Demanding targets: what leaders need to preserve
Numerical targets play a central role in management, yet they rarely spell out what must not be sacrificed to achieve them. For SHR — Swiss Human Resources' “Leadership d'excellence” programme, the useful question is therefore precise: how can managers set a demanding target without diverting attention from quality requirements?
What the literature establishes
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham (2002, American Psychologist) synthesise research showing that specific, difficult goals generally produce better performance than instructions to “do your best”. This relationship depends, among other things, on ability, goal commitment, feedback and task complexity. Demanding goals therefore do not work in isolation: people need the means to understand and adjust their actions.
The mechanism that leaves part of the work out of view
Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky and Max H. Bazerman (2009, Academy of Management Perspectives) offer a critical analysis of the potential adverse effects of overprescribing goals. One of their arguments concerns the narrowing of attention: concentrating effort on a target can lead people to neglect dimensions that it does not include. This is a critical synthesis, not an experiment establishing that every numerical target undermines quality.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that specific targets should be replaced with general intentions. That would remove their directional function without resolving the implicit trade-offs involved in the work. A more cautious reading is to distinguish the performance sought from the requirements that must be preserved, and then make explicit what to do when the two conflict. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits of the evidence and of current practice
These publications do not establish an optimal level of difficulty applicable across a hydropower operation, a healthcare unit and a tourism business. Nor is an improvement in the targeted metric sufficient to establish an improvement in the work as a whole. Adding a quality indicator can make some costs visible, but it eliminates neither blind spots nor the difficulties of causal attribution.
A practical check in Sion
In Sion, a proposed exercise within “Leadership d'excellence” could pair each throughput or turnaround target with a non-negotiable quality criterion: maintenance checks in hydropower, complete handovers in healthcare, batch checks in wine production or verification of safety instructions in Alpine tourism. Over two baseline weeks and then two weeks after this clarification, the team would record the proportion of operations meeting both the target and the quality criterion, using a consistent scope, an explicit denominator and verifiable evidence in files or logs, without changing existing safety obligations. The comparison would focus on this joint rate rather than output volume alone, documenting changes in workload and staffing: a useful local check, not causal proof of the training's effectiveness. 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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