The goals trap: how to stop setting targets you cannot control

Ask any experienced leader whether they would set a goal they cannot control, and they will say no. Then sit in on a planning session, and watch it happen anyway. It is one of the most common traps in management, and spotting it is one of the more useful things a leader can learn: the habit of setting, or quietly accepting, goals whose success depends on factors outside your control.

It sounds obvious once it is named. In practice it is seductive, because the goals that pull us in are often the most ambitious and the most satisfying to write down. There are two versions worth knowing by name: competitive goals and contingent goals.

Competitive goals: winning by comparison

A competitive goal is defined relative to someone else. The biggest market share. The highest margin in the sector. The fastest growth among your peers. Each of these sounds like ambition, and each quietly hands control of your success to your competitors.

The problem is not the ambition, it is the reference point. If a rival decides to slash prices or discount their way to volume, your 'largest market share' target can be blown out of the water by a decision you had no part in. You can do everything right and still miss, because the goalpost is being carried by someone else.

The test for a competitive goal is a single question:

Is there an external player who could stop us reaching this goal, whatever we do?

If the answer is yes, the goal is competitive and it needs reframing. The fix is an absolute goal: a target defined by your own performance rather than someone else's. Not 'the biggest market share', but 'a margin above 25%'. Not 'faster growth than our rivals', but 'a 15% share of our target segment'. An absolute goal usually passes a simple check: no third party has to fail for you to succeed.

Contingent goals: success that depends on someone else

The second trap is quieter. A contingent goal is one whose achievement depends on a third party you do not control. A launch date that relies on a supplier delivering on time. A revenue target that assumes a partner will co-sell. A programme that only works if another department reprioritises to support it.

Contingent goals are not wrong to hold, but they are dangerous to hold blindly, because you are carrying the risk for a decision that sits with someone else. The diagnostic question mirrors the first:

Is there a third party who must actively help us, or this goal fails?

If yes, the goal is contingent, and you have three honest choices. Secure a real commitment from that party, turning a hope into a collaborative goal with agreed obligations on both sides. Bring the dependency in-house, rebuilding the goal around resources you control, which makes it an autonomous goal. Or, if neither is possible and the cost of the dependency is too high, change the goal. What you should not do is leave it contingent and unexamined, then act surprised when it slips.

Two questions that keep goals in your control

Most of the value here fits on an index card. Before you commit to a goal, ask:

• Who could hinder this, whatever we do? If someone can, the goal is competitive, so rewrite it as an absolute target
• Who must help this, or it fails? If someone must, the goal is contingent, so secure their commitment, bring the work in-house, or change the goal

Neither question asks you to lower your ambition. They ask you to aim it at something you can actually move.

A skill best learned by doing

Reading about the goals trap is easy. Feeling it is what changes behaviour, and that is hard to stage in a classroom. It is why we teach goal-setting inside business simulations, where the pressure is real but the stakes are safe.

In a competitive simulation like Compete, teams go head to head on strategy and price, and quickly learn how fragile a 'beat the market' goal becomes when a rival moves first. In Acumen, leaders run a global business across several years and practise setting targets they can hold as conditions change. Both are immersive, live and in-person, and facilitated by our experts, so the lesson lands through experience and lasts.

If your leaders are making decisions under uncertainty, and goal-setting is one of the first things that goes wrong, the strategic thinking challenge is where this capability gets built.