Manage By Objective – The Good & Bad
Manage By Objective Is The Cornerstone Of Managers Today, But Is It The Best Tactic?
Manage by objective! Yes, I meant to add the explanation point there because it has been beat into my brain along many others that it is the best way to manage people, improve productivity, etc. It has been so ingrained in our business schooling, workplace, and development that I have rarely seen someone look objectively at manage by objective versus subjective. In this post I will get into the good and bad of manage by objective and hopefully by the end you will be asking yourself the same questions I will be asking. I also hope that you can take a step back and see if managing by objective is indeed the best management tactic. Lets get into it then
Manage By Objective – The Good
Manage by objective has many good components. But before I get into that I should explain what manage by objective is. Manage by objective is simply the management tactic that enables the manager to track progress and goals. For example, sales figures. A sales associate has a quota to hit quarterly to meet the sale objective. The manager of the sales associates manages the sales associate against their objective and rates their performance against their target. This example shows one good thing about manage by objective. It holds people accountable. If you put a goal to hit and hold the person accountable against that goal then it will show if the person is performing as they should right? Another benefit of manage by objective it helps with performance measuring. If someone is hitting their goals consistently, then they are a solid performer right? Yet another benefit of manage by objective is that should bring out the best in people’s performance to disallow the possibility of bad performance right? Manage by objective is not only for the workplace. It is very abundant in schools, we are graded based off of our grades essentially. Does this increase or decrease intrinsic motivation?
Manage By Objective – The Bad
Manage by objective has holes, actually a lot of holes after I began diving into Dr. Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge. But I am here with an objective stance. I will play off the prior section for this section. Manage by objective shifts the accountability to the person being graded. What I mean by this is a sales associate is graded based on the sales they bring in against the projected goal. It centers the focus of the manager to hitting that goal. They in turn have to report up the chain whether they hit the goal or not. So it does “hold the sales associate accountable” to hitting that goal. But, and this is a big BUT it also shifts the focus away from what actually makes hitting the sales goal possible. Shouldn’t the manager ensure that the system and processes are as effective as possible over hitting a sales goal? Isn’t there more involved with hitting goals than just hitting the goals? Doesn’t variation exist in all things? Manage by objective also skews performance. If we are based solely and only on hitting goals for the most part, doesn’t that skew performance? What I mean is if a sales associate knows his/her goal for the quarter and is going to do well above it wouldn’t they just hit the goal more times than not instead of exceeding it? If a sales associate exceeds his/her sales goal what will happen? Their sales goal will increase to that mark. What happens when variation kicks in and they have low numbers for two quarters? So does this enable top performance? Does this model foster intrinsic motivation or decrease it? Does it increase extrinsic motivation?
Final Thoughts On Manage By Objective
I am asking a lot of questions in this post for a reason. I want all of us to think about this both objectively and subjectively. My stance as of now is this, manage by objective is useful but it should be after the fact. It should come after the leaders and managers have looked at the planning, the process, the quality, the operational productivity first, then set certain manage by objective guidelines around that. If all we do is work towards hitting goals that will have variation all the time, then it is a never ending cycle of madness. It pumps up extrinsic motivation, decreases intrinsic motivation, and puts blinders on managers and employees to “just hit the numbers.” People, systems, companies, and the like are complex and unique. So how does a one size fits all manage by objective work in all scenarios?
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Very interesting subject , thanks for posting . “Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge’s chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.” by Lillian Hellman.