The Goals Trap: When Targets Become Traps

Goals are strategic assets. They focus attention, coordinate teams, and measure progress. But goals have a dark side: they can push you to over-persist, ignore better opportunities, and treat anything short of the target as failure.

Management researchers Maurice Schweitzer and Lisa Ordóñez documented the systematic costs: goals create pass/fail thinking, proxy confusion, and inflexibility that interferes with rational strategic adjustment.

The Pass/Fail Problem

Goals are effectively graded pass/fail. You hit the number or you don't. This creates two predictable distortions:

• Fear of starting: If the only passing grade is full completion, the risk of "failing" discourages experimentation
• Fear of stopping: Once started, anything short of the target feels like failure—even when partial progress vastly exceeds the value of not starting

Economist Richard Thaler put it sharply: "If a gold medal in the Olympics is the only grade that passes, you do not want to ever take your first gymnastics class."

When Proxies Become Objects

A goal is usually a proxy for underlying strategic objectives. Revenue targets proxy for business viability. User growth proxies for product-market fit. OKRs proxy for strategic progress.

The trap: the proxy becomes the object. You start optimising for hitting the number rather than the strategic value the number was meant to represent.

Inflexibility in a Flexible World

Goals are set based on information available at the time. But the world changes. New information arrives. Assumptions prove wrong. Better opportunities emerge.

If you reran the original analysis with current information, you'd often set different goals—or pursue different directions entirely. But goals persist. They become anchors that resist updating.

The "Unless" Solution

The antidote isn't to abandon goals—it's to build in conditional flexibility. Every goal should include "unless" clauses that preserve strategic adaptability.

Examples:

• "We're pursuing this market unless we fail to achieve traction indicators within two quarters."
• "We're building toward this product vision unless customer feedback indicates a fundamental mismatch."
• "We're committed to this partnership unless the strategic rationale materially changes."

The "unless" is your pre-agreed exit ramp. It protects against pass/fail lock-in, proxy confusion, and inflexibility—without abandoning the motivational benefits of goal-setting.

Progress Markers

The second countermeasure: deliberately award partial credit. The pass/fail view ignores progress. Counter it by explicitly tracking and celebrating intermediate milestones.

• What capabilities were built, regardless of target achievement?
• What signal was generated, regardless of outcome?
• What options were created or preserved?
• What learning occurred that informs future decisions?

Progress markers convert the evaluation from "did we hit the number?" to "what value was created?"—a more strategically accurate frame.

Goal Audits

Goals should be periodically re-examined against current information. Not "are we on track to hit the goal?" but "given what we now know, is this still the right goal?"

The Deeper Pattern

Goals are tools. Tools serve purposes. When the tool becomes the purpose—when hitting the number matters more than what the number represents—you've confused the means for the ends.

The operators who navigate this best hold goals loosely: committed enough to drive focus and accountability, flexible enough to update when conditions warrant. They use goals without being captured by them.

This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute business or professional advice. Strategic decisions should be made with appropriate professional counsel.