RE: TARGET SETTING

["Vic Forte" <vic@vicf.com>]

When you set people a target you usually have a purpose in mind. Your
purpose may be complex. You are assuming that you yourself are internally
motivated (committed to your purpose) and that others are not so committed
and therefore need to be motivated by some external force. If such people
were fully committed to your purpose, why would you need to set them a
target? So inherent in target setting is the assumption that others are
different from you (if not inferior)? 

This inequality (I am motivated, others need targets) is very obvious to
those on the receiving end of the target. People are highly creative. They
will try and meet the target any way they can, even if this means subverting
the target's original purpose. You cannot always foresee the methods that
people will use to meet the targets that you set them. These methods will
not necessarily achieve the complex purpose that you had in mind.

Warning. Philosophical bit coming up.

There is a law of system's theory discovered by Ross Ashby. It goes
something like this. In a hierarchy, the system controlled is more complex
than the system doing the controlling. In order to control something
perfectly the variety in the controlling system needs to match the variety
in the entity controlled (this is known as the law of requisite variety).
This is well nigh impossible. So in the attempt to control, some information
gets lost. In short you, the controller, have imperfect information about
the thing (department, team, organisation) that you are attempting to
control. This is also known as "being too remote" or "too hands-off".
End of philosophical bit.

Targets express the point of view of the "hands-off" controlling system.
Furthermore, over time they will continue to reduce the information
available to the controlling system and lead to further reduction in variety
for the controller. What the controlling system should be doing instead is
increasing its variety and widening the channels of information that are
available to it. This is done by enriching the channels of communication,
sharing purpose close to where the customer is, and listening.

Better to devote the time spent devising ingenious targets and carrying out
measurements to instead working hard at sharing purpose with others in a way
that makes targets unnecessary.

Regards

Vic Forte