The Destructive Pursuit ofIdealized Goals

D. CHRISTOPHER KAYES

Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 391–401, 2005 ISSN 0090-2616/$ – see frontmatter� 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.08.006www.organizational-dynamics.com

Everyone can see things far off but isblind to what is near.

–Sophocles

‘‘They should have given up theirattempt for the summit a long time ago;why do they keep climbing the mountain?’’an experienced mountain climber asked ashe witnessed a team of climbers pursue themountain summit, well after other climbershad abandoned their attempt. Troubled bymy firsthand encounter with the disaster thatfollowed, I have spent nearly a decade study-ing disasters, mishaps, and problemsencountered in a variety of organizationalsettings—high-risk and not high-risk, busi-ness and military. I have conducted an exten-sive analysis of the positive and negativeeffects of goals, reviewed case studies ofgoal-setting sessions, spoke with numerousexecutives and leaders, and executed variousstudies of my own.

Organizations set and pursue goals withfoolish devotion. Despite a nearly universalbelief in the power of goals, growing evi-dence reveals that goals also allow leaders tojustify a course of action to its own detriment.Leaders and groups can easily becomeentranced by goals because they create thevision of a desired future. My researchrevealed that, under certain conditions, thenormally useful process of goal setting alsodrives failure. Years of study have led me toone simple conclusion about goals: goalswork best in conventional situations withfew contingencies. Traditional approachesto goal setting break down in the face ofthe unexpected. When goals replace learningas a primary motivator, the destructive pur-suit of goals begins to take form.

This article describes the destructive pur-suit of goals and points to three limitationsthat result from the goal-setting process. Ioutline six warning signs and five remediesfor the destructive pursuit of goals. In a timewhen leadership advocates challenging goals,an understanding of how to avoid the destruc-tive pursuit of goals becomes essential.

THE DESTRUCTIVE PURSUITOF GOALS

On a mountain trek in 1996, I went to explorethe natural landscape of the Himalayas.What I stumbled upon was a mystery ofhuman nature. As I explored the foothillsof Mount Everest, one of the world’s mostdeadly mountain-climbing disasters began tounfold on the peak itself. In an unwaveringpursuit of the summit, teams ignored pre-established turnaround times. As a result,several teams became lost, and others weretoo weak to continue down the mountain. Inthe end, eight climbers from four countriespursued the summit to their eventual death.During the days following the incident, mycolleagues and I, hiking at much more mod-est heights, came across survivors of that ill-fated expedition.

My quest to understand the behavior ofthese mountain climbers led me to discoverthe potentially destructive effects of goals inmore common situations. For example:

� An organization, unable to accept thechanging and competitive environment,fudges its books to meet projected earningtargets.

� A young executive experiences conflictstemming from her hard-headed stance on

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issues and indicates that her approach will bejustified in her future role as company pre-sident.

� An idealistic, close-knit communitybegins to justify behaviors in its leadershipthat it would never accept in other groupmembers, expressing that this behavior willhelp the group achieve all of its goals.

Existing research offers several explana-tions for such behaviors, but in the end, eachof these explanations falls short. One expla-nation focuses on how individual ambitiondrives overly ambitious leaders. The drive toachieve lofty heights and the ambition tomake a unique contribution lead individualsto put normal discretion aside. But myresearch showed that ambition does notalways explain the detrimental pursuit ofgoals. For example, ambitious climbersproved likely to abandon any one attemptat the summit and return another day. Theambition explanation fails to explain whysome goal-setting efforts drive success whileothers result in failure.

Group explanations provide a secondaccount. The group explanations attributedysfunctional behavior to the irrational deci-sion-making that emerges in group settings.The desire to belong forces group membersto agree to a course of action too quickly, andthe fear of retaliation or rejection from othersprecludes questioning the direction. Thegroup explanations enjoy terms such as‘‘risky shift’’, ‘‘groupthink’’, and ‘‘AbileneParadox’’, which offer appealing and mem-orable explanations for dysfunctional beha-vior. These explanations carry intuitiveappeal since nearly everyone recalls experi-ence with the dysfunctional conformity pres-sures of groups. However, years of researchshow that highly conforming groups oftenmake more conservative choices as well asriskier ones. Close-knit groups make just asmany good decisions as bad. In addition, thekind of goal-driven dysfunction I discoveredappeared equally common within indivi-duals, groups, and organizations. The con-tention that group memberships somehowpressure members to overpursue goals alsofails to provide a full explanation.

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I also uncovered a third line of reasoningthat focuses on a leader’s prior experience.Study after study shows how leaders becomemore committed to a course of action afterinitial efforts fail. When faced with the pro-spects of public failure and humiliation, lea-ders tend to put even more resources intopursuing an existing course of action. Lea-ders escalate commitment even if the existingcourse of action is a failing one. Researchersnow realize that commitment also escalateswhen prior experience proves successful.Both prior success and prior failure drivethe dysfunctional pursuit of goals.

The escalation explanation failed to pro-vide a complete answer. Moreover, what con-stitutes prior success and failure remains opento interpretation. Correct interpretations ofpast experience as either successes or failuresare particularly difficult to distinguish inhindsight. In addition, few efforts can be con-sidered total failures or total successes with-out resulting unintended consequences.

Each explanation provided insight, buteach in itself remained incomplete. My pur-suit of a more compelling answer took medown another path. I began to look at howgoals shape the identity of leaders and theirfollowers. I now believe the climbers andother groups I studied pursued goals to theirown detriment because of an inherent limita-tion in the goal-setting process itself. Thedestructive pursuit of goals emerges fromidealized futures.

Future Perfect

In study after study, I consistently found howclosely leaders identify with their goals, as ifachieving the goal is the leader’s primarysource of social status. Close identificationwith future goals serves a useful purpose forleaders: an appeal to followers with a visionof a desired future. From charges of ‘‘set clearobjectives’’ and ‘‘identify strategic direction’’to ‘‘increase shareholder value and improvenet profit margins’’, the language of goalsassumes an almost religious status in orga-nizations. Goals forge a shared identityamong group members and catalyze com-

mon direction. Goals help leaders gain capi-tal with followers. Sometimes the goalbecomes the very identity of the group.When goal setters identify too closely withthe future goal, the normally functional pro-cess of goal setting goes awry. The grouplooks to the goal for its sole source of identity.

The process of goal idealization applies togoal setting this way: the more a person,group, or organization relies on a future,as-yet-unachieved goal as a source of iden-tity, the more likely the pursuit of the goalwill become unreasonable. The investment ofresources in achieving an idealized goal atthe expense of immediate demands increasesthe likelihood that the goal setter will risk itsown demise in favor of achieving the goal.The goal becomes the sole identity, and aban-doning the goal becomes as unthinkable asabandoning oneself.

This doesn’t imply that all goal-directedbehavior results in idealized goal pursuit orthat all goal-seeking behavior leads todemise. In most circumstances just the oppo-site is true: goals result in achieving success.The advantages of setting goals get lost, how-ever, because psychological, social, and con-textual factors make abandoning the goalunthinkable once the goal-setting processhas begun. Justifying the pursuit of goalsbecomes more important than achievingthe goal. The quest to understand the moun-tain climbers and other goal-pursuing enthu-siasts brought me to understand goal settingas a process consistent with what philoso-phers have called farsightedness.

Farsightedness

After years of war with Greece, the citizens ofTroy delightfully looked over the city’s for-tress walls to see that the Greeks no longerheld them under siege. Indeed, the Greeksleft behind a gift. Thinking they had achievedvictory, and ignoring all warnings andomens, the leaders of Troy accepted theGreeks’ wooden horse within their walls.By believing they had achieved victory, theTrojans fell prey to the farsightedness ofidealized goals. Thinking they had won the

long-fought war, the Trojans failed to noticethat within the belly of the premature victorylay severe consequences. The Trojans putfaith in a desired outcome rather than facethe hard realities of the present.

The fall of Troy and other tragedies ofancient Greece led Sophocles to believe that‘‘everyone can see things far off but is blindto what is near’’. This ‘‘farsightedness’’ cap-tured what I saw in the disaster on MountEverest. The goal of reaching the summitpromised an idealistic, far-off utopia worthstriving for, but blinded the climbers, lit-erally and figuratively, to the difficult reali-ties of the present. Regardless of the setting, Isaw the same mechanisms at work: pursuit ofan idealized goal. The Everest disaster repre-sents a broader but seldom-discussed pro-blem in the study of organizations: the limitsof goals.

The Limits of Goals

The mounting losses and eventual bank-ruptcy of WorldCom illustrate the limits ofgoals and the goal-setting process. The multi-billion-dollar telecommunication providerset out to prove that industry growth projec-tions were too conservative. At first, thisstrategy paid off. The profits climbed pastcompetitors to the pleasure of starry-eyedinvestors. Once the fast-growing cellularmarket became saturated and profits contin-ued to climb, the stellar performance alsocaught the attention of security regulators.Few in the organization wanted to re-evalu-ate projected earnings. Rather than adjustprojections to changing market conditions,the organization began to justify bookingnoncash items as profits. In the end, theorganization overstated $7 billion, resultingin bankruptcy. Members of the WorldComboard, once thought off limits to shareholdersuits, agreed to pay hefty fines from theirown pockets for failing in their oversightduties.

Goals are difficult to abandon. The World-Com debacle reveals how goals can bothlimit critical thinking and offer a guide for

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action in undesirable directions. By focusingattention to a distant, often idealized futuregoal, goals inspire directed action. Theinspiration of what can be achieved, ratherthan the difficulties of how to achieve it,diverts attention from the resources, sacri-fices, and consequences that will result whenpursuing the goal. At WorldCom, focusingon a goal at the expense of the internalaccounting process allowed the organizationto rationalize changes in the competitiveenvironment. As WorldCom demonstrates,goals become difficult to abandon once acompelling direction for their pursuit hasbegun.

Goals can be used to justify action. Second,goals allow leaders to take chances, justifyrisky behavior, and avoid normal account-ability. At WorldCom, leaders throughoutthe organization – including those responsi-ble for compliance, like the chief financialofficer and the external auditors – overlookedobvious accounting problems. The goal tocontinually outperform the competitionbecame so ingrained in the culture that themanagement could easily justify violatingreporting standards. WorldCom illustrateshow goals establish acceptable behavior inan organization. Goals help define the cul-ture, which, in turn, allows the organizationto justify behavior that would normally beconsidered unacceptable.

Goals have unintended consequen-ces. Third, even well-intentioned goals carryunintended consequences. Organizationsachieve some goals at the expense of others.WorldCom achieved short-term profits at theexpense of long-term survival. Mountainclimbing provides a disturbing example ofthe unintended consequences of goal pur-suit. As occurred on Everest, most climbersdie working their way down the mountain,not getting up. It appears that reaching thesummit often comes at the expense of makingit back down the mountain successfully.

Growing evidence, in cases like World-Com and also in controlled laboratoryexperiments, supports this claim: under

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some circumstances, stringent and demand-ing goals may actually encourage unethicalbehavior, stifle learning, and hasten failure.The desire for lofty future achievement jus-tifies risky behavior. Even as organizationsachieve their goals, the unintended conse-quences of success are seldom considered.Idealized goals, despite their many benefits,often lead to destructive pursuits. Recogniz-ing the warning signs provides the first stepin overcoming the destructive pursuit ofidealized goals.

WARNING SIGNS

Narrowly Defined Goal

Priority is given, almost exclusively, to onecourse of action. One cross-functional team Ilearned about in the textile industry wascharged with reducing lost time due toon-the-job injuries. The committee estab-lished the general but ambitious goal of zerotolerance for safety violations. In the end,the committee lost sight of the originalintent to increase safety in favor of a morenarrowly defined goal, reducing incidents.Under pressure from the committee, linemanagers and workers simply stoppedreporting accidents even though they wereoccurring with the same frequency asbefore. It appeared that safety increased,when in reality reporting decreased.Although the committee went about achiev-ing its goal with the best intentions, thenarrow goal ensured its failure.

A similar situation occurred with a med-ical equipment sales force that became trans-fixed with sales figures. With pressure toincrease sales, the sales force ignored theconsuming processes of customer service,innovation, and communication. In theend, repeat customer business suffered, ulti-mately resulting in decreased sales. One ofthe culprits of these failed attempts at goalsetting clearly is a faulty compensation sys-tem, but the real culprit is the limited focus ofthe goal itself. Similar situations occurred inorganizations where the reward for success

was simply personal and not monetary. Forexample, the mountain climbers I studiedwere seldom motivated by anything morethan personal challenge or the admirationof peers. Yet, too many times mountain clim-bers defined their goals narrowly—likeachieving the summit of the mountain withlittle consideration for getting back down.Defining a goal too narrowly, such as limit-ing accident reports or increasing sales,comes with unintended consequences thatrun contrary to the larger goals of creatinga safe work environment and increasingincome.

Idealized Future

A romanticized picture is created of whatthe world will look like after the goal isachieved. Corporate mergers often promisedesirable benefits such as improved opera-tions, lower costs, or strategic synergy. In theend, few mergers live up to the compellingfuture promised by their champions. TheAOL–Time Warner merger promised an inte-gration of AOL’s fast growing Internet deliv-ery system with Time Warner’s contentdevelopment expertise. What began as thelargest corporate merger in history becameone of the biggest losers in years. The pro-mise of continued double-digit growth nevermaterialized, once-promising careers fell toruins, and AOL became embroiled in anaccounting scandal similar to WorldCom’s.

Goal-Driven Justification

Current actions are justified in terms of thefuture achievement of goals. Let’s return tothe safety committee for a moment. Imaginehow difficult it must have been for line man-agers to report accidents to the committee inan environment where reported accidentswere considered the hallmark of an unsafework environment. What manager wouldwant to be accused of not supporting a safework environment? But that’s exactly whatcommittee members accused line managersof doing if they questioned the policy. Thegoal of creating a safer work environment

resulted in a culture that justified overlook-ing accidents. Reporting accidents appearedto be a violation of the culture of safety. Evenmore disturbing, workers invoked the goal ofcreating a safe work environment as justifi-cation for not reporting actual incidents. Notreporting accidents resulted not in a saferworkplace but a workplace more fearful ofreporting accidents.

Public Expectat ion

Failure to accomplish the goal would be metby public perception of failure. The AOL–Time Warner merger occurred under consid-erable fanfare. Press conferences were held,gifts were given to local museums in thename of top executives, and appealingclaims were made about media integrationacross television, film, and the Internet. Con-sumers, investors, and advertisers all sali-vated at the potential. Once the profit targetsand the strategies to reach them becamepublic, the newly formed organizationseemed to thrive under the pressure. Expec-tations increased. As Internet users gravi-tated towards forms of high Internet accesslike cable and DSL connections, however,the promise of a fully integrated media pro-vider lost connection with its stakeholders.Advertising, the main source of revenue forthe organization, began to fall. The newlyformed organization failed to meet theexpectations it set for itself.

Associat ion of the Goal withDestiny

Achieving the goal is conceived in terms of‘‘rightfulness’’ and ‘‘destiny’’. A surprisingexample of narrowly defined goals occurredamong the board of directors of a not-for-profit organization. The board became sodogmatic about its own mission that it beganto criticize other charitable organizations thatit saw as competitors for limited corporatefunding. The board even went so far as to callone approach to disaster relief unethicalbecause it placed a higher priority on differ-ent aspects of the relief efforts.

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Viewing achievement of a goal as a matterof destiny may run high among organiza-tions founded on a particular belief system.One group I read about sought comfort in thebelief that they would be saved from worlddestruction by aliens who would swoopdown to earth and rescue them. Many mem-bers of the group continued to focus on thisgoal and even became more adamant aboutbeing rescued when the day of rescue cameand went without incident. The group’s firmbelief in their own destiny, and the fulfilmentof a goal that was to serve as evidence,blinded them to the near term.

Face-Saving Behavior

If initial steps to achieve the goal are metwith resistance or failure, the pursuit isagain justified in terms of its futureachievement. Psychologists have shownhow gamblers, investors, and organizationscontinue to throw good money at bad invest-ments. Once an organization establishes agoal, it makes more sense to continue inthe same direction than to adjust course.The rationalization may change, but the sameactions seem to be taken. Face-saving beha-vior describes the need to explain an existingcourse of action rather than amend it. Face-saving behavior might include changing therationale for a belief, as it did in the case ofthe closely knit group of believers waiting forthe alien ship. Once the ship failed to materi-alize, the group engaged in face-saving beha-vior by suggesting the ship had the wrongaddress, stepping up recruiting efforts to addto their membership and courting the pressto explain their cause.

The Problem with Goals

The idealization of goals occurs when mostor all of these warning signs exist. The pre-sence of these factors warns that identity hasfused with the pursuit of idealized goalsand that these idealized goals have begunto serve as the basis for justifying action.These warning signs carry the flavor of‘‘groupthink,’’ the word used to describe

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the pressure for consensus in groups thatleads to poor decision-making. Everest andthe other events I described, however, arisefrom a different problem: an idealized viewof the future justified by goals. Remedies tothis problem come in rethinking the nature ofgoals in organizations and supplementingthe goal-setting process with learning.

REMEDIES

The research and development efforts ofpharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. often resultin blockbuster drugs like Viagra. To be sure,Pfizer’s goals—like ending diabetes—are nottrivial. To accomplish its lofty goals, Pfizerspends nearly $8 billion annually on researchprograms that yield only a handful of newproducts each decade. Basing its identity on afuture goal makes an organization like Pfizera good candidate for the destructive pursuitof idealized goals. Even though they appearparticularly vulnerable to the destructivepursuit of goals, firms like Pfizer developmechanisms, both formal and informal, todeal with setbacks, failures, and the unin-tended consequences of pursuing goals. Myresearch revealed five remedies for overcom-ing the destructive pursuit of goals.

Learning from Experience

Develop multiple strategies for achievinggoals, assess impact, and update with newstrategies, especially under novel situa-tions. Successful achievement of goalsrequires learning, especially in the face of anew or complex problem. Research anddevelopment teams, like those at Pfizer, faceunique situations where no known course ofaction exists. When situations require a novelapproach, setting goals often results in dis-aster. Instead, project teams focus on learn-ing from experience. When teams learn fromexperience they develop multiple strategiesfor achieving a goal, anticipate contingencies,and acquire new skills.

Learning involves an iterative process. Incontrast, pursuing goals requires an uncom-

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mon effort in the face of a one-time event.Learning requires testing short-termassumptions about how to achieve a goal.Unlike goal pursuit, which requires puttingprior experience to work on a known pro-blem, learning involves adaptation to novelsituations. Simply generating new ways topursue a goal, a common strategy advocatedby goal-setting strategists, falls short. Thechallenge of learning from experience liesin testing and updating multiple strategiesbefore pursuing a single, narrowly definedgoal with full gusto.

Take, for example, one military battle inthe Crimean War. The commanding officerhad no prior combat experience. In fact, onlyone of the commanding officers had experi-ence, 20 years earlier and in a remarkablydifferent terrain. After what seems to havebeen a miscommunication from the general’sfield officer, the inexperienced commanderordered a cavalry charge. The commanderdrew on the lore that the cavalry had lost noartillery guns in recent history and assumedthe same would be true for his charge. Thecommander demonstrated exceedingly highconfidence in his ability by relying on theaccumulated past experience of the militaryto meet a goal. But success required morethan experience and goals. The commanderfailed to take a realistic look at the capabilityof the troops; this unbridled confidence insetting a high goal resulted in the worstcasualties of the war.

Recovering

Develop mechanisms to adjust to setbacks,mistakes, and errors. U.S. President John F.Kennedy’s goal to ‘‘put a man on the moonand bring him back safely before the decadewas out and before the Russians’’ eventuallybecame a source of national identity andpride: the first man on the moon. On its face,the statement seems ripe to induce thedestructive pursuit of idealized goals. Yet,on second reading the goal reveals a cleveramendment that makes it remarkably resili-ent. The statement considered the need forrecovery while pursuing the goal: getting the

astronaut back safely. Contrast the Kennedygoal to the mountain climbers who definedtheir goal as getting up the mountain withlittle regard for the effort involved in gettingback down.

Successful project teams, like those atPfizer, know they will experience minorsetbacks before they even begin to pursuea cure for diabetes. Adjusting to changes,wrong turns, and unintended consequencesis the hallmark of recovering from thesesetbacks. Some goals, like those articulatedby Kennedy, are built on the logic ofrecovery. A formidable example of thinkingin terms of recovery comes from airlinepilots. Those pilots who were most likelyto anticipate and be open to learning inthe face of unexpected events proved thehighest performers during simulated in-flight emergencies. In the context of goals,‘‘think recovery’’ contains realistic state-ments that

� recognize the unintended conse-quences of achieving the goal;

� provide a strategy and justification forretreat from the goal;

� identify multiple goals with multiplebenefits;

� project costs of continuing the pursuitafter setbacks.

Fostering Trust

Develop a culture safe for surfacing proble-ms. Remember the textile manufacturingcommittee charged with increasing safety?The actions of the committee membersresulted in an overall decrease in trust amongcommittee members, line managers, andeventually other employees. The drive tocomplete the goal of limited reported injuriescame at the expense of identifying the realcauses of errors and mistakes. Recovery canoccur only when team members trust eachother enough to talk about errors and pro-blems.

Experiencing an environment of trustwhere learning can take place becomesimperative for achieving goals. Years ofresearch with leaders in high-risk environ-

ments like airline cockpits, offshore oil rigs,and emergency rooms revealed that trustreduces errors in the long run because indi-viduals can surface problems and addressthem. For example, some airline cockpitcrews set a tone of trust through inclusive-ness and invited comments from crew mem-bers during preflight inspection. These crewsdemonstrated a superior ability to recoverfrom problems during a flight.

Minding the Gap

Attend to discrepancies between presentreality and ideal expectations. The LondonUnderground system’s pervasive warningsto ‘‘mind the gap’’ remind travelers of thedistance between the moving train and therailway platform. Distracted passengers caneasily become trapped between the station’splatform and the allure of a fast-movingtrain. Like the promise of a fast-movingtransport, the hasty achievement of goalscan lure people into ignoring the gapbetween where they currently stand andwhat they hope to achieve.

Minding the gap between the currentand the idealized state grounds the goalin realistic expectations. The nature of goalsetting suggests a rational process toachieve an idealized future. Successfulteams resist the need to rationalize setbacksin terms of future rewards. Instead, theseteams learn from setbacks and reconfiguregoals based on new information. If AOL–Time Warner had minded the gap duringthe merger, they would have given moreconsideration to the difficulty of mergingcultures, the lack of business integration,the costs incurred, and competition amongtop management.

Cultivating Dual Loyalt ies

Balance multiple roles and loyalties todifferent cultures. Internal auditors recog-nized a debacle when WorldCom’s uppermanagement ignored accounting irregulari-ties. Auditors tenaciously pursued the case,despite warnings from their superiors to stop

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the investigation. By continuing their effortsto uncover the irregularities, the team ofaccountants demonstrated loyalty to thecompany for which they worked while alsoremaining loyal to professional standards.While others in the organization recklesslypursued goals, these auditors followed theirloyalty to a set of goals other than thosemandated by the organization.

When goals act as the sole regulator ofbehavior, organizations are likely to pursuegoals to their own detriment. Maintainingloyalties to multiple groups or ideals bal-ances the pressure to pursue goals at all costs.Examples of dual loyalty include:

� WorldCom auditors’ adherence togenerally accepted accounting principlesdespite pressures from management to over-look discrepancies,

� Pfizer research scientists’ exposure ofdrug complications prior to commercial roll-out,

� Mountain climbers’ abandonment of aclimb to return another day,

� Military officers’ maintenance of rulesof engagement despite the unruliness of war.

Utopia

Applying these five remedies runs counterto conventional wisdom on goals. Goalsoften harbor a kind of utopian vision ofthe future. Future problems become over-looked for the farsighted hope of achievingan idealized goal, as one former WorldComexecutive demonstrates. He said, ‘‘I knewit was wrong, and I knew it was againstthe law, but I thought we were going to getthrough it in a short period of time’’.

Constantinos Cavafy, in the poem Ithaca,exhorts weary sailors to forget about theirfears, boredom, and loneliness by envisioningthe ports of Ithaca, a real yet fantastical islandthat offers purity of mind and richness ofthing. For the sailors, Ithaca represents thegoal of their trip, the justification for theirtroubles. The destination justifies the goal.Such utopias, like idealized goals, offer secur-ity in their comprehensive and idealizedvision.

CONCLUSION

Events such as Everest and the WorldComscandal open our eyes to the limitations ofgoals. One of the Everest survivors retrospec-tively voiced these limits when he said, ‘‘Youcan over-pursue goals. You can becomeobsessed with goals’’. Goals provide theimpetus to accomplish new heights, explorevast terrain, and seek new challenges, but theunbridled pursuit of idealized goals oftenleads to obsessive destruction. While leaders

Exhib

Mechanisms at Work in the D

The destructive pursuit of goals occurs throuenvironmental mechanisms. When this complex mix ofof goal setting and pursuit becomes dysfunctional. Rmanagement, history, economics, psychology, andmechanisms at play as organizations pursue goals to t

1. Sociologist Max Weber (1922) described the conrationalize current suffering with the promise of future

2. Social psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-wcult managed cognitive dissonance, or extreme internal pbe rescued from world destruction by developing variobecame more committed to its achievement after its in

3. Psychologist David McClelland (1953) describedpractical goals rather than extraordinary ones and then,pursuit.

4. Sociologist Robert K. Merton (1957) identifieadherence to means (pursuing goals) becomes an end

5. Psychologist Irving Janis (1972) illustrated thGroupthink describes how a group can pressure individpursue a commonly shared vision.

6. Psychologist Barry Staw and co-workers (1976course of action, commitment escalates, especially wheescalation of commitment also occurs in groups and o

7. Historian Barbara Tuckman (1984), in her comrevealed how different forces within an organization pusconceived, or utopian goals. She described the justificatiofolly.

8. Management consultant Alfie Kohn (1993) estaband narrow behavior while stifling creativity.

9. Strategy professor Henry Mintzberg (1994) annoability to respond to changing internal and external de

quickly extol the virtues of goals, they oftenfall blind to their unintended consequences. Ina time when leaders extol setting and pursu-ing high goals, the unintended consequencesof these actions deserve greater attention.Cultivating the positive effects of goals ratherthan falling prey to their destructive pursuitprovides an alternative direction.

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it 1

estructive Pursuit of Goals

gh the interaction of psychological, social, andfactors comes together, the normally helpful processesearchers working across diverse fields includingsociology have described fundamental human

heir own detriment.cept of theodicy, where individuals rely on theology toredemption.orkers (1956) displayed how members of a doomsdaysychological conflicts. The cult dealt with its failure tous justifications for failure of achieving the goal anditial failure.how achievement-oriented leaders set moderate andmodify performance on the basis of results from their

d the phenomenon displacement of goals, where(the goal) unto itself.e process of groupthink in public-policy decisions.ual members to abandon critical thinking in order to

) noticed that, once an individual is committed to an prior efforts have failed. Later research showed thatrganizations.parative analysis of historic and contemporary wars,h policy makers to believe in achieving fantastical, ill-n for war in the face of idealized goals as the march of

lished how rewards create unintended consequences

unced that strategic planning limits an organization’smands.

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10. Goal-setting advocates (2000) reveal the paradox of success, where escalation of commitment to acourse of action (see point 6 above) also occurs when groups and organizations experience prior success. Thissuggests that both past success and past failure can lead to continued commitment to goals.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

This paper is based on primary research andtheory. The limits of goal setting areexplained in D. C. Kayes, ‘‘The Limits andConsequences of Experience-Absent Reflec-tion: Implications for Learning and Organiz-ing’’, in M. Reynolds and R. Vince (Eds.),Organizing Reflection (Ashgate Publishing,2004). The details of how goal pursuitbecomes destructive and the implicationsfor organizations are explained in D. C.Kayes, ‘‘The 1996 Mount Everest ClimbingDisaster: The Breakdown of Learning inTeams’’, in Human Relations, 2004, 57(10),1236–1284. The basis of experiential learningin teams can be found in D. C. Kayes, ‘‘Prox-imal Team Learning: Lessons from UnitedFlight 93 on 9/11,’’ in OrganizationalDynamics, 2003, 32(1), 80–92. Another article,D. C. Kayes, ‘‘Dilemma at 29,000 Feet: AnExercise in Ethical Decision-Making Basedon the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster,’’ inJournal of Management Education, 2002,26(3), 307–321, provides an example of how

to develop leaders’ attention to the ethicalimplications of goal pursuit.

For an overview of the state of goal-setting theory in organizations, see the spe-cial feature in the Academy of ManagementExecutive, 2004, 18(4), 122–139. The rise andcollapse of a doomsday cult is described inL. Festinger, H. W. Riecken, and S. Schacter,When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psycholo-gical Study of a Modern Group That Predictedthe Destruction of the World (New York: Har-per Torchbooks, 1956). For historic accountsof policy blunders, see Barbara W. Tuch-man, The March of Folly: From Troy to Viet-nam (New York: Knopf, 1984). For theutopian ideology behind goal setting andthe possible consequences, see Alfie Kohn,‘‘Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work,’’ inHarvard Business Review, 1993; and PaulWatzlawick, John H. Weakland, andRichard Fisch, Change: Principles of ProblemFormation and Problem Resolution (New York:Norton, 1974).

D. Christopher Kayes (Ph.D. Organizational Behavior, Case WesternReserve University) is an assistant professor at The George WashingtonUniversity, School of Business. His research focuses on leadership, teamsand learning.

His research has or will appear in 30 publications, including bestpaper in Human Relations, for his analysis of the 1996 Mt. Everestclimbing disaster. His paper was one of three recognized by the journalAcademy of Management Learning and Education. The OrganizationalBehavior Teaching Society named Kayes with the ‘‘New Educator’’award for his promise in furthering management education. He consultsworldwide on issues of leadership, teams, and learning.

He is likely to be found hiking along the banks of the PotomacRiver with friends, his wife, and two sons. His home page ishttp://home.gwu.edu/�dckayes (Tel.: +1 202 994 4795; e-mail:dckayes@gwu.edu).

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