Should we be secretive or open about our 2012 goals?

December is a popular month for businesses to set or revisit goals. With a fresh new year on the horizon we are revitalised; in business terms our 2011 goals are all but done and we now have the opportunity to formulate some inspiring goals for 2012.

An interesting question I am often asked in this regard is, “Should we keep our business goals a secret?”

Businesses usually give two common reasons for wanting to keep their goals private.

The first, of course, is that if you don’t let anyone know what your goals are you don’t have to worry about suffering the ignominy of not achieving them. And the second is the notion that the less you make public about your business the more you protect yourself from unwanted attention from competitors.

But keeping your goals a secret is a big mistake.

Way back in 1961 Jean Nidetch accidentally discovered that publicly sharing goals is a very simple way of significantly increasing your chances of achieving them.

Jean was rather overweight and had enormous trouble sticking to diets. In a moment of despair she invited a group of friends to her house and told them about her weight loss goals. It was the birth of Weight Watchers.

Weight Watchers is famous for its meetings where, for those of you not in the know, would-be-slimmers share their target weight goal publicly. It is the goal sharing (rather than the diet sheets, special food, etc) that is credited with getting the best weight loss results.

Many psychological studies back this up, showing that a person’s private decision to lose weight is often too weak to withstand temptation, but that a public commitment beats temptation hands down.

And it is the same for business goals.

When we take a stand that is visible to others – a public commitment – our subconscious brain is driven to making it happen. It seems our brains are wired to appear consistent to an audience that matters.

So when we share our business goals publicly we are significantly more likely to achieve them. We’d be daft not to share them.

But what of the fear that sharing goals gives too much information to competitors? It’s a good point but, as we all know, the goal setting is the easy part, making it happen is the tough bit; and you aren’t going to share your secret sauce for that.

Julia Bickerstaff’s expertise is in helping businesses grow profitably. She runs two businesses: Butterfly Coaching, a small advisory firm with a unique approach to assisting SMEs with profitable growth; and The Business Bakery, which helps kitchen table tycoons build their best businesses. Julia is the author of “How to Bake a Business”  and was previously a partner at Deloitte. She is a chartered accountant and has a degree in economics from The London School of Economics (London University).