Improved Performance Starts with Planning I
Five key components of effective performance management are planning,
monitoring, development, assessment, and recognition. This article is
the first in a series that addresses the first component: performance
planning.
Performance Planning.
Performance planning means setting goals and determining what needs to
be done to reach those goals. Consider the results of studies on goal
setting as reported by Edwin A. Locke of the University of Maryland and
Gary P. Latham of the University of Washington:
- People who kept daily records of all the food they consumed but did
not set goals to reduce food intake did not alter their eating habits.
Only those who set specific goals in addition to keeping records lost
weight.
- People who were given feedback during performance appraisals performed
no better than those who received no feedback. However, when goal setting
took place as a follow on to the feedback, performance improved significantly.
- People who were given specific, hard goals either outperformed people
who were trying to do their best or else surpassed their own previous
performance when they had already been trying to do their best.
- People who were given feedback on five different dimensions of their
performance had goals assigned with respect to only one. Their performance
improved significantly only on that one dimension for which the goal
had been set.
Study after study reveals that setting goals, measuring performance against
those goals, providing feedback on goal achievement, and rewarding goal
achievement improves performance significantly.
Mechanisms. Goal setting improves performance
through three major mechanisms:
- Goals give people direction and focus their thoughts and actions.
- Goals give people the ability to regulate their efforts in proportion
to the difficulty level of the goal they have accepted.
- Hard goals that employees accept increase employee persistence at
achieving the goals.
Other Benefits. Besides improving
performance, setting goals for individuals and groups provides many other
benefits:
- Goals can clarify expectations. Employees find it helpful to know
what management and supervisors expect from them.
- Goals can increase the challenge of a job. They can make a monotonous
job more interesting to employees.
- Goals that are difficult but attainable can provide employees a sense
of purpose.
- When people receive feedback that their goals have been reached, they
feel a sense of increased liking for their job and satisfaction with
their performance.
- Setting and achieving goals can create self-confidence in employees,
pride in their achievement, and a willingness to accept future challenges.
Setting goals for individuals is an important key to improving performance,
but setting goals for teams is essential to the success of the team. Because
a team is defined as two or more people who must coordinate their activities
to accomplish a common goal, by definition teams must have goals.
The second article in this series will address
setting goals for individuals. Additional articles will describe goal
setting for teams and avoiding pitfalls when setting goals.
Originally published on April 1995.