Setting goals and objectives within an organization or team is very different from setting personal goals and working toward achieving them. Both are creative processes that demand discipline, but organizational goal setting requires aligning the work and action of many people and therefore necessitates a distinctive strategy.
I observed long ago in sales organizations that sales people were required to come up with their sales goals at the beginning of each year. However, the outcome often depended largely on external forces they could not control to make those sales (e.g., economy, competitors, size of the salesperson's market, etc.). A conclusion anyone could make when looking at the variability of past sales. How would the distinction between goals and objectives change the outcomes when labeling the exercise differently doesn't change what can or can not be controlled by team members? Often that is the elephant in the room.
Jan 27, 2023·edited Jan 27, 2023Liked by Admired Leadership
This is great. Just taking time to have a discussion like this with your team seems like a great exercise to get everyone operating in this same framework.
Another discussion that explores a similar nuance in thinking is in choosing goals that are both outcome-oriented along with ones that are process-oriented. Maybe this turns into the same discussion without using Drucker's narrow term definitions?
You highlight an important reason to always include process goals in your thinking and not just outcome-oriented goals.
I observed long ago in sales organizations that sales people were required to come up with their sales goals at the beginning of each year. However, the outcome often depended largely on external forces they could not control to make those sales (e.g., economy, competitors, size of the salesperson's market, etc.). A conclusion anyone could make when looking at the variability of past sales. How would the distinction between goals and objectives change the outcomes when labeling the exercise differently doesn't change what can or can not be controlled by team members? Often that is the elephant in the room.
This is great. Just taking time to have a discussion like this with your team seems like a great exercise to get everyone operating in this same framework.
Another discussion that explores a similar nuance in thinking is in choosing goals that are both outcome-oriented along with ones that are process-oriented. Maybe this turns into the same discussion without using Drucker's narrow term definitions?
You made a point to distinguish this discussion for organizational thinking rather than for individuals at the beginning of this entry.
Is this because it is less effective for individuals to make this distinction?