Most managers are familiar with setting goals or objectives for their teams or departments. However, there is still a lot of speculation about why targets are needed, who needs to have targets, and ultimately how to go about forming the perfect target.
Objectives are generally a list of one or more statements, each statement a clear definition of what is to be achieved. There can be overall company goals, department goals, team goals, and even personal goals. Goals, especially short-term goals, provide immense clarity about the team’s immediate future and how it will be affected.
For example, an Olympic 100m runner knows her goals. If the sprinter ran with no purpose or goals, she would have mentally exhausted herself. By knowing the goal of the 100m race, she can maintain the necessary pace and focus.
Some examples closer to home. An R&D wing may focus on higher purity of your product or better tensile strength. A sales team can focus on better sales numbers or increased market share. An HR department may focus on improving employee satisfaction or reducing attrition rates. A maintenance team can define a higher degree of machine uptime or service availability. Customer relationship representatives can aim for higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Every team that strives for clear, stated team goals leads to overall improvement in the company, in small ways, but clear forward momentum has been established. Managers no longer have to rely on vague notions of good work. The performance of a team is clear and is measured by verifying whether the objectives are achieved.
A company would do well to have all the teams and levels define goals for themselves and make sure they complement each other. Why is it necessary to have the entire company in it? Consider that the sales manager has set sales goals for 2005 and the product development manager has not set any goals to launch the product in early 2005. The lack of the product development manager’s goal will affect the managers’ goals. of sales.
How do the goals benefit team members? The best boost a team can have is “knowing” that they achieved their goal. I said it earlier in the case of the 100m sprinter. For this momentum to happen, it is important for the manager to clearly communicate goals to team members at the right time. For example, if the target is for the year 2005, the manager should have communicated this to the team in early 2005.
It is important that the manager periodically communicates the progress of the objective to the members. For example, a sales manager should communicate the achievement of the annual sales figure to her team, at least monthly.
And finally, the manager must tell the team whether or not the goal was achieved at the end of the time period. If it was not achieved, a good manager would know about it before the actual end of the time period. Corrective actions and preventive actions would be taken.
Suppose the manager realizes in the medium term that the goal is difficult to achieve. He can change the sales strategy if the strategy fails. She can change staff if necessary. Perhaps the sales brochures were inadequate.
In some cases, sales may be lagging due to reasons beyond the control of sales managers. For example, the product has some problems. It will then notify the product development department, who will initiate corrective action. In this case, the goals set by the sales department helped drive corrective action and ultimately helped the company save its sales numbers.
Managers must involve team members in setting process goals. Team members may have the basic knowledge to know if a goal is really achievable or not.
How to formulate objectives? Ideally, the objectives should be SMART, with 5 characteristics
S-specific
M-measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
Time limit T
S-specific
The objective must be specific and not vague. For example, a goal of “99% network uptime” makes it more specific to a network maintenance team than “high network uptime.” A receptionist may have the objective of “Take calls before the third ring”.
M-measurable
It should be possible to measure achievement. This is the area where managers get confused. A goal of “Achieve the highest possible speed” for a car is not measurable, “Achieve 250 miles per hour” is measurable. It follows that if a goal is set, there has to be a method to collect data and demonstrate that the goal has been achieved.
A – Achievable
Always set goals higher than what has been achieved, but not so high that they can never be achieved. That’s why 99% uptime is more feasible than 100%. But an error rate of 0.5% is more feasible than one of 0%. Therefore, setting achievable goals improves trust in a team than an unattainable one. The closer you get to a near perfect score, the more difficult it becomes. It can be very difficult to go from a tolerance limit of 99.2% to a figure of 99.7%.
R – Relevant
The goal should be relevant to the team or department you are training for. For example, can a maintenance team achieve 99% customer satisfaction? No. They can probably keep the network active. But by doing so, they are helping the product design team achieve customer satisfaction. The maintenance wing would be better off if they had a goal relevant to their team like “99% uptime.”
Time limit T
Managers must set goals that are limited in time. A sales manager may set a goal that says “Annual sales of 30,000 washing machines.” The “Annual” part does it with a time limit. Otherwise, the team would not know when it has to achieve the goal.
Here are some examples of goals – For a teacher: “90% passing grades for annual batches” – For a bus driver: “99% scheduled stops on time every month.” For a CEO: “50% market share by 2006.” For a product development manager: “Reduce customer maintenance requests by 50% by the end of 2006.”
