How to Set Goals

ones are frequently achieved.7 However, participation does seem to increase a person’s goal-aspiration level and leads to the setting of more difficult goals.8 Also, participatively set goals are often more readily accepted, and accepted goals are more likely to be achieved.9 Therefore, although assigned goals might be achieved as effectively as participative ones, collaboration is likely to result in more ambitious goals and more commitment to those goals by those who must implement them. Participation makes the whole goalsetting process more acceptable. Employees are less likely to question or resist a process in which they actively participate than one that is imposed on them from above. 5. Designed to provide feedback. Feedback lets people know if their level of effort is sufficient or needs to be increased. It can also induce them to raise their goal level after attaining a previous goal and inform them of ways in which to improve performance. Ideally, feedback on goal progress should be self-generated rather than provided externally.10

When employees are able to monitor their own progress, the feedback is less threatening and less likely to be perceived as part of a management control system.

How to Set Goals

Seven steps need to be followed to obtain the optimum results from goal setting.11 1. Specify the general objective and tasks to be done. Goal setting begins when you define what you want your employees to accomplish. The best source for this information is each employee’s job description, if one is available. It details information such as what tasks an employee is expected to perform, how these tasks are to be done, and what outcomes the employee is responsible for achieving. 2. Specify how performance will be measured. After an employee’s tasks are defined, you can determine how the outcomes from these tasks are to be measured. Typically, work outcomes are measured in physical units (e.g., quantity of production, number of errors), time (e.g., meeting deadlines, coming to work each day), or money (e.g., profits, sales, costs). For many jobs, developing valid individual measures of performance is difficult or even impossible. For example, upper-level management jobs are complex and often defy clear measurement. Similarly, when employees are part of a work team, it is often difficult to single out their individual contributions. In such cases, the available outcome measures can be combined with inputs (behaviors) that are controllable by the employee and that are assumed to lead to successful outcomes. A senior executive might be evaluated on criteria such as “listens to employees’ concerns” or “explains how changes will affect employees” in addition to “completes monthly forecast by the 25th of the preceding month.” 3. Specify the standard or target to be reached. The next step requires identifying the level of performance expected. In step 2, you might determine that one of the criteria by which a salesperson will be judged is customer returns. In this step, you need to specify a target; for example, monthly returns will not represent more than 1 percent of that month’s sales. If properly selected, the target will meet the requirements of being specific and challenging for the employee. 4. Specify the time span involved. After the targets are set, deadlines for each goal need to be put in place. Typically, the time span increases at upper levels of management. The goals of operative employees tend to be in the range of 1 day to several months; middle managers’ goals are more likely to fall into the 3-months-to-a-year range; and top-level managers’ goals often will extend to 2, 3, or 5 years.