We are continuing our theme for the week on systems thinking. Today I’m going to talk about a specific system pattern called “Eroding Goals.”
Eroding goals is when we face a challenge to meet our goals or standards (such as quality of service), then we lower the goals or standards rather than wrestling to meet the original goal. Here are some examples:
- To continue meeting product delivery times, a company discovers it needs to build a new factory which is expensive. So the company slides on it’s delivery time standards for the customer.
- To get an A in school, our teenager discovers he has to do his homework and study which is a lot of effort. So our teenager decides it’d be OK if he got a B instead.
- We want to end homelessness, but as we get into it, the task seems daunting. So, we settle for only giving out free meals to the homeless and don’t watch to see if people are getting off the street or not.
When we erode our goals, we let the current circumstances influence us to let our goals slide rather than to do the necessary adjustments and work to meet our goals. We say things like, “It’s OK to not meet our goals or performance standards a little while until this crisis is over.”
The Boiled Frog
Eroding Goals is similar to the parable of the boiled frog. If you put a frog into a pot of hot water, it will jump out immediately. But if you put the frog in room temperature water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog will stay in the water until it’s boiled. The frog’s standard for good water temperature erodes over time slowly until it’s too late.
Effects of Eroded Goals
The insidiousness of this is two fold. The first is when we gradually let our goals slide over time. One day, we look up and realize that we aren’t achieving anywhere close to what we wanted. Our goals or standards have eroded to sub-par levels.
The second is that by lowering our goals instead of facing the challenge, our ability to meet our goals and face challenges is diminished. Decision making thought processes are reinforced. We fail to gain necessary experience in facing certain challenges. And because the crisis is averted (by lowering our goals), we focus on other problems, which, by the way, may be symptoms caused by our eroded goals.
This doesn’t mean that we can never change our goals. We just want to be deliberate about changes in our goals rather than letting circumstances slowly erode the goals we keep.
Our Calling and Eroded Goals
When we start out to live our calling, we will likely have some crazy amazing goals that really motivate us. Then as we get going, we may encounter obstacles. Things may be tougher than we thought. We may experience fear as we step into the zone of the unknown. When this happens, we have to be careful about lowering our aspirations. We don’t want to wake up suddenly realizing we’re back to our old average life.
