Smith Business magazine-summer24-paperturn - Flipbook - Page 21
CAREERS
The Secret to
Accomplishing Big Goals
Smith research suggests breaking goals into bite-sized chunks
It can be dif昀椀cult to 昀椀gure out exactly how to achieve your ultimate career
goal. Whether it's running your own business or becoming CEO of the
company you work for, the steps you need to take to make it happen can
seem insurmountable. However, the 昀椀ndings in a study co-authored by
Aneesh Rai, assistant professor of management and organization, may
provide a useful strategy.
Rai’s study, “A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The
Trade-off Between Goal Granularity and Flexibility,” 昀椀nds that breaking large goals
into bite-sized chunks helps increase the time spent working on the long-term goal.
This was borne out in a group of crisis line volunteers who committed to 200 hours of
counseling a year, aiming for four hours a week or eight hours every two weeks.
Rai says as you navigate your career, “striving to achieve high levels of performance
can be daunting.” To help motivate yourself, the idea is to break a huge goal into
smaller pieces so you can experience small wins along the way, he says.
If you dream of becoming a CEO, there are ways to separate that goal into easier-toaccomplish parts. The research suggests identifying smaller subgoals that contribute
to achieving the overarching one.
Be strategic:
You may need to be promoted several times to rise to the C-suite, so pin down the
things that are going to help you do that.
• Make sure your performance is consistently at a high level.
• Don’t let avoidable pitfalls like tardiness or absence get you off your path.
Show up to work on time every day to demonstrate how reliable you are.
• Build a sound network. Develop a mentoring relationship with colleagues or
managers who can give you advice on how to rise through the ranks.
• If you know how many years from now you’d like to be CEO, benchmarks
may be helpful. For example, set up the subgoal of becoming a team
leader in two years, then moving to middle management in four, and so on.
Build in some 昀氀exibility:
More rigid deadlines can be motivating but less 昀氀exible. The risk with having a
very rigid, granular goal is that when you miss that subgoal you may end up feeling
like you’re falling behind. Flexibility can reduce feelings of goal failure.
• Build in extra time to reach subgoals like getting that next promotion on your
way to meeting your ultimate career goal. You won’t feel so bad about not
getting the promotion a year from now if you give yourself another year-anda-half to get it done.
• Don’t follow what has worked for someone else. Find your level of 昀氀exibility.
If you build in too much extra time to reach subgoals, you may lose motivation
and stop making progress toward the large goal. Find your sweet spot.
rhsmith-editor@umd.edu
summer 2024
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