Concrete objective: a specific and clearly defined goal.

Step three involves the setting of concrete objectives by which to build on the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses identified at step two. In setting concrete objectives, and encouraging others to do so, you will:

• Clarify organisational, departmental and individual focus.
• Close the gap between the values you espouse and those you live.
• Reinforce key messages about the organisational mission.
• Generate a practical understanding of organisational aims and values.

The last is particularly important: in setting concrete objectives the fine sentiments expressed in the mission statement start to acquire practical meaning. Only this will ensure they engage with everyday behaviour.

When this happens the vision expressed in your mission statement starts to become a reality.

INVOLVING EVERYONE

Everyone needs to be involved in the setting of objectives. This is because objectives need to be set for every individual, as well as every department and for the organisation itself. In each case the objectives set need to reflect objectives elsewhere. Every objective set should reflect the related objectives for:

• individuals
• teams
• departments
• the organisation.

And they need to be informed by the review of current individual, departmental and organisational practice conducted at step two.

Every individual will be involved in the setting of his or her individual objectives. Most individuals will also be involved in the setting of team and departmental objectives. This will ensure that these objectives have meaning for individuals and that they are more likely to be achieved.

Your support, and the support of senior management, needs to be visible and practical throughout this process. You and your team might:

• drop in on objective-setting meetings
• field reports on departmental and managerial objectives
• comment on reports as an agenda item at board meetings
• ensure managerial appraisals consider objective-setting skills.

You and your senior management can usefully set the pace by identifying and publicising organisational objectives.

Harnessing creativity

Another reason for involving everyone is to harness their ideas. Few people do not have good ideas about how they might improve on the way in which their job is done, or on how the organisation might more generally improve its practice. These ideas might be simple or complex, based on experience or simply on reflection.

All too often these ideas are shared with partners and friends, but not with the organisation. In setting your objectives you have the ideal opportunity to solicit these ideas from employees.

GETTING IT RIGHT

A good objective is:

• achievable
• stretching
• honest
• balanced
• meaningful
• measurable
• finite.

Ensuring achievability

To be achievable objectives must be an accurate reflection of an individual’s:

• capabilities
• potential
• motivation
• level of support.

If achieving objectives depends on an inflated or otherwise unrealistic assessment of any one of these the objectives will not be met. This leads to loss of self-esteem. Achievable objectives motivate. Unachievable ones demotivate.

It is important to be realistic about the support available to those who must meet the objectives set. If someone has been prevented from meeting their objectives through no fault of their own, this can result in the sense of an injustice having been done.

The need to consider such issues shows that steps three and four of the six step process are not entirely independent of each other. In setting objectives it is important to consider how these objectives might be met.

Ensuring stretch

An objective that is too easy to meet is a bad objective. There will be no improvement in performance unless a person is taken out of his or her ‘comfort zone’. Yet the point of objectives is improved performance.

In being asked to push harder a person is being offered the opportunity to succeed. Success brings self-esteem. Setting objectives that are both achievable and stretching is the best way to improve organisational morale. Happy people make for happy organisations.

Encouraging honesty

It can be tempting to try to impress others by setting high objectives. This says ‘look at us and what we’re capable of!’ Sometimes people engaging in self-deception do not realise they are being dishonest in the setting of objectives.

But if targets aren’t honest, they are unlikely to be met. Worse it might become tempting to ‘meet’ them by massaging the figures or engaging in wholesale denial. Dishonesty breeds dishonesty.

It is possible to improve performance only in the context of an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses. It is not possible to raise morale, for example, by setting objectives the achievement of which would be possible only if morale were high. Better to face the truth and set yourself the target of raising morale by setting targets that can be achieved.

This problem can be especially troublesome in a culture of everpresent optimism, where the explicit recognition of potential barriers is seen as unacceptable pessimism. Make sure yours is not such a culture by the explicit and honest discussion of weaknesses and barriers as well as strengths and opportunities.

Setting balanced objectives

It is important to strike a balance between objectives. Every value sets a goal that constrains the pursuit of other goals. Concrete objectives need to be set with an eye to consistency.

Such checks will ensure that no part of the organisation is unwittingly undermining the objectives of another part. Examples of what you want to avoid include:

• Production targets that can be met only by threatening relationships with suppliers and destroying the morale of the production team.
• Individual development targets for teachers that cannot be met consistently with achieving departmental targets.
• Objectives for reducing waiting lists that can be met only if staff ignore the hospital policy of always listening to patients.

Securing meaning

A target that is imposed from above is a target that will not have meaning. To be meaningful targets must be negotiated and agreed so they are fully understood and accepted by the person who has to meet them.

Ideally objectives should be win-win; such that meeting them will benefit individual and organisation. If this is not possible it is important to ensure that the packages of objectives to be met by individuals achieve an appropriate balance between benefits to individual and organisation.

Deciding success criteria

If it is unclear what it would be to meet an objective, the objective is unlikely to guide behaviour in any meaningful way. This can be avoided by agreeing success criteria as the objectives are set.

If the objectives set can be quantified in some way, this makes it easy to set success criteria. Examples of such criteria include the following:

• move ten places up the league table
• increase sales by 20 per cent
• decrease customer complaints by 50 per cent
• increase applications by ten per cent
• answer telephones by the fourth ring
• respond to applications within five working days
• decrease errors by 70 per cent.

Not every target can be measured in this way. Indeed some of the most important objectives are not so measurable. It is notoriously difficult, for example, to measure personal development or indeed initiatives by which to improve organisational culture.

Even here, however, careful thought will suggest the criteria by which success can be evaluated. How, after all, do you know there is a problem that needs to be solved if you don’t know what counts as evidence for the existence of the problem? And if you can identify the evidence that signals the existence of a problem it is but a short step to identify the evidence that would signal a solution. (It might consist in little more than the disappearance of the evidence for the problem.)

All the examples of objectiveness offered on page 97 included success criteria. Here are some more examples:

Role	Objective	Method of achieving	Success criteria
Secretarial	Improve filing system	Ensure all documents are correctly filed within 24 hours of receipt.	No piles of files lying around in the office. Correct files can be found within minutes of initiating search.
Managerial	Improve communication skills	Attend course, practice during interviews, presentations etc	Confidence in communication skills, improvement measured in evaluations from peers and people managed

The success criteria agreed will make it much easier to monitor progress and evaluate success at step five (see Chapter 7).

Setting finite objectives

Part of deciding the criteria for success will involve deciding a timetable for achievement. Either the time limit can be set first (so in setting the success criteria one is asking what sort of improvements it could be realistic to expect in that time). Or the success criteria can be set first (and then a realistic timetable agreed).

Either way the timetable for meeting the objectives must be finite or the objectives will be meaningless.

IDENTIFYING OBJECTIVES

In taking steps one and two you have already started the process by which objectives can be defined. The process is as follows:

• identify your goals (step one)
• identify your baseline (step two)
• decide what needs to be done to close the gap
• agree on what should count as success.

As we saw above this needs to be done at every level: the organisation itself, departments, teams, individuals.

Clearly at each stage of the hierarchy objectives will depend on the objectives of the next level up. It is sensible, therefore, to adopt a topdown process for the setting of objectives.

Here is an example of how objectives at each level might look:

• 1.Organisational objectives – by July 2003 be ready to implement 360° appraisal throughout the organisation. Success criteria: Employees at every level have been trained, they understand the benefits of appraisal and the role they will play. Everyone knows when they will be appraised. Knowledge and understanding to be checked by a survey of employees.
• 2.Managerial objectives – by November 2002 to be confident about conducting appraisals and being appraised. Success criteria: I have conducted at least four appraisals, gathered mainly positive feedback and identified any further training needs. I have prepared for my own appraisal by identifying possible objectives and appropriate success criteria.
• 3.Departmental objectives – by November 2002 to have devised a workable timetable for appraisal and set up appropriate administrative support. Success criteria: The existence of a timetable and an administrative system that have been checked as acceptable by experts and within the department.
• 4.Team objectives –by February 2003 to have fully integrated ecommerce into our marketing strategy. Success criteria: we have been fully trained in e-commerce and can outline its benefits, possible problems and solutions. We have revised our marketing strategy to reflect those benefits and avoid those problems.
• 5.Individual objectives –by my next appraisal interview to have improved my presentation skills. Success criteria: I have undergone training, given (and received increasingly positive feedback on) at least three presentations and identified further training needs if any.

The process of setting objectives depends on the process of reflection. It is only by taking the time to reflect on our goals (organisational, departmental and individual), on what it would be to achieve these goals and on how we’re going to achieve them, that we are likely to succeed in achieving them.

Acquiring a sound understanding

Our daily lives are so busy that it is easy for reflection time to be squeezed out. Yet if we want to succeed we must exercise self-discipline in taking the time to reflect on our goals and our strategies for achieving them. When an organisation:

• takes the time to set its own objectives
• insists that departments and individuals also set objectives
• gives its full support to such a process by providing the time and resources necessary

it is recognising the importance of such reflection.

You will already have provided much of the time needed for reflection if:

• At step one, everyone was involved in deciding on the organisational mission.
• The induction process makes sure that every new recruit is required to reflect on the organisation’s mission and what it means to them.
• At step two everyone was involved in reflecting on current practice, identifying success and failures.

If such is the case people will already have a sound understanding of the organisational mission and of current strengths and weaknesses.

At step three such people need only:

• crystallise their understanding of where they might improve/agree on success criteria.

At step four we shall be considering the steps that need to be taken to ensure that objectives are met.

Organisational clarity

Steps one and two together constitute a process of clarification. Once they are complete the organisation, its departments, teams and individuals should all have a firm grasp of:

• their goals
• how their goals fit into each context
• how their goals relate to each other
• the extent to which they are achieving their goals.

Such clarity can usefully form the basis of a written description of each task, function and role within the organisation. In reflecting, for example, on his or her own role within the organisation and his or her own objectives, an individual will be well-placed to write a description of:

• his or her own role within the organisation
• the daily tasks that go into that role
• the relations with others that support that role
• the skills and competencies needed to fulfil the role
• the role-objectives to be met.

Such descriptions can be enormously useful if a person is off sick, on holiday, undergoing training or otherwise not available to do their job. It is also useful, of course, when the person moves on and must be replaced.

Similar descriptions can be written for departments and for teams. These can be useful for the purposes of the induction of new recruits and those who move within the organisation.

SUMMARY

In this chapter we have discussed step three, the process of identifying concrete and achievable objectives for:

• the organisation itself
• organisational departments and teams
• individuals.

Deriving such objectives requires people at every level to acquire a practical understanding of the organisational mission and departmental objectives. In acquiring such understanding people come to understand the contribution they make in a way that underpins confidence in their role, clarity of focus and a commitment to success.

It is in taking step three that the mission statement stops being simply a string of ‘feel good’ nouns. It is now poised to become engaged in every aspect of the behaviour of the organisation.