Worthwhile Goal vs. Instrumental Goal

Definition

An instrumental goal is pursued as a means to something else (revenue, market share, career advancement) and generates, at best, compliance. A worthwhile goal is pursued because it is valued in itself, and generates enthusiasm — a Greek root Denning invokes literally, en theos, "a god within," an energy that "leaps, bubbles, and overflows" rather than sitting still as mere contentment. The distinction isn't rhetorical: people can tell which kind of goal they're being handed, and they respond to instrumental goals with, at most, obedience.

In the Book

Chapter 2 contrasts three successive Apple CEOs who tried to redirect the company toward instrumental business objectives — John Sculley (pursuing low-cost computers or an operating-systems business "like Microsoft"), Michael Spindler, and Gil Amelio — each of whom was pushed out within a few years despite real managerial competence (Amelio, for instance, raised revenue and cut costs at National Semiconductor before arriving). Denning argues the staff never abandoned Steve Jobs's original goal — "creating cool, innovative electronic products," a purpose they found worthwhile in itself — and no managerial tool could dislodge it, because it wasn't a business-metric goal to begin with. When Jobs returned as interim CEO, he didn't try to sell staff on a new instrumental direction; he resumed the original worthwhile purpose, and the "interim" was dropped from his title as the iMac and iPod followed. Denning illustrates the underlying mechanism with two children learning piano: one plays for the joy of it and needs no external reward; the other plays because her parents require it, performs competently, and finds it "monotonous and forlorn" — same activity, opposite motivational structure.

Why It Matters

This gives a diagnostic for why technically sound strategic redirections repeatedly fail to generate follow-through: if a goal is presented as a means to a financial or competitive end, it will be complied with at best and abandoned the moment enforcement lapses, whereas a goal framed as valuable in itself recruits people's own motivation rather than borrowing the leader's. It applies to any attempt to redirect collective effort — a corporate pivot, a school reform, a team's quarterly objectives — where the choice of framing, not just the destination, determines whether people push the change forward or merely tolerate it.