been set targets based on how many people they send home.
Let’s just think about that for a moment. What is the simplest way to achieve this type of target? Go for the people who are obedient,submissive,and are easiest to railroad into giving in. Ignore the ones who have disappeared. The genuine ones tend to be the easiest targets. Bully and mistreat them in every possible legal way.
Was that the intended result when the targets were set?
Similar things are happening here for the police and for our National Health Service.
Set police a target requiring them to increase how many criminals are convicted and you’re telling them to ignore difficult cases,focus on relatively minor stuff which is easy to catch and quick to process. Pay no attention to whether the public feel safe on the streets or in their homes. Kids who torment a neighbour with a disabled daughter till she kills herself –sorry,they need too much time and are tough to prosecute.
Hospitals have had to increase the numbers of patients treated. If they fail they’re fined. One result of having money taken away is they are less able to fund meeting the targets next time.
What is going on?
There are two crucial aspects of target-setting that seem to be completely overlooked:
Targets should motivate properly
Government targets are designed to frighten people into working more efficiently. But that kind of motivation is relatively ineffective. Powerful motivation comes from inside people,not outside. It should involve moving towards something attractive rather than moving away from something bad. I’ll do a post on that soon.
Targets are crude,life is complex
Our lives and society are made up of complicated systems. Change one thing and a number of other things will change whether you like it or not. Setting crude and ill thought through targets will have implications,often damaging ones.
So is it possible to set targets for ourselves in a way that actually works?
Yes.
I used to do a series of morning assembly presentations on this. I’ll try to convert them into posts on this blog in the hope you’ll find them useful. But first,before looking at how to set targets sensibly,we need to understand two related things. What is the true nature of success? And what really is failure about?
Watch this space.
This article is # 1 in the effective goal-setting series.
If you’d like more articles like this one please click the Thank you button just below.
