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Another significant limitation
of a smart goal framework is

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it doesn't help you make goals meaningful.

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It doesn't help you imbue
goals with meaning.

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In fact, very often it leads
you to do exactly the opposite.

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It leads you to set very crisply defined
specific goals that no one cares about,

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and that people are not
motivated to pursue.

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I really liked this quote
from John Maynard Keynes,

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who is a famous economist who said,
if human nature felt no satisfaction,

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profit apart, in constructing a factory,
a railway, a mine or

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a farm, there might not be much investment
as a result of cold calculation.

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A study by Duffy and
colleagues revealed that those employees

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who reported that they found a meaningful
job, a meaningful career, also

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reported greater levels of satisfaction in
their job, greater levels of life meaning,

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and in the end, much greater levels
of overall satisfaction in life.

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I wanted to give you
an example of a study that

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illustrates the importance of meaning when
it comes to our tasks, goals, and jobs.

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The study was done by Dan Ariely and
colleagues.

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What they did is they asked
people to assemble Lego robots,

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and they put them in two
different conditions.

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In the first condition,
the experimenter disassembled the robot

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as the participant was
moving to the next robot.

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So imagine the situation, you've just
completed your first robot figure,

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you submitted it for
evaluation, you got paid.

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You're moving on to the next robot.

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And then you're seeing the first
robot being diligently disassembled

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by the lead investigator.

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In the second condition,

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the Lego robots stayed assembled
until the experiment was over.

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So as you progress with the experiment,

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you can see these Lego figures
being lined up next to one another.

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What would you expect as a pattern
of results in this experiment?

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Participants in what condition would
you expect to build more robots?

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Now if you chose the second condition,
you're spot on.

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Participants in the second condition,
on average,

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build 32% more robots than
in the first condition.

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What was also interesting about this
experiment is there was a progressively

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declining pay scale.

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So, you would get paid for
every robot, but

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with every next robot you would
get paid a little bit less.

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And so in the second condition,
participants were more than three times as

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likely to continue building robots when
the pay dropped to below $1 per piece.

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Now why is this the case?

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If you think about this, what Ariely and
colleagues did is pretty ruthless.

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Because in the first condition,
they drained this task,

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they drained these goals of
all possible meaning, and

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it's not a particularly
meaningful task to begin with.

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But seeing the product of your
work being instantly disassembled

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right in front of your eyes
is incredibly demotivating.

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In the second condition,
when you see the product of your work,

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that contributes to high levels
of engagement and motivation.

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Now one thing that you can do with your
teammates to make sure that you imbue

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goals and tasks with meaning is to
allow them to see how the product

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that they are producing, or the service,
influences the lives of other people.

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Adam Grant did a lot of interesting
research on the subject.

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For example, he approached
university fundraising callers,

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these are the people who solicit funds for
scholarships.

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And he found out that they don't
particularly view their jobs and

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tasks as being particularly meaningful.

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Pardon the language, but one of the
fundraising officers described his job as

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wetting your pants in a dark suit.

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He said you get a pleasant feeling,
but nobody else notices or cares.

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So what Adam Grant did is he gave these
fundraising officers an opportunity

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to interact with those students who
were the recipients of scholarships.

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So imagine a student walks into your
office and says, look, the only reason I

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can afford to go to college is because of
the scholarship money that you raised.

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What Adam Grant found is that for

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those officers, fundraising callers that
were able to interact with students,

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scholarship recipients, they increased
their time on the phone by 142% and

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raised 171% more money.

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Recall our radiologists that missed
a gorilla image on a long scan.

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It turns out that

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some of them don't find the tasks
particularly meaningful and engaging.

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To sit in the basement of a hospital,
in this dark room,

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continuously reading x-rays.

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They never get a chance
to see their patients.

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One simple intervention that Turner and
colleagues have introduced for

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their jobs is that in addition to
the x-ray image, they would also

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receive a picture of the patient for
whom they would be reading that x-ray.

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And what the scores found is that
the length of the report increased by

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about 29% and the accuracy of
the report went up by about 46%

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in those conditions when the radiologist
saw the picture of the patient.

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One aspect of our discussion I would like
for us to focus on is to recognize that

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it's not sufficient to just set crisply
defined specific measurable goals.

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The checklist is not sufficient.

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It's also helpful to be
aware of the limitations

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that come with setting smart goals.

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But more importantly, it is essential
that we view our goals with meaning.

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And one of the most effective strategies
to help people view their goal with task

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and meaning is to allow them to see how
their product impacts the lives of others.

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So for example in medical devices firms,

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engineers who work on medical devices
that often save patient lives,

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such as pacemakers, they rarely get
a chance to see their patients.

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And what these companies are beginning to
do is hold parties, corporate parties.

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They're giving the chance for

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the engineers to meet the patients
that are using their medical devices.

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It's an incredibly emotional moment and

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leads to tremendously higher levels
of engagement and satisfaction.

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Adam Grant also reports that
at Ritz Carlton for example,

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every day starts with employees
sharing these wow moments and

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wow stories of how what they did yesterday
fundamentally shaped customer experience.

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So those are some of
the motivation tools and tactics

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you can use to make sure that you imbue
tasks and goals with greater meaning.