Goal setting…Has it been a year already?

June 26, 2009 by janet · 1 Comment 

executive, employee and business coachingManaging people?  Setting goals?  The process can actually be a lot more fun than the average organisation makes it out to be.  Starting this week, follow my series on successful goal setting and avoid the mistakes observed in so many organisations getting it wrong.

Last night at a dinner party, a friend asked me if I had anything useful to read on employee goal setting.  My friend has been newly promoted and now manages 12 staff – she’s loving it.  Her request should have been easy. Yet, when I scoured my over-flowing bookshelves, I found nothing to loan her but an old (and rather uninspiring) Harvard Business Review on managing people.  More than that, when I searched my heart, I uncovered lots of unpleasant memories of corporate life and the dreaded annual setting of objectives.

The problem I find with much of the objective-setting literature and training is that…well, it misses the point.   Over the next 3 weeks, I will tell you why and what to do about that.    We will also follow the case of 1 manager and 2 employees trying to achieve some goals.  Ready?  Let’s get started.

Step One:  Why are we doing this?

If all of this employee goal-setting stuff is so painful, why do we do it?  In response, most organisations say something like this:

 “We want employees’ to be clear on the behaviour and performance we need from them to successfully contribute to our business.”

Stop.  Welcome to the first problem:  Motivation.  That statement is about you – the business (or the manager)…not them (the employee).    People just don’t get motivated by other people’s stuff.  The most motivating goals are those that intrinsic to the person – the stuff that is interesting and important to her.

So, here is goal setting rule number 1:  If you want an employee to be serious about the goal, make it about her instead of about you.  She will try harder, for a longer period of time and feel more satisfied when she attains it. *

How do you do that?  Well, you could ask her.  If there is some flexibility on how the objectives are set, get the employee involved in setting the goal in the first place – tell her the problem the business is trying to solve and get her to suggest how she would help.  If you don’t have that level flexibility, make a link between your goals and hers and find a place where they have something in common…tie the goal to something important to her.

Let’s look at a couple of specific cases:

Julie is a franchise sales manager for an electronics provider.  Her primary responsibilities are to provide support to franchise owners and managers to help them sell products, manage campaigns, run effective businesses.  She is measured on profitability and satisfaction of the franchise.  This year, Julie’s boss has given her an additional objective:  to increase use of sales kiosks by 20% for all Australian franchises (not just the ones she manages).  Julie has not made any progress on her goal.  She says she has been too busy to start it. 

Joe is a software architect.  His primary responsibilities are to design and program new features.  He is highly respected for his knowledge and problem solving skills.  Joe’s company has identified usability as a major force driving support costs and preventing sales.  Because of this, Joe’s management would like him to implement user-centred design standards into his work, but implementing those will take time away from other features he wants to add.  Joe has refused to do it.  Because Joe is so valuable to the business, his manager has not pushed him on the issue.

Motivating Julie and Joe

Since Julie’s objective has already been defined, we need to know what will motivate her to get started.  Talking to Julie, we learn that she feels a strong loyalty to her franchisees (customers) and is motivated by helping each one be more successful.  She admits that she doesn’t see the point of having kiosks in the stores and that she doesn’t want to hassle the franchisees about them.  Her manager explains that the kiosk sales are a way to free up time staff time so they are able to serve more customers and drive more high-value sales.  Once Julie sees the benefit to something she cares about (her customers), she is more motivated to start working on the goal.

Our objective for Joe is something we know he is not really interested in doing.  He is not convinced of the problem – he is in denial.  Getting someone out of denial usually requires information.  If Joe is the type who likes learning and information, we could try giving him a learning goal.  He could be given a research project that would allow him to review technology journals and talk to others in his field (things he likes to do anyway).  He could report back with his findings, conclusions and recommendations about usability.  Remember, goals don’t always have to be about performance to be impactful.

Next week:  Step two:  action planning – turning motivating goals into action. 

*Sheldon, K.M. & Elliot A.J. (1999), Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being:  The self-concordance model.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  76(3).

 

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