Understanding the difference between aims and targets is one of the most important steps in forming successful long-term strategies. Yet, this point evades the minds of most planners and strategists, and is one of the prime reasons for the corrosive stress factors that beset so many of us.

Let’s get to the point by making a statement that may cause you to raise an eyebrow: Whenever possible, try not to have targets but only have aims. The reason is that setting a target means projecting towards a singular, defined result, around which a person, a team or an entire organization evaluate their ‘success’ or ‘failure’. An aim means working to cross a certain threshold, into an evolving state of affairs that makes good returns, but not towards a targeted singular result. When taking into account the huge complexity and multiple factors that are part of life these days, having an aim is so much wiser and more sensible than working towards overly defined targets.

To explain this approach, let’s first turn to dictionary definitions (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary):

Target: “a goal to be achieved” Aim: “to direct to or toward a specified object or goal”

A couple of locating examples may help in the translation into everyday actions:

Example 1, at a corporate level: Setting an objective for a given year for double-digit growth that maintains or exceeds that of last year, making it the most important objective of the organization that reduces many CEO’s into the role of a bean counter.

Growth can and should manifest in many ways: People’s personal growth, quality of service, quality of research and development, quality of interpersonal dealings, quality of products, quality of leadership, quality of management, quality of human environment, the ability to adjust to new requirements and changes in global trends, actions towards long-term objectives…

The big problem in setting specific targets is that it enforces one measurement by which all is evaluated, thereby squeezing out the above mentioned measurements and much more. So you get your target but cause an exponential increase in stress factors and lose your best people because they can’t take the stress and forget the last time that they really looked forward to going to work.

On the other hand, setting an aim that the organization is intent upon a continuous process of growth, where staying profitable is, of course, one of the prime objectives, creates a completely different picture altogether. This approach allows for a much greater flexibility and enables the leadership to combine a number of factors into the equation of evaluating the results. So yes, it is absolutely true that this approach can be very challenging to everyone’s psychologies when applied in highly competitive environments. Perhaps the best way is to set a minimum target and then go about defining the aim, rather than a high target that leaves no place for an aim. Think about it.

Example 2, at personal level: So far, Stanley had a great run at his career. A distinguished Harvard graduate, at the age of 35 he is a senior R&D project-leader in one of the largest Fortune 500 companies and a prime candidate to leading the division. He has a happy family life, a lovely wife and two kids, but for sometime things did not seem be going the same way any more.

Stanley’s team has not been meeting its objectives, with friction and distance developing between him and his ‘inner circle’ of project managers. At home, his wife has been remarking that unlike his nature, he is becoming distant and hard to reach. “Why is everyone so bloody minded?” he thinks to himself. Things really came to a head when in a conversation with his superior Stanley learnt that his career might be in jeopardy unless he gets the team back on track.

Being urgent to do something about it, he applied for coaching sessions. To his surprise, one of the immediate reflections from his coach was that many of his problems come down to his poor listening abilities. “Your success has gotten to your head and you assume too much about yourself and what you can do on your own”, his coach reflected to him. The prescription was to begin to practice listening and find ways to act upon what he learns from listening to others.

So he did and the more he practiced listening, the more he realized how far he strayed from one of the most important principles of good leadership: the ability to listen and value other people’s views and feelings.

Stanley set himself a target of becoming an excellent listener within a period of 3 months, with precise monthly progress markers. After a while, as he was evaluating his ongoing results with his coach, another problem surfaced: Now he was suffering a new kind of stress, as well as generating it around him: The stress of looking for results and confirmations of how well he is listening and understanding everyone. Feedback from those around was indicating that whilst he appears to be listening, he comes across as a shallow and superficial listener that acts it rather than lives it. His wife reflected to him: “You have this pained expression when you listen – don’t you like finding out how others think?”

After a few more coaching sessions, Stanley realized that becoming a genuine listener – and realizing the difference between hearing and listening – cannot be achieved in a machine-like way. Then he started to perceive the difference between target thinking and aim thinking as they apply to the worlds of listening. Instead of forcefully always projecting a self-opinionated outcome, he found himself in an extraordinary journey of trying to feel and understand what people are trying to convey, and then think what it calls for.

Soon enough, Stanley came to a pivotal personal development fact: Making a change – even a tiny one – requires years of work. The returns, though, are huge. Have an aim to become a good listener, do not try to target it, there is far more involved in this process than initially realized.

To sum up

Aim thinking brings many results; target thinking brings a few results.

Of course the transition from ‘target thinking’ to ‘aim thinking’ involves the need to apply a wise balance of both, starting from a simple awareness to what for some is a way of life that breeds great wealth and success.