Realising That Not All Goals Are Created Equally

The New York Times 'Corner Office' series recently featured an an interview with David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, entitled The Boss’s Challenge: Have Everyone Join the ‘In’ Group and this extract references the issues of having shared goals, which sits at the heart of effective organisational execution

We make a decision about each person we interact with that impacts basic processing and many other things. And the decision we make about everyone is, “Are you in my ‘in’ group or in my ‘out’ group?’” If you decide that I’m in your “in” group, you process what I’m saying using the same brain networks as thinking your own thoughts. If you decide I’m in your “out” group, you use a totally different brain network. So the very level of unconscious perception has a huge impact based on this decision of: “Is this person similar to me? Are they on my team? Do we have shared goals, or are they in my out group?” This is the neurobiology of trust in a sense, but also of teamwork and collaboration. It feels good to be with “in” group members. But we basically treat everyone as foe until proven otherwise, with the exception of really attractive people or if you’ve had a moderate amount to drink.

The important question this raises is, “How do we create an ‘in’ group?” And the research is really clear. If you can create shared goals among people, you can create quite a strong “in” group quite quickly. When you can find a shared goal, you turn an “out” group” into an “in” group. Unless a leader creates shared goals across an organisation, an organisation will be a series of silos. That’s the inherent way that we live. We naturally think in small groups.

The challenge for organisations is that many leaders will read this, think 'I have clear goals' and 'I have communicated these to my organisation', and believe that this is their job done. What we know from our experience, however, is that much depends in the first instance on the nature of the goals that are defined by the leader, and this is where our initial work is focused when embarking on an execution engagement. Where real value lies in these discussions is in helping leaders look through a 'different lens' in terms of how they select and then define their key goals.

This lens is specifically behavioural, to ensure that when they reach teams across the organisation, the goals identified are ones they will feel engaged by. It involves thinking through with a leader how the goals link to their overall strategy, how they can narrow the focus on 'the difference that will make the difference', how they can word the goals in compelling terms and how they can specify goals in 'X to Y' terms that can be impacted by 80-90% of the organisation. In this sense 'not all goals are created equally', and those not created though this behavioral lens are unlikely to break down the silos and create the kind of trust and collaboration which David Rock references.