The Metiss Group's Blog

Mark McCormack, in his book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, tells of a Harvard study conducted between 1979 and 1989. In 1979, the graduates of the MBA program were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” It turned out that only 3% of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13% had goals, but not in writing; and 84% had no specific goals at all.

Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers interviewed the members of that same class again. They found the 13% who had goals that were not in writing were earning twice as much as the 84% of students who had no goals at all. And most surprisingly, they found that the 3% of graduates who had clear, written goals when they left Harvard were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97% of graduates all together. The only difference between the groups was the clarity of the goals they had for themselves when they graduated.

Yes, you read that correctly. The 3% who had clear, written goals earned ten times as much as the 97% who didn’t have clear, written goals. Almost all successful people have goals, and outstanding high achievers have clearly defined written goals. That said, why do so few people actually write out their goals?

Empower your direct reports to write down their goals and you’ll see them become more successful

source: Brian Tracy, Goals!

This entry was posted on March 15, 2012 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.