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Curated and described by Harsimran Kaur Kapoor
3. Performance Management
Goal setting and its shadow
When hard goals help and when they hurt
Use when
Cascading targets, or when someone proposes a moonshot
What the evidence supports
Specific, hard goals beat vague ones, reliably, when four conditions hold: commitment, feedback, ability, and task fit. One of the most replicated findings in OB.
Where it breaks
Stretch goals narrow attention, raise risk-taking, and suppress learning. They pay off only with recent success plus slack, and are most seductive to organizations with neither.
The applied case
Wells Fargo: eight products per household, tied to individual pay and job security, no integrity counterweight. ~5,300 staff fired for meeting the number fraudulently; over $3bn in penalties.
“A hard goal tied to individual consequence in a low-trust system will be met, one way or another.”
How to use it
Use the four conditions as a pre-check before cascading anything. If commitment, feedback, ability, or task fit is missing, the goal will produce distortion rather than performance. Pair with the Audacity Licence when a stretch target is on the table.
Card details
- Model type
- Grid
- Origin status
- Established
- Content last reviewed
- 28 July 2026
Origin
EstablishedLocke and Latham, 2002; Sitkin, See, Miller, Lawless and Carton, Academy of Management Review, 2011; Ordonez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman, 2009.
Used in these workflows
Neighbouring models
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Page description, selection and arrangement © 2026 Harsimran Kaur Kapoor. Goal setting and its shadow is an established model. See Origin for attribution.