The Joy and Pain of Goals

How do individuals, teams and businesses deal with changing circumstances? Circumstances are always changing. The answer is they set goals. The goals provide a steady focus point. The constant change we all face is a key concept in Buddhist Wisdom referred to as impermanence.

Impermanence

Whether you are examining sub-atomic particles, a material good, an organic life form, a group, a micro or macro-economic scenario, a company or the “company consciousness”, the fact is the only constant is change at every level all the time. A common exercise to internalize this concept is to take some time to try and think of something you have experienced whether a feeling or a material object or any part of yourself that has not changed or will not change over time.

The Buddha’s Goal

One of the things I like about the Buddha is he set audacious goals. Near the time of his enlightenment he said “My goal is the awakening of all senient beings in all universes”. No business or individual has ever set a more ambitious goal.

The Nature of Goals

We are all familiar with the joy that accompanies accomplishing a challenging goal that we have set for ourselves, our team or our company. Most of us who are driven to accomplish goals know that the internal satisfaction derived from achieving a goal can be relatively short-lived. A few examples:

1. A Manager is promoted to Director a day later she is trying to figure how to become a Vice President.
2. A sales rep or sales manager has their best quarter ever. A day later they are trying to figure out how to do more in the next quarter.
3. A CEO increases the company value significantly in one year. The job is to do it again the next year.

The accomplishment of a goal gives rise to satisfaction for two reasons. The first is that compared to the alternative i.e. not getting promoted, having a bad quarter, not increasing shareholder value it is a relief. The second is that it temporarily satisfies the desire which prompted the setting of the goal. The accomplishment of a goal does not in and of itself resolve once and for all the issue(s) that prompted the individual, team or business to set the goal in the first place.

The Tony Robbins School of Goal Setting

One school of goal setting focuses on setting ambitious goals, planning on how to reach them and staying motivated to work extremely hard to accomplish all that has been set out. The most famous propoent of this school of goal setting is Tony Robbins. This method followed correctly will lead to significant changes in income and how the world perceives us either as an individual , a team or a company. However, it does not address our inner-character or the character of a team or consciousness of a company. This method tends to leave us constantly judging ourselves as coming up short. It also creates strong attachments to outcomes which may lead to significant mental and emotional pain if the goal or outcome is not achieved.

The worst manifestation of this kind of goal setting leads to a win at any cost mentality that has the potential to cause great harm not only to employees careers and personal lives but to the community that the business exists in and is ostensibly creating value for. An example of how this behavior manifested itsellf is the behaviors of the influential players in the housing market that led to economic crisis that began in 2007 and the world economy is still recovering from today. Specifically the overly aggressive structuring, markerting and selling of mortagge backed securities by people, teams and companies that were more motivated by short-term profit for themselves and their companies then their broader fiduciary responsibilities. These behaviors wreaked incredible havoc on indiciduals, families and businesses around the world.

The Stephen Covey School of Goal Setting

A second school of goal-setting focuses on understanding the roles we play in life, what we control, what we influence and what is outside of our control. Once understood in conjunction with our values we can set goals and make changes to improve ourselves in a way that matches our character and community as an individual or team. The most famous proponent of this school of goal setting is Stephen Covey. A famous quote from the Founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki (also known as Suzuki Roshi), is “Each of you is perfect the way you are …and you can use a little improvement.”

One way of thinking of this for a business is to evaluate what is within the business’ control, what does the business have the ability to influence and what is outside of the business’ control. If these factors are understood, and articulated in actions, behaviors and communications within the executive team, with employees, with customers and investors i.e. stakeholders it is only natural that there will be fewer missed expectations, less friction and higher productivity.

During the run-up to the financial crisis of 2007 there were commercial banks that chose not to offer and sell the more aggressive mortgages that only have a place in a very unusual circumstances. This is an example of a business putting the idea of creating long-term value for both themselves and their customers in front of short-term profits which in the long run served all parties well.

I like to think that the ideas driving every business that is seeking to create long-term value is perfect….the implementation might need some improvement. To the degree that these posts touch on contemporary goal setting it is closer to the ideas articulated by Stephen Covey. My next post at inkd.in/1s8HvHX will take a look at how the fact of constant change and/or impermanence impacts a business as well as the difference between company culture and company consciousness.

The post previous to this looked at why business contains difficulty and can be found at http://linkd.in/1kGe2ol.

Caveats, Disclaimers, Past and Future Posts

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This post is the third in a series that looks at how Buddhist Wisdom can be applied to business. To start from the first post go to linkd.in/1qEIoKb. I have also created an an index / table of contents for all the posts at http://linkd.in/V7Yugv.

The writings in these posts represent my personal interpreations and understandings of buddhist wisdom as it applies to business. The responsibility for any errors, misconceptions and/or alternative interpretations of traditional buddhist teachings are completely mine and mine alone.

I hope to post additional thoughts and writings each Tuesday and Thursday but this will vary as life’s circumstances require. Please follow me on LinkedIn to stay in touch. I sincerely appreciate and look forward to reading any posted comments.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Stay tuned!