When it comes to defining and achieving goals, Goalscape is far superior to mindmapping.
Just look at the two screenshots below: they represent the same structure and content, yet they are very different.
The mindmap uses tiny icons to denote importance and progress, so it is
hard to tell what is more important and what is less important. The same is true for the progress.
By contrast Goalscape shows the relative importance and progress directly and intuitively: the size of each goal is its importance and the shading is progress. The information practically leaps from the screen and the picture is much more meaningful.
There are key differences in using the tools as well. While mindmaps are quite good at showing dependencies, they have no concept of upward progress. With Goalscape however, as you enter your progress in lower level goals it automatically reflects upwards all the way to the main goal. Every time you check off a completed task you immediately see the contribution it makes to your overall progress.
There is also some inherent rigor with Goalscape: the importances of any set of subgoals must add up to 100%. So when you change priorities by adjusting the importance of one goal, it has an immediate and obvious effect on all its neighboring goals. Mindmaps do not capture any information about the relationships between subgoals of the same parent, so changing the importance of a goal has no effect on its neighbors.
Goalscape beats mindmapping by a wide margin: it not only has a clearer and richer visual format, it has far more functionality and is easier to drive.
We have issued this second set of updates this month because we have finished some extra features and enhancements early! The two really big items are the new ‘Presentation Mode’ and much smarter Attachments handling.
Here are a couple of short videos that summarise the key changes and demonstrate how the new features work:
Presentation mode
This screenshot illustrates the new ‘fullscreen’ view with the menu bars stripped out and a pared-down panel, showing only the goal name, notes and attachments. It also shows the new Attachments display and image preview.
You can access Presentation Mode using the new View option in the OS menu bar (click the ‘X’ top right or press ‘Esc’ to revert to the standard mode).
Attachments
The Attachments tab now displays attached files as icons. For image files a preview appears on mouseover and there are different options to show the image, including fullscreen.
To indicate the presence of attachments on a goal, an asterisk appears next to the paper clip icon in the tab.
AIR 2.0 (currently in beta) offers further improvements here – particularly the facility to open attachments directly in their native applications rather than through your browser. If you do not want to wait until AIR 2.0 goes on public release, you can download the beta version here (check the License Agreement box and download Adobe AIR 2 Runtime).
HTML reports
HTML reports now include details of any attachments present (with live links) and text in user-defined fields.
Bug fixes
There were a few, er, “interesting” bugs that needed fixing urgently! The most obvious was the issue with the German ‘Get started with Goalscape’ template that caused an exception on starting Goalscape. There was also a problem opening old goalscapes that had goals with very small Importance.
There are a few more fixes and a couple of minor tweaks to the look and feel. As always you can find a full listing in the Release Notes.
Goalscape Online beta test
We already have a basic alpha version running and we are putting it through its paces right now. Many of you have already signed up for the beta test: this is still open and you can sign up on this forum thread.
Goalscape Affiliate Program
Lots of people have also joined our affiliate program: if any more of you want to earn rewards by helping us to spread the word about Goalscape you can sign up here.
Most of the changes in the latest updates are in Goalscape’s look and feel. Here is a short video to illustrate the most significant:
Start and End dates
Goalscape enforces the rule that subgoal start and end dates must lie within those of their parents. If you try to select an invalid (grayed out) date a pop-up tooltip explains the constraint. You can now delete dates.
Goal names
Once you select a goal, if you click it again the ‘Rename goal’ pop-up text entry field will appear. (A faster double-click still accesses Focus view functionality.)
Hotkey options
We have extended the hotkey options so those who dislike moving the mouse can now cut, copy, paste and delete goals with standard ‘Ctrl+’ functions (Cmd+ on the Mac) instead of using the relevant icons.
Responsibility
When you copy a goal from another goalscape, any new people it brings with it (as Responsible) are added to the target goalscape’s Responsible list.
Look details
Further refinements of the automatic resizing of goal names
Changed order of items in the right-click context menu; invalid options are disabled and grayed out
More compact Search results list
There are other minor tweaks to the look and feel and a few bug fixes. A full listing of all changes appears in the Release Notes.
Lots of you are already using the forum to ask questions, make suggestions and report problems. Your feedback is very valuable to us and we always try to respond quickly. In fact some of these latest bug fixes are the result of your notifications, so thanks again!
...is surely not your motto, otherwise you would not have ended up on a website about goal-setting. But according to David Logan from the University of Southern California for 2% of the US population "Life Sucks!" is their daily mantra. This is Stage 1: the lowest of 5 motivational stages described by Logan in his book called "Tribal Leadership". Do you employ anyone who acts as if they believe this? If so they may need some help and support.
Most probably you do not; but what about those who are at Stage 2 – those who subscribe to the motto: "My life sucks!" According to Logan, this group comprises 25% of the working population. So it is quite likely that you work with or employ one off those poorly motivated, pessimistic individuals.
Things get a lot better in Stage 3, where people say “I am great…” but that’s usually followed by a unspoken “… but you are not!” About half the working population operates on this level. The benefit of Stage 3 is that it is future oriented: deferring immediate gratification to improve the future situation. The downside is that it´s also ‘ego oriented’ (“I am only great because you are not so great”).
Leaders in Stage 3 believe they can force their own goals down everyone else’s throat and they will happily swallow it. But this kind of operation is rarely effective and it can become expensive. You may be able to make people swallow by paying them (or by threatening refuseniks with the sack): so they might even smile as they swallow, but they will rarely digest.
Effective organizational goal setting occurs at Stage 4, where people say “We are great” – this is 22% of the workforce. Here, goals are not pushed down top to bottom, but developed and agreed collaboratively. It’s not a one-way street; rather it is a hub of ideas and insights. Stage 4 organizations outperform Stage 3 teams because their members actually have a personal commitment to the common goals. Stage 4 people genuinely want to perform and will put in the effort required to reach the organization’s goals. Monetary reward is a secondary factor – the satisfaction of achieving worthwhile results is much more important.
Stage 4 is surpassed only by Stage 5: the opposite extreme to “Life sucks!” Stage 5 people deeply believe that “Life is great!” It’s not even about winning – at Stage 5 there is no competition and no lonely winners: instead the focus is on cooperation so everyone wins. In Logan's words: “People work together in innocent wonderment.” Stage 5 is extremely rare: only 2% of the workforce operates at this elevated level. It can only be reached by working through Stages 3 and 4.
Goalscape can help everyone in your organization to climb the ladder through these stages. It opens the door to a goal setting dialog and provides a clear, engaging format for discussing the real goals and values of the organization and the people within it. These are the foundations of a successful shared endeavor, and will help you to move to Stage 5. A organization that is driven by the belief that life is great, can achieve things that "level 1 to 4" organizations only dream about.
Watch this great TED Talk by David Logan, and check out Zappos - a company truly immersed in a stage 4 culture.
