Chapter 31 Chapter 31 Implementing Effective Management by Objectives

Someone once did such an experiment: Organize three groups of people and ask them to walk along the road to three villages 10 kilometers away. Group A didn't know the name of the village they were going to, nor how far it was, so they just told them to follow the guide.When the group had just walked two or three kilometers, some people complained. When they walked halfway, some people were almost angry. They complained why everyone had to go so far and when they could get there.Some people even sat on the side of the road, unwilling to go any further.The further you go, the lower your mood will be, and you will be disorganized and defeated.

Group B knows which village to go to and how far it is, but there are no milestones on the roadside, and people can only roughly estimate that it will take about two hours to walk based on experience.Only when the group walked halfway did some people complain about their distress. Most people wanted to know how far they had traveled. The more experienced people said, "It's probably just gone halfway." So everyone crowded together and walked forward.When we reached 3/4 of the distance, everyone felt depressed and tired, and the distance seemed to be long!And when someone said that it was coming soon, everyone cheered up and quickened their pace.

Group C is the luckiest.Not only do you know which village you are going to and how far it is, but there are milestones every kilometer along the road.People keep an eye on the milestones as they walk.Every time we see a milestone, we have a small burst of happiness.The mood in this group has been running high.After walking seven or eight kilometers, everyone was indeed a little tired, but instead of complaining, they started singing and laughing loudly to relieve fatigue.In the last two or three kilometers, the more they walked, the more emotional they became, and the speed increased instead.Because they knew that the village they were going to was right in front of them.

This experiment shows that when people's actions have a clear goal, and when they constantly compare their actions with the goal, clearly know their speed and continuously reduce the distance to reach the goal, their motivation for action will be maintained and strengthened People will consciously overcome all difficulties and strive to achieve their goals. The leader is the "head" of the organization. His duty is to unify the opinions and actions of all members, set goals for them, and provide them with the direction of action.The so-called "leadership" means to "guide the direction" and "lead the way" for the members.Only by doing so can we be called "leadership"!But some leaders don't understand this. They don't understand the truth that "objectives are indeed the basis of management". They think that their subordinates already know what they want to do.However, when you go to their units and ask the employees what their job is, you will be surprised to find that their answers are quite different from what their "boss" said.In fact, for those leaders, what they want their subordinates to do is still deep in their hearts.It's just that they are too lazy to tell their subordinates the whole story in an easy-to-understand way.This makes the subordinates inexplicable and confused about the goals of their actions.Therefore, leaders should set goals for their subordinates and communicate their intentions clearly to them. This is an encouraging way and the basis for coordinated work.

Needless to say, goals are very important to everyone.Goals are essential to every organization.Targets serve several functions.When subordinates are new to the job, or do not yet understand a particular job, clear and specific goals can save them from detours.The goal can also enable subordinates to quickly clarify the content and sequence of work.Experienced subordinates can use clear goals as the basis for formulating work plans and clarifying work responsibilities.The formulation of goals should not only consider the specific environment, but also consider the experience and ability of subordinates, as well as the relationship between subordinates.

A wind in any direction is a headwind for a ship with no course. The course is the goal of doing things. To do anything, you must have a clear goal, and then you can do things well.It is important for leaders to do things right, but they must first do the right thing.Clear goals, not only for yourself, but also for all employees. Many leaders do not have a clear direction in their work. They don't know where they should go. They go east for a while, and go west for a while;If you don't do well, you can change the direction immediately. When you are lucky, you can get some results. If you are not lucky, you will damage your work performance.They often imitate others as soon as they hear how to do it well. Their life seems to never have a fixed direction, so their work performance is not satisfactory.In fact, in the eyes of others, their problem is very simple, that is, they don't know what they should pursue.

As a master of success said: "The human mind has an automatic navigation function like a missile. Once a person has a clear and clear goal, the mind will automatically exert its infinite energy and generate a strong driving force. And being able to constantly aim at the goal and modify your behavior naturally leads us in the direction of the goal.” For leaders, the most important thing in the process of the mind’s operation is not just to set a clear goal , but to be very clear about the "reason" for achieving this goal. After all, reason dominates everything, and only this reason is the driving force for people to continue moving towards the goal.

Warren Benlings studied 90 of the most outstanding leaders in the United States and found that they have four common abilities: a convincing vision and a sense of purpose; The pursuit of goals demonstrates consistency and total commitment; knows one's own strengths and capitalizes on them.It can be seen that the ability to set goals is very important for leaders. For a leader, it is not enough to just have goals, but must also be able to decompose the goals like a dog. To decompose the goal, the leader must first communicate fully with his subordinates.Only through sufficient communication can the upper and lower levels of the organization have a better understanding of the environment and eliminate information asymmetry to the greatest extent, which is a prerequisite for mutual understanding and coordination between the upper and lower levels.

Second, the goal must be initially decomposed.The decomposition process of the goal follows the way of participation in decision-making, combining from top to bottom, participating in the selection of goals from bottom to top, and reaching a consensus on how to achieve the goal.Leaders need to use various methods to encourage subordinates to participate in the decision-making of goal setting.The main advantage of participatory decision-making is the ability to induce individuals to set more difficult goals, which are effective if the goals are difficult enough for the individual to reach his or her potential.Participation can have a positive impact on performance by enhancing personal courage. Through participation in decision-making methods, the morale of subordinates is greatly boosted. They are generally satisfied and confident in the goals they choose because they are in Actively challenging the goals set by yourself is very beneficial to the realization of the goals.

Again, the goal must be deeply broken down.Subordinates combine their own goals, analyze the organization's next work direction and competitive strategy, find out the differences and divergences between their own thinking and the organization's business thinking, and analyze the reasons.After understanding the business objectives of the organization, members of the management team have a correct and clear sense of direction in their work. While pursuing short-term interests, they ensure the realization of the organization's long-term strategy, and re-draw the next work plan accordingly.

Finally, a work plan is drawn up.The process of goal decomposition is a process in which subordinates think about how each data is estimated and how to complete it.After the goal is decomposed, the subordinates are basically confident about the details of the next period of work, and then they can arrange their own work plans according to the importance and urgency of each detail, and form them into words and tables, and record them during execution Progress situation. To get something done, you have to have a clear purpose—a target to aim for, a direction toward which you and your organization are striving.Then make it concrete.Without direction, you don't know where to go, and you waste a lot of precious time doing it.Goals are guiding lights.With a goal, you can focus and lead the group straight ahead. Facing the road ahead, as a leader, you have to go step by step.If you want to reach the sky in one step and realize the master plan in a blink of an eye, then you are trapped in a fantasy.You have to do a lot of things and complete small goals one after another to realize your dreams.The division of small targets allows you to reasonably divide the team into several small corps to fight, and then launch a general attack to win a big victory. Leaders need to constantly remind and warn subordinates, need to guide them in the direction, need to let them understand the importance of things, need to let them find out the truth of the facts, need to let them understand that their work is closely related to their survival and success, and need Showing how much they contribute requires acknowledging their place in the organization and allowing them to see their future. Leaders translate the long-term goals of the organization into concrete goals that subordinates can achieve and provide direction for everyone in the organization. To get there, you have to be focused.Help subordinates grasp the goal, and correct it in time if they deviate from the direction. Subordinates need someone to give them purpose and focus in life and work, and leaders are the best candidates.If they can't see the good things in life, they will feel lost and lose confidence.The same is true at work. If you can't see the goal, you will be aimless and lost. It is very important for leaders to sit down with their subordinates at regular intervals (such as 3 months) and describe the future work prospects of the entire organization and everyone.This blueprint is the focus of the entire organization's work, and it is also a clear direction you provide to your subordinates.Competent leaders can determine the direction of their work according to the requirements of their bosses.In addition, they will also show their subordinates what they want their subordinates to do in addition to completing the established goals. When leaders set specific directions for their subordinates, perhaps they themselves know best how to achieve the goals you set.When problems arise, you must also make appropriate adjustments to ensure that the prospects you have identified are the maximum goals for you and your subordinates.At the same time, make sure that the goal is something that you and your subordinates can achieve through hard work. If the leader does not point the focus of the organization's long-term plan to the subordinates, and does not let them feel the internal relationship between their own efforts and the success of the organization, where does their work motivation come from?If you don't explain the problem clearly, how can your subordinates recognize other colleagues' help to him?How can people face tough problems if you don't help them make key choices and introduce solutions they've never used? But in fact, we lose focus on many things, do not see the crux of the problem, lack vision, only see the trees but not the forest, are susceptible to external influences, do not see the good side of ourselves, only think of those dark sides, only listen to Those who want to hear things, do things without measure. Find a time to bring one or two people together to discuss work and openly examine issues.You only need to give your subordinates some information about the market and competitors, the latest instructions from the company's top management, and fairly judge the content of your subordinates' discussions.This is conducive to helping subordinates find the key to the problem and achieve their goals. When setting goals, remember: less is better. Why is it bad to have more goals?The more goals you have, the less energy you have to focus on each one of them, so you get twice the result with half the effort.No matter how capable you are as a leader, it is impossible to grasp everything. Leaders who set too many goals often find that well-intentioned plans go unnoticed.Subordinates feel overwhelmed with aggressive tasks.In the eyes of those busy subordinates, too many goals equals no goals. "Why do you have to work so hard? You can't see the results anyway." Subordinates often complain like this when there are too many goals. So, it's best to pick one or two of the most critical goals and work on them. Concentrate on doing two or three things well.A leader can't do everything at the same time, and neither can a subordinate.There can only be one or two mountains to conquer at any one time.Casting a wide net is not only distracting, but likely to accomplish nothing. Focus on goals that are closely related to the mission of the organization.Maybe you want to tackle challenging and interesting goals that are far from the mission of the organization, remember not to do such stupid things. Prioritize and prioritize, some goals will take you a long time to complete.Since you have limited time, it's better to pick a few goals that relate to the bigger picture of the organization to tackle, rather than grabbing a bunch of unrelated goals. The established goals are regularly reviewed and updated in a timely manner.The business world is not all smooth sailing, and regular review and assessment of established goals can help leaders verify that these goals are still aligned with the organization's ambitious plan.If it agrees, great, move on.If not, rework the schedule to achieve the goal. Some organizations will make the mistake of "only thunder, no rain".Although some organizations have perfect plans, procedures, processes, and preparations, they fail to implement them; sometimes the organization is close to the end of success but deviates from the goal; This "only thunder, no rain" problem is very harmful.The condition for success is to develop ideas, plan, complete and strive for the best results.These four aspects are equally important.If your company has the problem of talking but not doing, you have only fulfilled the first two conditions, and you cannot succeed because the latter two conditions have not been fulfilled.Take a look at your strengths and weaknesses in these four aspects, highlight your shortcomings, and attract the attention of your subordinates.See if there is a problem with your reward system. If you do not reward your hard-working subordinates, or if such rewards are not implemented to specific people, your subordinates will naturally just say nothing. To completely get rid of the corporate fault of "only thunder, no rain", the simplest word is "dry".Immediately stop endless planning, act now, learn by doing, enjoy the success of getting the job done thoroughly, even if the situation is very difficult, take this step forward and get things done one by one. In management activities, leaders will encounter many complicated and troublesome problems, sometimes even confusing.A few people, dozens of people, or even more people can't solve it.When faced with such problems, leaders can try to break the problem down by breaking it down into parts.You will see that the hot potato is no longer hot, and the problem is solved. The essence of breaking things down into parts is to decompose the whole. Generally, there are two methods: For a major task, break it down into smaller sub-tasks.For example, the large indicators are decomposed into component indicators, and the sub-indicators are decomposed again until they can finally be implemented by relevant units, departments or individuals. For important work that needs to be completed within a certain period of time, it is decomposed into several stages, and then implemented to relevant units, departments or individuals to complete in stages.Even if the decomposed task fails, it is easy to find the cause of the failure and correct it.Because the failure is usually not all faults, but a mistake in one or some links, as long as it can be corrected in a targeted manner, the existing problems can be solved without completely denying the entire work. When leaders study and solve problems faced by enterprises and organizations using the wonderful method of dividing into parts, they can regard the problems they face as a whole (system).Find out what its connotation is, what kind of large system it is in, its nature and overall goal; find out what status and role the problem has in the large system, and how it is related to other factors in the large system What kind of relationship is there between... Only by clarifying these issues can we make a correct judgment on the problems we face. Let's give an example of the use of fragmentation in production management.The leader first decomposes the goals and tasks of the whole factory, and implements them in each workshop and department.Then the workshops and departments are decomposed again, and it is implemented in each section, team and group to individual employees.So far, the overall goals and tasks of the entire enterprise have been concretely implemented. More importantly, responsibilities and powers have been clearly divided among various departments, units and even everyone, and the completion of corporate goals and tasks With full assurance. Sometimes, consciously or not, leaders overcomplicate the problems they need to solve.This not only wastes time, energy and money, but also artificially increases management troubles.In fact, many seemingly complicated problems can be easily completed as long as they are divided into several operable parts. Leaders deliberately complicate matters for the following reasons: in order to make the work seem important, time, money and other resources should be devoted to it; in order to facilitate late answers to unknown things, do it late, or even avoid responsibility and excuses for procrastination.This is very dire and these tendencies which compound the problem must be stopped. Leaders should make it a habit that whenever they encounter a problem, they should first look for the simple and quick solution to it.Before going to use a solution, see if there is an easier way to solve the problem.Get a good person and have them build you a simplification checklist or simplification guide and use that to simplify everything.All kinds of decisions, decisions, expressions, reports, etc. can be improved, updated, simplified with it. Another, more useful approach is to reduce complexity to simplicity.Many complex problems can be broken down into manageable simple problems.There are no hard problems that cannot be solved, and no complex problems that cannot be broken down.Complex problems take on the appearance of complexity because you haven't found a way to break it down.There is always a way, and not just one.As long as you are willing to think, you will be able to find it.When a complex problem is broken down into smaller components, its difficulty is minimized and we only need to work on one problem at a time.After completing the first question, you will have more confidence and courage to complete the second, third and even all the questions. There is a good saying: "The best way to resolve or avoid the potential problems you may cause is to make comprehensive preparations before the problems come, that is, to maintain the mentality of 'not afraid of ten thousand, only in case' .” Here, as a leader, you must fully understand "yourself", the reason is that "you" will be the main basis for solving problems.Therefore, you should know in advance how capable you are at dealing with problems.In other words, you have to make a rational judgment about your abilities, personality and situation. For example, you should try to make an objective assessment of your general goals at work and your specific goals in specific situations.What is your real goal?What do you want to achieve?Are your goals achievable? As a leader, what you really need to ask is whether your purpose is feasible, not whether you are not setting your sights high enough.Because, assuming your vision is not so high that even you yourself question its feasibility, then you simply don't have the determination to face the problem.In this case, you are no different from thinking that you have solved the problem and achieved your goal. Most leaders want to go further, even risking failure in order to win more valuable rewards or achieve greater achievements. Then leaders not only need to assess the size of the factors that constitute risks, but also estimate themselves without deceiving themselves to see how many "resources" they have.The so-called "resources" here mainly include the most obvious abilities such as intelligence, but also imagination, understanding of immediate plans, and psychological attitudes to problems and interpersonal relationships.Beyond that, leaders should also assess how sincere they are about accomplishing their goals: How much do you "need" to accomplish this goal?But perhaps most importantly, leaders should ask themselves whether they have the “energy” to navigate the thorny road to their destination. On this path, you are directly or indirectly influenced by the opinions of others.Of course, if you have sound and keen judgment, it's harmless and legitimate to take someone else's opinion.However, you cannot allow others to judge your abilities and set goals "for you".In fact, only "you" can correctly make a reasonable assessment of ability and purpose, so "others" cannot do it for them. Assuming you've set your goals and started the necessary work, it's still necessary to appreciate that you'll need to build up enough backup "resources"—even far more than you think you'll need to get along the way—to deal with the unexpected. outside situation.This is like when we go out on a trip, we originally need to spend 10,000 yuan, but in order to meet "occasional" needs, we bring more, or even double the money.The reason is that unexpected situations may happen on the way, such as the car breaks down, is stolen, or you suddenly want to buy rare souvenirs or hold extra celebrations. In the early stages of pursuing our goals, we often have the illusion that success is within our grasp, because problems at this stage are easier to solve; however, the real difficulties and intricacies of the problems often emerge later.At the beginning, most of us paid attention to paperwork, analyzed problems, and found corresponding solutions.However, our actual actions are often divorced from the facts.Therefore, the most testable management ability is the ability to implement the established policy for solving problems through personnel relations at all levels.So you have to have a skill that borders on genius, otherwise, even if there are many people actually doing the work, if the solution doesn't materialize, the ultimate responsibility will fall on you, the executive. In fact, the failure of your plans is often due to the fact that you only have one possible solution in mind at the beginning of the plan.But in fact, because the problem has various possible situations and variable factors, there is not only one solution.Here, it is necessary for you to re-do the most basic analysis of the problem, that is, to examine its basic assumptions.Also, you need to keep an open mind so that you can understand that the various causes of the problem may suddenly change. Because of this, leaders should uphold the principle of "don't be afraid of ten thousand, only in case of eventuality" and make psychological preparations for a rainy day in order to deal with various unforeseen "bad" situations.