LE02 Goal Setting - The Tower Building Exercise

The second lecture focussed on the goal setting process applicable to an individual as well as an organisation.
To understand this concept better, a tower building exercise was carried out.

Exercise:

A situation was presented to the class wherein a student had to build a tower by placing one cube over the other until the tower fell over. The student was supposed to use only his left hand.
Before starting the exercise, all the students were asked to write the number of cubes they thought the tower could sustain.
At the end of the exercise, it was noted that the tower could sustain 17 cubes before falling over.


After the completion of the exercise, students were given a situation where the tower was being built by a student who was blindfolded and was receiving instructions from another student. Students were then asked to revise their estimates of the height of the tower.


Analysis:

Various estimates were made by the students ranging from 10 blocks to as many as 25 blocks. The estimates of the students show their idea of goals. When the exercise situation was modified, it was noticed that most of the students revised their estimates while some retained them. Following learnings could be derived from the exercise:

1) The students who lowered their targets showed the tendencies of restrictive managers (for want of a better word). The organisations must never revise their goals downwards no matter what hurdles they face. The only change that should occur is the increase in effort towards achieving the goals.

2) The students who retained their original targets were examples of the managers who believed in achieving the set goals no matter what hurdles present themselves on the way. 

3) There were very few students across the sections who increased their targets when the exercise was modified. These are the examples of Progressive Managers. There were companies that grew even in the times of recession. These companies saw this as an opportunity rather than a threat and made the most of it. 


Goal Setting:

When an individual or an organisation sets their performance goals, it will be in terms of answering four questions:

          - What is the potential?
          - What target should be set?
          - What might the actual performance be?
          - What is attainable?


The potential is always unlimited. Everyone is capable of great things. management is the art of bridging the gap between performance and potential.


The target that is set should be greater than the organisation's assessment of what might their actual performance will be. Only when the goal is higher than the current idea of the firm's capabilities will the managers put in an effort that is beyond the scope of their current perceived capabilities. This in turn will lead to an increase in capability, leading to an ever increasing limit of goals that can be set.


The attainable goals are the ones that can be achieved using current capabilities of the firm with minimal management. This should effectively be the lower limit of the firm's performance.
The above process becomes self feeding as it is followed wherein Goal Set > Actual Performance > Past Performance.