Goals Goals

Goals are fantastic as standards or aspirational states for regulation. Using a goal as a way to set direction is a fundamental part of Scrum and I am seeing it more in generic "Big A" Agile. of course the goal needs to be the right goal, and if we are inherently goal directed organisms then we need to make sure everyone has their goals aligned.

Having learned some skills for project management the idea of managing a plan based on the original estimates (aka commitments) never seemed right to me. In this situation the goal is to make sure the plan is met, be that the dates/scope/budget. Ah hah! that's project management, the magic is to drive the team to achieve this result. Of course it's also utter bunk, it's hitting the target and missing the point.

My rough sketch above is an attempt to show what I am on about. An idea becomes a plan, then there is some action followed by measuring progress, then checking the progress against the plan. This assumes the plan and the idea are correct. With these two assumptions there isn't much room to make changes. This is a simplification and plans do change, but from what I have heard it's more about "updating" the plan than intentionally varying the plan and re-planning is a significant effort that is met with disapproval.

Now if we manage our work to achieve the goal rather than to follow the plan there is greater opportunity for changing what we doing. The second sketch shows this simple difference, that is to check progress against the goal rather than the plan. Each cycle through the action, measure, check and change needs to be treated as an experiment, where we learn what works and doesn't work to achieve the goal. In this scenario nothing is assumed to be correct until it is proven to help achieve the goal, and we can refine the goal as well.

Unfortunately within a traditional work environment this is a big change in thinking. Outside of a specific R&D team trying something that might fail is rarely approved. Changing this will be a significant challenge as structure of the organisation reinforces these ideas of how to view success.

Goals

Goals... simple stuff really. A goal is just something you want to achieve such as "get that job!", "get a promotion", "run the four minute mile". Interestingly there are some people who have made a career out of studying goals, weirder things have probably happened.

Austin and Vancouver (cool names for co-authors) define "goals as internal representations of desired states, where states are broadly construed as outcomes, events, or processes" which extends the discussion (and the career) on goals.

The upshot is that any person at any moment has multiple goals. Right now I have the following:

• Sit comfortably
• Write something sensible
• Don't let me right eye dry out - as it isn't closing properly
• Enjoy listening to Portico Quartet's Isla whilst writing this post

but wait there's more

• In the very near future I will need some sleep
• Right now I want to keep my body at a comfortable temperature and it's warming up in here
• I also want to read a few books that I have recently acquired
• Earn three stars on each level of Angry Birds (known in this house as Cranky Chickens)

This list could extend for a lot longer but it's boring enough.

So what? So everything we do can be interpreted as pursuing a goal. Whoop de do.

What if you want me to pursue a goal that's not on my list? For example you may want to change the way I work. Now we may have some difficulties as your goal may be discordant with my goal. Our first reactions in this situation are going to be interesting.

You - Lachlan just doesn't want to change.

Me - Why would I want to do that? What I am doing is fine.

Is this resistance? Rather than thinking in a confrontational way about the situation perhaps we could consider that we have competing goals and then we can start to dig into what these and whether they can be aligned.

Within the trans-theoretical model this conflict on goals is coming from one person being further through the cycle of change than the other. In my two line example I am in pre-contemplation, I think what I am doing is fine, I have no reason to change. It's back to raising my awareness of the alternatives and the limitations of the way I am acting/working.