The Importance of Setting the Right Goals

While setting the right goals can help you turn your plans into reality, it is still one of the most overlooked facets. Not only is it critical to set goals, but it is also critical to review them on a regular basis to ensure that each one is motivating enough to be pursued and to see if any short-term goals need to be added in order to achieve the long-term objectives you have set. Whereas on one side, not setting goals is a problem, not knowing how to set the right goals is a bigger problem. Hence, it is imperative to know the importance of setting the right goals. To help you with this, John Doerr, venture capitalist discusses why the secret to success is setting the right goals in this video from TED.

John starts the conversation by stating how organizations fail us by leading us to the wrong goals. He believes it is critical to select the correct course, regardless of how difficult it may be. As a result, John begins to discuss how to make decisions that distinguish between taking the right and wrong path. Setting meaningful, audacious, and right goals at the right time and for the right reasons is critical, according to John.

According to him, it almost does not matter how much you know; what matters most is how well you execute. It all comes down to excellent execution when it comes to setting the right goals. “Objectives and key results”, according to John, is a simple goal-setting system. The goals are the things you want to accomplish. How you are going to get that done is a key result. As a result, objectives and key results are inextricably linked. He goes on to say that one of the issues is that many of us do not set the right goals, or do not set goals at all. The second issue is that most organizations lack a sense of purpose that would motivate their employees to achieve their objectives.

According to John, the first step in setting the right goals is to ask yourself why you want to accomplish the goal in the first place. The answers to why you want to achieve a particular goal serve as motivation to work towards it. It all comes down to great leadership, consistent working, and effective management once you have found the motivation to do the necessary work to achieve your set goals. All these things serve as the key results (the “hows” of accomplishing your goals) to what you targeted to achieve and worked on.

However important it is to set the right goals at the very beginning of starting the work, it is still considered optimum to take immediate action without the right planning. It needs to be understood that setting the right goals is very important. With this wonderful discussion by John Doerr in this YouTube video from TED, you will get a deep understanding of why setting the right goals is the secret behind success.