Flossing and Goal Setting

By Joe Kraus

I went to the dentist recently.

I'm always slightly embarrassed at the dentist. It's as if I'm 11 years old all over again where I know I did something wrong and I'm just waiting to be caught.

I sat in the chair and after a few minutes of chit-chat, the hygienist began her ritualistic Socratic questioning.

"How often do you floss, Joe?"

Of course, I don't floss. That's the problem. She knows I don't floss but she asks anyway. And, my trick of flossing the day before I come into the dentist's office never seems to fool anyone.

"Uh, not very often."

"That's ok," she said. "Just floss the teeth you want to keep."

Well, if you put it that way...

Don't ask me why, but that line, "just floss the teeth you want to keep", got me thinking about goal-setting inside companies.

Goal-setting is everywhere. Everyone knows it's the right thing to do. I've got to focus. I've got to have goals and objectives. I've got to communicate these goals and objectives to those around me. We've got to get on that proverbial "same page" and goals are the way.

Problem is, most goals are never met. Goal setting quickly becomes overhead. It takes time with no rewards. People stop believing that goals are anything more than management requirements that have little effect on day to day behavior.

It may seem obvious, but in my opinion, the root of the problem is that companies make two big mistakes around goals:

1. They set soft goals that cannot be measured.
2. They measure absolute goals without reference to competition.

"Just floss the teeth you want to keep."

"Just measure the goals you want to meet."

Soft goals

I see it all the time. "Improve customer support" or "Gain market share."

But how do you actually measure these?

The cure is to never set a goal you can't measure. Sounds draconian and simplistic, but it's the best cure to "squishiness" around. Cultures in companies are really nothing more than a shared set of behaviors and if you let "squishy" behavior in early through soft goal setting, it's really hard to stamp out later.

Absolute goals

An ancillary mistake people make is that they set absolute goals as opposed to goals relative to competition.

We worked with a technology company a few years ago. Their whole industry was exploding and their revenue was growing by double digits every quarter. Of course, their competition was growing even faster, but they were measuring progress relative to their internal targets. We probably knew it wasn't right, but we were letting our excitement over their internal growth cloud our judgment.

You know what happened?

They explosively grew their way to irrelevance. After a couple of years with few other options available to them, they accepted a buy out by one of the three market leaders.

So, floss your teeth, set measurable goals, measure relative to competition, and be kind to your hygienist. There's no telling what wisdom she can provide.

Joe Kraus is co-founder and CEO of JotSpot. A long time entrepreneur, Joe has been involved with early-stage technology development and starting companies for more than twelve years. Upon graduation from Stanford University in 1993, he co-founded the highly successful Internet company, Excite, Inc. The original president of Excite, Joe was deeply involved in product strategy, direction and vision as the company grew. After leaving Excite, Joe co-founded Digitalconsumer.org, a non-profit grassroots consumer organization with more than 50,000 members dedicated to protecting consumers’ fair-use rights to digital media. This article reprinted by permission.