January is the time of the year when organizations scramble to finalize and agree on performance objectives for the year. What kind of objectives have managers set for the year? Are they buoyed by positive economic prospects? Have they been tempered or further increased in anticipation of the impact of elections? Or are they optimistic, expecting to benefit from the fortunes brought about by the Metal Tiger?

S.M.A.R.T objectives

One of the acronyms that managers are familiar with is S.MA.R.T., which represents the characteristics of an effective objective, i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, result-oriented, and time-hound.

SMART. objectives provide employees direction and encourage them to focus their efforts on activities that contribute to meeting their goals. They facilitate the desired orientation toward delivering results. For managers, SMART. objectives facilitate measurement, monitoring, and evaluation. In fact, researchers have documented the contribution of effective objective setting to task performance.

Objectives are generally set such that employees are challenged to stretch and improve their performance. Quantitative targets, for instance are almost always, set to be above last year’s performance. This stretch is good in the sense that it allows employees to optimize their potential. When targets are too easy, they become boring, so challenging objectives serve as a motivation. The stretch, of course, is in support of the demand and the aspiration of the organization to always have a better performance.

While challenging objectives are good, they should be realistic or attainable. Unrealistic objectives have the tendency to make employees lose heart and even exert less effort because they believe it is for a lost cause. It causes a lot of stress, and stress can lead to other behavioral or performance problems. Unrealistic objectives can also cause employees to rebel or disengage, thereby impacting adversely on performance.