The repertoire of consultants, trainers, and motivational speakers, nothing comes before the power of setting personal goals. And in the annals of personal goal-setting, no story outranks the Yale University Class of 1953.
The story, as told by consultants, goes like this: In 1953, researchers surveyed Yale’s graduating seniors to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. The answer: 3%. Twenty years later, researchers polled the surviving members of the Class of 1953 — and found that the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined!
It’s a consultant’s dream anecdote: a vivid Ivy League success story that documents the cause-and-effect relationship between goals and personal success. It’s powerful! It’s compelling! It’s also completely untrue — as the Fast Company Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU) found out.
First stop: consultant Jay Rifenbary’s 1995 book, No Excuse!, in which he cites the famous Yale story. Rifenbary couldn’t document the study, but his researchers happily confirmed its proliferation across the consultant landscape: “We’ve attended hundreds of motivational seminars and heard it many times,” say Mike and Marjie Markowski.
