Thursday Insight - Why Objectives Matter

When I first became a manager, I was given the worst performing department in our business. It was meant to be a place where I could learn the ropes without doing any real damage; after all the results couldn’t get any worse…

But, with the unwavering support of my manager, I decided I wanted my approach to be more than “do no harm”; I wanted to turn things around.

I won’t pretend the journey was easy. I won’t pretend that at times I wasn’t scared. I certainly won’t pretend I didn’t make mistakes along the way.

But one thing I learned was the power of setting clear, challenging targets and following up on them. What my team also learned was that I expected a lot, but if they delivered, they’d be recognised and rewarded for their success.

I was reminded once again of the power of clear objectives when I delivered some training to fellow training professionals last week using our brilliant Filing Frenzy cards.

We started with a challenge so deliberately vague that no-one could be confident they had completed it. Looking round the room, I could see looks of intense concentration, puzzlement and determination; the participants wanted to succeed but had no idea how to, or what success looked like. Consequently, no-one came close to achieving the goal. 

So I asked them to try again, but this time gave them a bit more information about how to get the right result. The additional information meant that most teams got closer to success; though some were adamant that the lack of information meant that they could do exactly what they chose to do and they would be “right”.