Goal setting
Goal Setting involve setting a clear objective and ensuring that every participant is clearly aware of what is expected from him or her, if this objective is to be achieved. This has a couple of advantages in that, assuming that the goal is reasonably challenging, all participant will have to put a substantial effort to achieve that goal. Second, because every member is aware of what is expected of him or her (high role perception), little room is left of inadequate effort going unnoticed. Management by objectives is another name for goal setting. Note, the goal has to be reasonable, setting a goal to go to Mars (planet) on a shoe string budget and very tight schedule may not improve intensity and persistence from employees and may actually achieve the opposite. One drawback of goal setting is that implicit learning is impended. This is because it encourage short term gain without intimately understanding the work process. i.e. you may end up with zombie like employees.
“Goals provide a sense of direction and purpose” (Goldstein, 1993, p.96). Locke et al. (1981) examined the behavioural effects of goal-setting, concluding that 90% of laboratory and field studies involving specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than easy or no goals.