For the Organization
To succeed, organizations need to be able to coordinate the
work of individual employees and work units, so that everyone is
pulling in the same direction. Performance goals provide the
foundation to allow this kind of coordination to occur.
The process of setting individual performance goals pro-
vides the mechanism for translating the goals of the organiza-
tion as a whole into smaller chunks that are then assigned or del-
egated to individual employees. That’s necessary because organ-
izations achieve their overall goals to the extent that each
employee does his or her part in completing the right job tasks
in effective ways.
For the Manager
It’s easy to think about performance management and goal set-
ting as “overhead.” In a world where many managers are exceed-
ingly busy, there’s a tendency to think that performance man-
agement and goal setting are simply a paper chase that has little
to do with the manager’s life.
That’s not true. Yes, the process takes time and effort. What’s
easy to miss is that goal setting is an investment that pays off
through higher productivity. Let’s look at how properly set goals
help managers.
First, most managers want employees to do their jobs with a
minimum of direct supervision. Employees who require constant
guidance and direction eat up a lot of managerial time. Where do
performance goals fit?
When an employee knows what he or she needs to accom-
plish and what is expected, it’s a lot easier for that employee to
work without constant supervision. Also, by helping employees
5Using This Book to Write Better Performance Goals