Goal Setting: Management By Objective

In the last byte, we looked at how goal setting reduces role stress, conflict and ambiguity. In today's byte we look at how goal setting could help improve performance evaluation.

In effect, goal setting increases the accuracy and validity of performance evaluation. One example in such a goal setting process is the famous method - Management By Objectives (MBO) a concept originated by Peter Druker. This goal setting process could be called by various names like - work planning and review, performance planning and evaluation etc.

If we can categorize the stages of these goals setting process, we see two distinct stages:

1. Planning
2. Evaluation

The Planning stage involves the individuals and departments being given discretionary control to develop operational and tactical plans to support the corporate objectives. Clear, Consistent, Measurable and Ordered set of goals to articulate WHAT to do are the primary outcome, the HOW is generally determines by the operational support planning. Once the goals are set, the individual know both the WHAT and HOW pieces and understands that both are important.

The Evaluation stage consists of interim reviews of the goal progress. Typically a formal process, these are designed to help employees take self corrective action, and are not designed for the final evaluation. There is no "once size fits all" in this approach - these evaluation methods need to tailored for the business.