Goals Gone Wild

Harvard Business Review article, Goals Gone Wild. Should be assigned to every "social investor" who says, "You can't manage what you can't measure." Goal setting can narrow focus, instill a culture of fear, creative compliance, and cheating, and can gin up disasters on a par with Enron or the Ford Pinto. "Do your best," the study suggests, is often more helpful to employees and more predictive of organizational results, than stretch goals measured and managed. Same might be true of grants and social impact?