My Objective is to Help You Achieve Yours
Writing Good Work ObjectivesWhere to Get Them and How to Write Them © Fred Nickols 2016
|
|
Abstract In many organizations, people are asked to write work objectives for themselves and for others as part of their company's annual or ongoing performance planning and appraisal process. For some, this is a new experience. For many, it is a difficult one. This article elaborates upon the qualities of good work objectives and the process of writing them. It is concerned with how objectives are derived (i.e., their content or substance) and how they are specified (i.e., their phrasing or form). This article was written for people who are writing work objectives for the first time and for those who, although they might have done so before, find the task a difficult one. The immediate goal of this article is to help improve the quality of work objectives. A longer-term goal is to improve human performance through better work objectives and, through better performance on the part of people, better performance on the part of their organizations. After all, it is people, not organizations, who actually get things done. Note: For a downloadable, PDF version of this paper click here. It Isn't Easy but It Is Manageable Writing good work
objectives is not easy. This is true whether you are writing them for
yourself or for someone else. Getting at meaningful content for a work
objective requires you to think at length and in depth about the work to
be performed. It is unlikely that you will be able to sit down and dash
off a set of finished work objectives. Instead, you will have to write
them, think them over, rewrite them, then rewrite them again. (Frankly, if
you find writing good work objectives an easy task, chances are you know
something the rest of us don't and would you please share it?) Although writing
good work objectives is not easy, it is a manageable task. The purposes of
this paper are to examine the qualities and characteristics of good work
objectives and to make the task of writing them easier.
Because the form or specification of a work objective is more
easily dealt with than its content or derivation, we will tackle the form
or structure of a work objective first. The Form of an Objective "Form ever follows function." (See Endnote 1) The function served by a work objective is to clearly communicate (a) the result sought from the work to be performed and (b) guidelines for determining if its achievement is satisfactory. It follows that the form of a well-written work objective should contain at least two components: a verb-object component specifying what is to be accomplished, and a standards component indicating acceptable performance. (See Endnote 2) On occasion, work is
to be accomplished under such unusual circumstances that these, too, are
spelled out in the objective. When this is the case, the work objective
contains a conditions component. A conditions component is optional. The
verb-object and the standards components are more or less mandatory.
Without them, the objective isn't an objective at all. Some Examples Here is an example of a work objective:
Clearly, this is a
work objective for someone with very broad responsibility, perhaps a vice
president of sales or marketing. Let us narrow our focus a bit, say to the scope of work of someone managing a testing program at Educational Testing Service, which is where I was employed when I first wrote this paper. Here is another example:
This is still a pretty broad work objective. Most of us are not responsible for anything this grand. Let us narrow our focus even more, to a possible objective for someone working in a document processing area.
There are people who
would spend a lot of time and energy arguing that the phrase "while
obeying all safety precautions" is a condition. There are others who would
argue that it is a standard. What is the point of such an argument?
Absolutely nothing. The
objective of a work objective is the clear communication of expected
performance. There is little value to be gained from identifying and
classifying the components of a given work objective. Do not waste time
trying to identify the components of a work objective. And do not waste
time trying to construct conditions components if they are not immediately
apparent to you.
All three of the preceding
objectives are clear, measurable, and time-tied. These are qualities to
strive for in work objectives. The three objectives just presented also
offer up three additional observations about work objectives. They can be
very broad or very narrow in scope, they can address financial or
operational matters, and they can address situational or recurring work
requirements. Following are some
more sample work objectives. Look them over and then we will review and
comment on them.
As you can see from
the last example, work objectives can be short and sweet. As you can see
from the first two, that is not always the case. Remember, the objective
is clarity, which does not necessarily mean brevity. None of the
objectives above sprang forth in finished form. All required thinking and
several required extensive rewriting. As written, they are acceptable, but
they might still benefit from some careful editing. The third and fourth
objectives, for example, place the time-tied portion of the standards
component at the beginning of the objective. This serves a useful purpose:
it focuses attention on the deadline. Alternate wording for objective
three might be as follows:
Here is a work objective that is truly short and sweet:
Clear? I think so.
Measurable? Sure is. Time-tied? Obviously. Could it be improved? You bet.
One could stipulate a condition such as a cost limitation; for example,
"at a total cost not to exceed $20 million." One could also stipulate
markets; for example, "with one program targeted at each of the following
markets: the home, K-12, school to work, and work to school." But, even
the stripped-down version satisfies the two basic criteria for a work
objective; there is a verb-object component, and some indication regarding
how to tell if the objective has been met. There are three more
points to be covered in this paper. One is the distinction between action
and results. A second has to do with who actually writes the objectives.
The third deals with derivation, that is, the source of the objectives.
Let's tackle the derivation issue next. The Derivation
of Objectives: Where Do You Get Them? Objectives are
derived from a process of reflection and analysis. Some of the more
common areas or aspects of the workplace where reflection and analysis
will yield objectives include problems, processes, practices and people. Problems (Or,
if you prefer, "Opportunities") Although many people
prefer to label discrepancies in results as "opportunities" instead of
"problems," the facts are that the workplace is full of such
discrepancies, no matter how we choose to label them. Discrepancies in
results offer fruitful ground for the derivation and subsequent
specification of objectives. At one company, for example, the
quality of business intelligence was deemed totally inadequate. Why?
Well, for one reason, there was no systematic effort to gather, compile
and disseminate it. In short, there was no discernible business
intelligence function. Guess what? A senior manager found
himself with the objective of establishing a viable business intelligence
function. Processes Work processes also
offer fruitful ground for deriving work objectives. This is
particularly true regarding any kind of ongoing or continuous improvement
effort. Consider the manager of a fairly sizable call center.
Each year her objectives include one or more objectives related to
achieving specific, measurable improvements in some aspect of call center
performance. Practices Practices, also
known as methods and procedures, offer a third area where reflection and
analysis can produce meaningful work objectives. These might quality
as incremental improvements, work simplification or even that dreaded
word, "reengineering." A simple example will illustrate the kind of
payoff that can be found here. A manager whose unit periodically
distributes printed materials to hundreds of sites throughout the
continental United States (and overseas as well), was charged with
reducing the costs of providing these materials. It turns out the
materials were regularly reprinted and redistributed in their entirety
owing to the way they were bound. A simple shift to loose-leaf
binders enabled the printing and distribution of only the changed pages,
greatly reducing cost and waste. People People, too, can be
a source of objectives. For one thing, their developmental needs and
requirements provide one source of objectives. For another, they can
generate objectives related to other matters. In other words, people
can set their own objectives. This brings us to the next issue: Who
writes them? Who Actually
Writes Them? This question can be
restated as "Do we solicit work objectives or do we impose them?" In this
enlightened new age of empowerment, full of self-managed teams and even a
self-directing individual or two, many managers and supervisors find
themselves on the horns of a dilemma; should they specify work objectives
for the people whose performance they must review, or should they solicit
objectives from them? There is no easy
answer to this question, but it is safe to say that the choice is greatly
influenced by the kind of work involved.
Figure 1 illustrates a fact easily confirmed by a moment's reflection: the
job of any given employee is a mix of routine and non-routine activities.
This means that the contributions sought from employees range from
compliance to creativity.
Figure 1 - The Mix of Work Routine work
activities are usually prefigured,
that is, they are designed in advance, by others, for the worker to carry
out. Routine work activities are frequently repetitive and often
documented in the form of a written procedures manual. Assembly line work
is the classic example of prefigured work.
Non-routine work
activities are almost always
configured, that is, they are developed by the worker, typically in
response to the requirements of a given situation. Because they represent
more or less unique responses, non-routine work activities cannot be
prefigured. Nor are they easily documented, except in a very general way.
[(One can document the general process of project management, for example,
but a particular project defies documentation in advance.) Although everyone's
job contains some mix of routine and non-routine work activities, some
jobs are almost completely dominated by one or the other. Depending
on its mix of routine and non-routine work, a given job can be placed
anywhere along the diagonal line in the center of the diagram in Figure 1. For jobs consisting
primarily of routine work activities, the expectation of the worker is
generally one of compliance with established procedures. In such cases,
supervisors and managers might rely heavily on specifying work
objectives. For jobs consisting
chiefly of non-routine work activities, the expectation is contribution
toward unit, project, or company goals and objectives. In these cases,
supervisors might rely more on soliciting work objectives. In all cases,
discussion and negotiation will be required because, no matter the kind of
work being performed, commitment is essential to its proper performance. Focus On
Results Whether routine or
non-routine, recurring or situational, all work may be viewed as a process
having a result. Results are the outcomes of activity, the effects of
actions taken. Work objectives for both kinds of work should reflect, in
measurable terms, the results expected, not just the activity to be
performed. Placing measures on
activity is not the same as developing measures of the results of that
activity. For example, focusing on keystrokes per minute is a measure of a
data entry or word processing system operator's activity. A useful measure
of results might be the percentage of documents correctly keyed or typed. For customer service
representatives, a work objective might call for maintaining an average
call duration of no more than 3.5 minutes (a measure that ties directly to
the cost of calls). Another work objective might require customer service
representatives to supply 100 percent accurate information as measured by
call sampling and monitoring. One customer service
representative (Rep A) produces results like those listed above and
maintains an average call length of 3.5 minutes. Another (Rep B) achieves
similar results but with an average call length of 4 minutes. Assuming a
cost of $1.00 per minute, the two service representatives are maintaining
average costs per call of $3.50 and $4.00. If each rep handles 100 calls
per day 100 days each year, that is 10,000 calls each. At a 50 cent
differential, Rep A's results cost the company $5,000 less than Rep B's.
Which rep do you think ought to get the higher rating? Which rep would you
keep if you had to let one go? (You might want to skip ahead to the caveat
about measuring work and performance before making up your mind.) Conceivably,
marketing representatives could be measured in terms of the dollar value
of new clients. At the same time, the desirability of these new clients
might be gauged using qualitative measures of their strategic value to the
business. Managers could be
measured on the number of process improvements made, their dollar value,
and more qualitative measures such as expansion of the skill base in their
units. A Caveat about
Measuring Work and Performance You get what you
measure. Before instituting measures of work and performance, you should
think through the consequences of measuring what you contemplate
measuring. If you do not, the results you get might be far removed from
what you are after. For example, measuring average call length could
indeed lead to reduced costs per call. But it can also lead to a situation
where customer service representatives inappropriately cut calls short.
Generally speaking, some mix of measures is needed to balance the
pressures exerted by a single measure. Identifying
Results To get at the
results an employee might be expected to produce, it is necessary to give
thought to the outcomes or effects sought from the employee's work
activities. Consider, for
example, a few of the results a customer service representative might
produce: questions answered, orders entered, errors corrected, materials
shipped, and customers satisfied (perhaps even delighted). A researcher's
results might be measured in terms of the number, quality, or value of
studies conducted. A program director's results might be measured in terms
of the performance of the program, financially, operationally, or on both
counts. The attainment of
results always consumes resources, either in the form of actual
consumption of materials or simple wear and tear on machinery, equipment,
and people. The consumption of resources incurs costs. Work objectives
might also reflect the cost of the results to be achieved as well as the
results themselves. The results sought from operations managers might take
the form of reductions in unit costs. As we saw earlier,
the mix of work comes into play as supervisors wrestle with the extent to
which work objectives should be specified for employees and the extent to
which they should be solicited from employees. It also comes into play in
thinking about the extent to which work objectives should focus on
activity and the extent to which they should focus on results. People whose work
requires of them that they configure their responses to a given situation
should typically have their work objectives expressed in terms of results,
not activity. One reason for this is that the response required to produce
the desired result can not be specified in advance. Another is that the
management of work should always be results-centered. To begin with the
task or process is to run the risk of performing work that should not be
performed at all. Finally, people whose work requires of them that they
figure out what to do can not be managed using an activity-based
compliance model. For people whose
work consists primarily of repetitive, prefigured routines, it is possible
to specify work objectives in terms of activity; more specifically, in
terms of complying with the prefigured routines that define their work.
The reason is that the results are a given. If the routine is carried out
properly, the result will accrue. However, if attention is not paid to
specifying the results as well, then the purpose of the work and its place
in the larger context will be unclear. The consequences of this lack of
context are well known: lack of commitment, absenteeism, turnover, shoddy
work, and morale problems. In general, then, work objectives should always
indicate the results expected. The short-and-sweet
sample objective given earlier, "Launch four new testing programs in the
coming fiscal year," could be refocused on the results the four new
programs are required to produce. For example, one could add words like
"each of which will yield a net return of not less than 10% of expenses"
or "each of which will yield gross revenue of at least $15 million." This
leads to a logical question: If revenue and net are the desired results,
why not put them up front? Doing so might yield an objective like this:
Clearly, it could be
the case that "launch four new testing programs" is a lower-level
objective derived in the course of figuring out how to achieve the $60
million revenue objective. Temper the
admonition to couch objectives in terms of results instead of actions with
common sense. It is indeed useful to think things through and make sure
you are clear about the results to be achieved. On occasion, however, the
result to be realized is the execution of a previously determined course
of action. In other words, work objectives sometimes focus on the ends to
be achieved, and they sometimes focus on the means to be employed. Ends
and means are relative terms. The launch of four new testing programs
within a one-year period might be the end sought by a product development
chieftain but, for a senior executive, it is the means to new revenues. The point being made here is that the content of work objectives should focus on the work to be performed. Work is a process and it has a result. If the work is best expressed in terms of results, fine; if it is best expressed in terms of the process to be carried out, that is fine, too. Do not fall victim to dogmatic dictates (not even this one).
We behave in ways that serve to make what we sense match what we want. We are guided along the way by comparing our perceptions of what is with our vision of what should be. That comparison is the basis for action. If a gap exists we act to close it. That comparison also serves to inform us regarding progress and achievement. Are we closing the gap? Is it closed? Moreover, we are able to exercise control in complex and changing circumstances, countering, offsetting and negating the influences of other actors and factors that also affect whatever it is we are trying to control. We adapt, adjusting our behavior to fit the circumstances at hand. Thus it is that we successfully meet challenges and surmount barriers, obstacles and disruptions. We prevail in the face of adversity. We are, to use William T. Powers' term, "living control systems." None of that changes when we become employees.
We are still "living control systems" and we still behave in ways
meant to change what we perceive so as to align it with what we want.
Unfortunately, a great deal of management effort goes into trying to
control our behavior, which also happens to be the very means by which we
accomplish our goals and objectives.
Why? Because "they"
(i.e., management) view our behavior as the means by which they can
achieve their goals and objectives.
Therein lies a great deal of conflict, game-playing, deception and
what B.F. Skinner termed "counter-control."
Why? Because at any
point in time we are striving to keep many, many variables under control,
ranging from moving half a dozen or so projects forward to keeping the
boss happy to figuring out what to do about that so-and-so in accounting
to responding to the latest inquiry from HR to picking out a suitable
present for our spouse's birthday.
We are awash in a sea of goals and objectives, some personal, some
work-related, some professional, some long-term, some-short term, some
clearly in view and well in hand, some behind, some in jeopardy and some
still out there as a puzzle to be solved.
Our behavior needs to be free from unnecessary restraints and
constraints, available to us at all times to wield as circumstances
demand, or else we can't achieve a blessed thing. Control, as Peter Drucker pointed out, is always against a standard - some preferred or required state of affairs.
Goals and objectives serve to define these preferred or desired
conditions. In short, they
define what we want. When work was materials-based and working was a
primarily physical activity, the "one right way" could be determined and
imposed. Results and feedback
were direct and immediate, typically taking the form of a physical
product. Compliance could be
ensured through a system of rewards and punishments.
The employee's mind didn't matter much to management and employees
could use it as they saw fit during working hours.
Management got what it wanted via overt, physical employee
behavior. The employee was an
extension of managerial will.
The locus of control over working clearly rested with management. Things have changed.
Work is information-based and working activities are mainly mental
and verbal. Moreover, they
are configured in response to the ever-changing circumstances at hand.
Results and feedback are indirect and delayed and rarely take the
form of a physical product.
The mind of the employee has moved center stage and employees and
management vie for the uses to which it will be put.
In this competition, the employee has the advantage. In today's world of work, management must rethink the
role of the employee and revise its approach to getting what it wants.
In a nutshell, this boils down to (a) getting employees to
set/adopt goals that contribute to the organization and (b) supporting
them as they pursue those goals.
Work objectives take on important differences in this context.
Instead of simply saddling employees with objectives specified by
management, employees must be involved in and have a genuine say in
setting goals and objectives.
Why? Because if an employee -
that "living control system" - is to achieve an objective the employee
must be committed to its achievement.
Why? Because
prefigured routines can no longer be imposed in advance, compliance is
irrelevant and supervision of mental activities is literally impossible.
The locus of control over working has moved from management to the
employee. As a consequence,
the employee must be viewed as an autonomous agent, acting on the
employer's behalf and in the employer's best interest.
And management must shift its focus from worker behavior to its
rightful and appropriate locus of control: the work itself. In short, good work objectives are more important than
ever before. Summary
Achieving
Your Work Objectives - Some Additional Resources Okay, you've written some good work objectives. Now, how do you achieve them? The short answer is that you do something. You act. You change something. But, do what? Act on what? Change what? Achieving an objective frequently requires that you change something "over here" in order to realize a result "over there." The path that connects "over here" with "over there" is known as the Achievement Path and it is part of an Achievement Cycle. Listed below are some additional resources that will be of assistance in achieving your work objectives.
References
END NOTES
|
|
This page last updated on August 12, 2019 |
