Iwo Hryniewicz

Iwo is a technohumanist with ~10 years in IT spanning product management, engineering management, and Scrum (PSM III, PSPO III). He works at the intersection of Agile, AI, and organizational truth-telling, with a focus on mentoring, storytelling, and solving complex problems collaboratively. He designs and facilitates workshops that turn research into practical, do-it-Monday tools.

Workshop—Goals Gone Right: How to Keep Goals Powerful Without Letting Them Go Wild

Goals work. That's exactly why they're dangerous. Ford Pinto engineers hit their weight target and people died. Wells Fargo hit "8 accounts per customer" with 3.5 million fake ones. Goal setting is one of the most researched topics in organizational psychology, but the 2009 "Goals Gone Wild" paper showed it has been over prescribed without a warning label: narrowed focus, unethical behavior, excessive risk taking, eroded collaboration, crushed motivation. If you have seen Sprint Goals become death marches or OKRs cascade into checkbox exercises, you have seen this firsthand.

This hands on workshop runs in three acts plus integration. Act I: why goals work, the four mechanisms that make them so powerful. Act II: how goals go wild, the five side effects diagnosed through real cases (Ford Pinto, Wells Fargo, Everest '96, Sears, Enron). Act III: building the safety system, leading versus lagging indicators, NICE indicators, IF THEN implementation intentions, and kill criteria, assembled into a one page Goal Charter. Integration: Commander's Intent and peer review. Built on Training from the Back of the Room, roughly 57 percent participant activity time. Everyone leaves with a completed, peer reviewed Goal Charter for a real goal they bring.

Iwo will do the workshop with Aneta Wiechecka-Kozieł.