Goal (management)

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A goal is a state of affairs or a state of a concrete activity domain which a person or a system is going/tends to achieve or obtain. A desire or an intention becomes a goal if and only if an action for achieving it, is activated (see goal-oriented).

Morten Lind and J.Rasmussen distinguished three fundamental categories of goals related to technological system management: production goal, safety goal and economy goal.

The above categories can be decomposed according criteria related to the numerous types of goal-oriented activities and goal domains (where the goal is defined).

For any successful business system, it means deriving profits by making the best quality of goods or the best quality of services available to the end user (customer) at the best possible cost. Goal management should include:

Assessment and dissolution of non-rational blocks to success
Time management
Frequent reconsideration (consistency checks)
Feasibility checks
Adjusting milestones and main goal target

1 Personal goals
- 1.1 Achieving personal goals
2 Goal Management in Organizations
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Personal goals

Individuals can have personal goals. A student may set a goal of a high mark in an exam. An athlete might walk five miles a day. A traveler might try to reach his destination city within three hours.

Managing goals can give returns in all areas of life. By knowing precisely what one wants to achieve, makes clear what to concentrate and improve on.

Goal setting and planning (goalwork) gives long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses acquisition of knowledge and helps to organize resources.

Efficient Goalwork includes recognizing and resolving any guilt, inner conflict or limiting belief that might cause you to sabotage your efforts. By setting clearly defined goals, one can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. One can see progress in what might have seemed a long grind.

[edit] Achieving personal goals

Achieving complex and difficult goals requires focus, long-term diligence and effort. Success in any field will require foregoing blaming, excuses and justifications for poor performance or lack of adequate planning or in short emotional maturity.

Long term achievements are based on short-term achievements. Emotional control over the small moments of the single day makes a big difference in the long term.

By accepting a degree of realism within one's own goals, one allows oneself not to change reality to match his own dreams by his own efforts alone, but to accept it how it is until a certain degree. This degree of "laziness" can prevent one from falling in unhappiness by losing too much control of life by trying to specialize in a very small area and to become a top leader in that field. No matter what level of society one belongs to, it is very likely that there are levels above and below.

[edit] Goal Management in Organizations

Goal management is the process of recognizing or inferring goals of individual team members, abandoning goals that are no longer relevant, identifying and resolving conflicts among goals, and prioritizing goals consistently for optimal team collaboration and effective operations.

Organizational Goal Management solution ensures that individual employee goals and objectives are aligned with the vision and strategic goals of the entire organization. Goal Management provides organizations with a mechanism to effectively communicate corporate goals and strategic objectives to each person across the entire organization. The key is having it all emanate from a pivotal source and providing each person with a clear, consistent organizational goal message. With Goal Management, every employee will understand how his or her efforts contribute to the success of the enterprise.

The example of goal types in business management:

Consumer Goals: This refers to supplying a product or service that the market/consumer want.
Product Goals: This refers to supplying a product which is outstanding compared to other products - perhaps due to the likes of quality, design, reliability and novelty.
Operational Goals: This refers to running the organization so that the best use is made of management skills, technology and resources.
Secondary Goals: This refers to goals which are not a priority for the organization.

From the socio-cognitive perspective (A.M.Gadomski, see Ex.links), there are distinguished three top goals:

design goals - invariant goals of human-made technological systems,
foundation goals - invariant goals related to human organizations and usually specified in their mission/status
intervention goals - related to temporal plans and actions of individuals or group of intelligent agents (such as, human organizations, robots or computer systems) in their domains of activity.