Demanding targets: improving performance without distorting the work
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Leadership d'excellence” programme, goal setting deserves examination as a management decision rather than merely a motivational technique. The precise question is this: how can managers ask for more without encouraging teams to prioritise the number over the work that matters?
What the literature establishes
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham (2002, American Psychologist) synthesise research showing that specific, difficult goals can yield better performance than vague instructions to do one’s best. Goals direct attention, mobilise effort and sustain persistence. These effects depend in particular on goal commitment, feedback, available capabilities and task complexity.
The reported result is not always the achieved result
Maurice E. Schweitzer, Lisa Ordóñez and Bambi Douma (2004, Academy of Management Journal) provide experimental evidence that unmet goals can encourage people to overstate their performance. In their experimental setting, this risk is particularly apparent when participants fall just short of the target. The study therefore highlights an essential distinction: improving a result and improving the result one reports are not the same behaviour.
The premature conclusion
It would be excessive to conclude that ambitious targets make employees dishonest, or that all numerical requirements should be abandoned. The two articles illuminate different dimensions: a target’s motivational effectiveness and the risk of distortion under certain conditions. The managerial implication is to specify both the desired result and the means that remain acceptable for achieving it. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
An experiment on performance reporting cannot establish how frequently misleading reports occur in a Sion business. Nor does the synthesis on goal setting provide a universal level of difficulty applicable to every occupation. In practice, tracking only the rewarded indicator leaves out of view what has been postponed, neglected or transferred to another team.
A practical check in Sion
As an application exercise for the “Leadership d'excellence” programme in Sion, a team could track a single operational target for one month, alongside a non-negotiable quality criterion defined at the outset. Depending on the activity, that criterion could concern safety maintenance in hydropower, the completeness of a healthcare handover, the traceability of a wine-production batch or the safety check for an Alpine tourism service. The proposed measure is the proportion of results reported as meeting the target for which a documentary check also confirms compliance with the quality criterion, stating how many records were checked and how they were selected. Any discrepancy would not prove an intention to deceive; it would give the manager a concrete basis for examining what the target leaves out of view. To go further: explore the Executive Leadership training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Executive Leadership in Sion
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