If you have a stable system, then there is no use to specify a goal. You will get whatever the system will deliver. A goal beyond the capability of the system will not be reached.
If you have not a stable system, then there is again no point in setting a goal. There is no way to know what the system will produce: it has no capability.
As we have already remarked, management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do, and in fact is usually management by fear.
Anyone may now understand the fallacy of “management by the numbers”.
Deming 1982 ‘Out of the Crisis’ (First MIT edition 2000 p76)