The importance of decision-making in goal setting, or "Is the juice worth squeezing"?

It’s hard to imagine life without having goals. They inspire, give direction and provide motivation for almost everything we do. Goal setting is responsible for almost all the amazing things we do. From walking on the moon to diving in the Mariana Trench. Simply put, goals get us out of bed in the morning and help us put food on the table. Having them, and setting them, is synonymous with human nature and part of who and what we are. Indeed, setting goals is almost always seen as a positive act on our part and something that drives us towards achieving them.

Goal setting also has a darker side that can get us into trouble. In his book “Destructive Goal Pursuit”(Destructive Goal Pursuit) D. Christopher Kayes reviewed the events surrounding the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy, where experienced mountain guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer led two teams of climbers on an attempt to summit the mountain that ended in disaster. Eight members of the expedition died, including Hall and Fischer.

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The title of Kayes’ book aptly captures the nature of the tragedy. Using hindsight and full knowledge of all the variables that would have affected their attempted climb, it is now easy to see how the teams were focused on their quest to reach the summit, ignoring seemingly obvious information and signals that suggested they should have turned back much earlier in their approach. One of the real values of this case study is how we can rationalise almost anything with sufficient motivation. There were many factors that influenced the climbers’ decision-making in this example, and Kayes uses this study to provide interesting insights into human decision-making and its relationship to goal-setting.

It is against this background that I recently received a ‘personal’ example of how ‘destructive target following’ can work.

Over the past few days I have been delivering advanced trimix CCR training, which requires a lot of skill and experience to be successful. Both students fulfilled the conditions of this training perfectly. One of the students had travelled thousands of kilometres and made travel arrangements with his family so that he could spend evenings with his family while on holiday in his home country and also attend the course during the day. This was a big commitment on his part in terms of time and money. He owns a business and has important activities in his life outside of diving, and has many clients and employees who rely on him to make the right decisions. He is extremely intelligent, has many degrees and is a really nice guy. I’ve gotten to know him over the past few years, and his love of family and passion for diving are very obvious. His teammate was a full-time diving professional with an impressive diving CV, and one of the most cheerful people you will ever meet. He is also extremely intelligent and has, I believe, a high level of common sense.

The first day of classes went off without a hitch as we essentially reviewed our existing skills and set boundary conditions for further development. The second day spent us in slightly deeper water and this is where things started to come crashing down. Once we had stabilised at our target depth, we noticed some funny information coming from the CCR controller of one of the students, so over the next few minutes we tried to sort this out. Given our depth and what we were doing, we were not at risk. However, we decided to end the dive and talk on the surface. We were in a very controlled environment, however I am what you call a ‘belt and braces’ diver, which means that if my belt breaks, my braces will still support my trousers. This means that while I am not risk-averse, I am very aware of the risks. We collectively decided that we should not continue with this dive until the equipment problem was resolved. We got out of the water, picked up our gear and headed back to the dive shop. This was not an easy task. It required a lot of effort, getting in and out of the water with all our equipment and about an hour’s drive from the dive centre to the dive site. We worked to solve the problem and eventually decided to replace the part of the system that we thought was causing the problems. We decided to gather the next morning with the intention of compressing the remaining dive in less time.

The next morning we repeated our efforts and hoped we had solved the problem. It was clear when we reached our target depth that the problem still existed. We surfaced again and discussed the plan before us and although we believed we had isolated the problem, it was not something we could solve without returning to the dive centre. We were now faced with losing 1 1/2 days of training on a demanding six day course and had to make some decisions. The whole thing was made worse by the fact that the equipment problem seemed to be sporadic and maybe even manageable at the depths we were diving.

And here we return to the theme of destructive goal setting.

We were a highly motivated group of divers with the goal of completing the course in an accessible location and time. One of the divers had travelled thousands of miles, as had I as the instructor running the course. There was a significant cost to the course and a missed opportunity that was also a significant loss for both of them. There was also pressure to succeed on one of the best courses in our diving world. One of the students was going to be out of diving after an upcoming operation and would not be able to complete this course easily and quickly in the near future. All these pressures were a force working in the background as we decided what to do.

As the situation unfolded and we floated on the surface of the water, I couldn’t help but reflect on what we were doing as we considered whether or not we should dive and/or continue to try to condense six days into the time we had left, thereby attempting to meet all the requirements to achieve in less time. It was exactly the kind of decision cycle that Shaw and Fischer made on Everest. Of course, we weren’t on top of the world during a blizzard, but the decision-making process was similar. We were trying to decide if “the juice was worth the squeeze”. The member of our team who had travelled the furthest and incurred the most expense was pushing for us to “try again” with equipment that was not 100% operational. Interestingly, it was actually his equipment that was causing the problems, but his goal of completing the course with all the pressures around him forced him to make, a decision that I believe was outside the risk matrix for this course. The other student agreed with me and after a short discussion we jointly decided to stop diving until the equipment was in perfect condition. I was prepared to make this decision unilaterally as an instructor, but I was much happier that we reached a consensus. It seemed quite clear to me that our attempt at a goal that morning could easily have been the subject of a case study in destructive goal setting.

You don’t have to be a diver or a mountain climber to recognise the pressures of destructive goal setting. In fact, with knowledge of this aspect of human behaviour, it is possible to find examples almost anywhere you look. As Kayes mentions, goals become difficult to abandon once they are set. So all those things that make goals worthy of praise work against us by setting us back or moving us away from our goal. In pursuing our goals, we may even make ethically questionable decisions. In our case, I clearly would have done the same thing had I decided to continue diving the same day, rather than stepping back and wondering if the ‘juice was worth the squeeze’. Kayes also suggested that open communication was important for coordinating teamwork and that teams that were “empowered” could learn to correct mistakes faster once they were identified. In this case, because there was a relatively low gradient of authority in our class, it was easier for the other team member to speak up and add their opinion and thoughts to our discussion.

Goal setting encourages us to do many amazing things, but an insidious twin brother may be responsible for the tragedy that follows. Being aware of the factors that shape and influence our decision-making process is essential to help us make better decisions.

Guy Shockey

The original is available on the human diverwebsite .

Guy Shockey is one of the instructors at Human Diver instructors. He is also a GUE Tech 2 & CCR 2 instructor operating in the Vancouver Island region of Canada. More about him and courses conducted by him you will find out from The Human Diver resumé i GUE Instructor Resumé.

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Andrzej GórnickiSport and technical diving instructor. Co-author of workshops on safe closed circuit diving. Trained as a psychologist and coach, associated with soft skills training. Graduate of postgraduate studies in Underwater Archaeology at the University of Warsaw. He has worked as an instructor, guide and dive base manager in Portugal, Croatia, Norway, Malta, Egypt, Sweden and Poland. Translates training materials for the largest organisations training and certifying divers. Author of articles related to diving. For years, he has been involved in disseminating the latest knowledge and trends in diving. Actively supports the Baltictech technical diving conference.

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