Beware what you wish for

It is systemically damaging with predictable and harmful side effects. It degrades employee performance and motivates unethical behaviours. It harms interpersonal relationships and corrodes organizational culture.

Are we talking about too much exposure to the Internet? Allowing employees to listen to their iPods all day long? Letting people take too many days sick? Nope, none of those.

We are talking about goals in organisations. The ubiquitous and seemingly benign Key Performance Indicator. Objectives, targets, goals – whatever you call them, we all have them – just some are better managed than others.

Goal setting
Two fascinating papers hit my desk yesterday on the subject of goal setting. Both, in different ways, were saying “beware organisational goals”.

The first by Bazerman et al did not mince its words: “systematically damaging”, “harmful”, “motivates unethical behaviours”. Strong, attention-grabbing stuff.

The second from Bourne and Franco-Santos at Cranfield School of Management was less controversial and more practical. They also looked at HOW to achieve goals and make the point that quality practitioners look at improving processes in order to achieve the required performance improvements.

Both said what we have known for a long time – that goals are often set with too little thought, and without thinking through the possible consequences. Bazerman’s article gives lots of grisly examples of how, under the right management pressure, people will cheat in various ways that would be comical if they weren’t so serious.

Goals are good
In between the doom and gloom of targets, both papers acknowledge the positive side of goal setting. Much research has been done in this area and neither could say that goal setting is a bad thing. It isn’t. It seems to be pretty well universally acknowledged that people like to have something to aim for, and do better when want to be seen to achieve what they set out to do.

The danger comes where goals compete with one another, are ill thought through, and where goals become too narrow, thereby shifting attention away from wider, but still important, issues.

A potential solution
Bourne and Franco-Santos suggest a 10-point checklist for goal setting. Notice how far down the list the task of setting targets is!

1. Review stakeholder expectations
2. Clarify and select strategic objectives
3. Define a success map
4. Prioritise objectives
5. Operational-ise strategic objectives
6. Collect data
7. Analyse data
8. Set targets
9. Design an action plan
10. Discuss and agree an action plan

Creating goals, and managing progress towards them, goes to the very core of business and organisational life. In my experience it normally takes a group of people to “buy into” dubious behaviours that sabotage the good intentions of targets to the degree where organisations can be damaged. In other words, a lot of people need to turn a “blind eye” to let some of the more remarkable stories come to fruition.

Goals that have been properly thought through, and do not set up dilemmas in people’s minds, must be more effective. And this 10-point checklist is both comprehensive and manageable.

References
Ordonez, L.D. , Schweitzer, M.E., Galinsky, A.D., and Bazerman, M.H (2009) – Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting , Harvard Business School

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html

Franco-Santos, M. and Bourne, M. (2008) –The Impact of Performance Targets on Behaviour: A close look at sales force contexts, Cranfield University School of Management