Let’s Target the Targets – Keep them Few and True
Has the Law of Unintended Consequences ever been better illustrated than through the use of management targets? They continue to have widespread use in both public and private enterprises. Ingenuity has no bounds in applying them to different aspects of performance: profit, efficiency, return on capital, timeliness, customer retention rates, staff retention rates and staff attitudes to mention just a few. And the use of targets appears frequently to encourage changes in management approach in a directive and often aggressive direction. There is no shortage of reports of dire consequences for individuals, team and business functions who have allegedly failed to achieve their targets. But this culture is now sufficiently long-lived for a panoply of negative impacts to have become apparent. Let’s consider some of them.
Targets may:
* be misaligned with desired outcomes and as a result misshape and degrade productive effort
* give rise to a variety of gaming approaches resulting in significant dysfunction and degradation of staff culture
* damage the standing and reputation of leaders and managers whose use of targets does not accord with their espoused values
* give rise to levels of stress far above those that might be normal in working life causing lowered morale, increased sickness absence and higher staff turnover rates
* diminish motivation amongst public services staff for whom the public service ethos has meaning
* lower the status of the front-line production/service delivery function relative to other functions within an organisation whose staff are not subject to such a harsh environment
Management-by-targets carries an assumption that the targets can adequately represent real priorities. But resources may be diverted to those aspects of activity that carry targets, damaging other areas of activity. Furthermore it can be more difficult to assign targets to the quality of outputs than the quantity.
Many examples of targets giving rise to gaming have been reported, in other words modifying working practices so as to give an apparent improvement through target metrics but not an improvement experienced by clients. This includes re-assigning resources to target-bearing outcomes to a degree that is bound to degrade non-target-bearing outcomes. Processes may be changed to produce an apparent improvement in timeliness but only by artificially making job start times later or finish times earlier. ‘Working to a target’ can result in deliberately slowing activity once a target has been met – the threshold effect; or continuing activity but not recording it until the start of the next reporting period. The reported staff capacity of a work centre may be artificially lowered when targets are proportional to staff capacity.
Failures to meet targets can be associated with sanctions against teams and individuals, sometimes as serious as dismissal. Management theorists
who claim that fear is a poor motivator are wrong. It was no surprise when a survey by the Chartered Institute of Professional Development in 2018 identified stress as the single most important factor for long-term sickness absence in the UK public sector.
There are likely to be more operational pressures in a targets regime on direct delivery staff than on staff in support functions. This is a likely cause of discontent for operational staff. A possible consequence is that operational staff seek moves to other functions damaging delivery capabilities.
The public service ethos can be eroded by a targets culture. It means motivation from a sense of working for the public good, and fulfilment from following principles of thoroughness and neutrality. These personal impacts can be suppressed by a targets culture that produces a commoditisation and narrowing of service provision.
The impact of targets on employees is compounded by league tables – performance data published periodically through which different workgroups can be compared. This is likely to add a new and particularly keenly-felt type of pressure. There are four possible combinations of outcomes depending on targets compliance and league table positions:
Targets failure – League position poor – Calamity
Targets failure – League position good – Comeback
Targets success – League position poor – Comedown
Targets success – League position good – Clover
Low positions in league tables are often more impactful than targets failure – they are seen to be an indication that it is possible for the workgroup to perform better but they have failed to do so. This can depress morale and accentuate rivalries, damaging organisational culture. If the behaviour of leaders and senior managers does not support an espoused culture of support and cooperation, trust can be damaged or even destroyed.
Experience shows that targets can have a place but they need to be few and true. When employed they need to be small in number and carefully related to the real priorities of the organisation. And they should be used sensibly, with an understanding of their impact on staff, and kept fully in alignment with the espoused organisational culture.
