Big goals numb your team
Better goal setting with human psychology
An obstacle that is way beyond somebody’s capability makes people give up trying altogether and deem something unworthy of time and trust. Look at the example below, can you get it right?
(A) 10 x 12 + 20 = ?
(B) 1872 x 2193 x 379 = ?
Most people will get the answer for (A) to be 140 and will give up on (B) and proceed to read the post.
That’s the intention, the right amount of challenge and pressure gets people to think and work (activating their system 2), while too much stress and difficulty cause you to conclude the second question is a harder computation that is ‘not worth my time-solving’.
People rely a lot on their intuition (system 1) and it governs a lot of our behaviors.
If you set goals for the team, have an ambitious yet realistic goal so they feel challenged instead of numb.
But if something is extremely important (thus the difficulty of the task), and seems like a dead-end, but it’s a do-or-die situation, tell your team WHY you want them to solve, get them to understand the root, and you will at least be able to get them to try working on the impossible
