ple,“Contribute at least one idea per meeting” or “Communicate
well in teams as measured by his or her team members’ surveys.”
In some situations, those specifics strengthen the goals; in other
situations, they might be unnecessary.
Let’s consider another example, from goals for support staff:
“Prioritize phone calls to the satisfaction of the manager.” Maybe,
depending on your situation, you could set a criterion that is
more specific and less subjective, based on the priorities of the
manager. That would strengthen the goal, but it might make
more sense to make a list of priorities to post for support staff as
a guide, rather than to write a goal that is long and complicated.
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves two questions. Is it worth-
while to list a number of specific goals that are measurable and
observable? Are we really going to use those criteria anyway?
You have to make your own judgments about what you
need, but it may be sufficient in some cases to have a general
goal that serves as a reminder to employees that, for example,
teamwork is important. When we simply want to point out the
importance of something, rather than actually measure that
something, general goals can suffice as the “aiming” device.
One final comment about goals and criteria: you get what
you measure. Before you develop a measure of performance,
think through the consequences of evaluating performance in
that way. Make sure that the results are what you want. Some
measures may lead to clashes among goals for an employee or
to conflicts among employees. In such cases, setting perform-
ance goals could hurt performance by undermining collabora-
tion and negatively affecting productivity in the work unit.
17Setting Performance Goals That Work