The Power of Short-Term Targets

Organizational change often means that you will have a loss of resources within your work group. You may lose some of your people, yet have as much or more work to do than before. Budget cuts may make it tougher to achieve what the company expects of you.

One way of maximizing effectiveness is to operate with clearly defined goals and objectives. That enables you to get the best mileage out of your people. An added benefit is that it helps your people get their minds off the past and become future-oriented.

You will get your best results at this stage of the game if you focus intensely on short-term targets. Long-term goal setting requires more time and effort, and there is more guesswork involved. Also, your people will benefit from seeing the short-range goals achieved. It pumps them up, builds confidence, and restores momentum to the corporate machine.

Concentrate on quarterly, monthly, and even weekly performance targets. Once these have been established, you must do an equally good job of communicating them to the people who will be responsible for their achievement. This calls for a lot of publicity.

Keep the spotlight on your short-term goals, and give employees generous feedback regarding progress that is being made toward goal achievement.