Do You Make These Mistakes In Your Objectives?

Here is a quick check list to help you out in writing your objectives and making them SMART.

 

6 badly written objectives

 

Can you identify what’s wrong with them? You’ll find the answers below.
All of these are real examples. Some may look familiar:

1. Manage the returns process.
2. File all applications.
3. Ensure the reports are accurate by the end of May.
4. Drive an increase in sales by the end of March.
5. Assist Managers with recruitment and selection of Administrators.
6. Ensure all complaints are handled in a timely manner.

For more help with your objectives, get our Objectives Quick Start Sheets, tailored to suit your job. They are lists of real examples of badly written objectives for specific job types. Each objective has the mistakes highlighted and what you need to do to fix it.

If you don’t find the objectives you need in your sheet, just let me know and I’ll do them for you for free.

How to fix these objectives

Example bad objective 1: Manage the returns process.

This objective tells you what you need to spend your time doing, but not what you need to achieve. Objectives should always be clear about what you need to achieve. So this objective could be something like:

 

Ensure all returns are entered into the system within one working day of arriving.

Or:

Design a returns process that will enable us to reduce the cost of returns to under £5000/annum by the end of March.

Example bad objective 2: File all applications.

This objective also just tells you what you need to spend your time doing, not what you need to achieve. If you have an objective like this, you need to find out how you will know if you are doing a good job.

 

Does it depend on how quickly the applications are filed? Does it depend on how accurately the information is put into the system?
Is it about the number filed per day? Or is it linked to the analysis of the applications?

Here are some options for this objective:

Ensure that all applications are filed within one week of arriving.
Ensure that the data control department has the information it needs about applications at the end of each week.

Example bad objective 3: Ensure the reports are accurate by the end of May.

In this objective you need to know what is meant by “accurate”. It may be that there has been a problem with figures not being correct in some reports.

 

Or it may be that up till now the reports have been to the nearest 100 and you need them to be to the nearest 10.

Or it could be that there have been typos in the reports and that needs to stop. Or it may be that there have been some obvious mistakes.

I just watched the new film “Robin Hood” on a plane. Whilst no one really knows exactly who Robin Hood was, we do know the geography of England at that time was much the same as it is now. So if Ridley Scott (who directed the film) had had the objective “Ensure the film Robin Hood is accurate” he would have needed to specify what he meant by that.

It would have been unreasonable to expect him to have stuck to the story of Robin Hood because we don’t know the true story. But he could have had the objective: “Ensure the geography of England in the film Robin Hood portrays the geography of England during that historical period.”

In this way, when you watch the film you wouldn’t see a new mountain range between Nottingham and the south coast (unless he failed the objective, of course).
 

Example bad objective 4: Drive an increase in sales by the end of March.

There are two main problems with this objective.

 

You don’t know what you want the sales to be – “increase” just tells you that you want the sales to go up. That could mean just by £1 or $1. You need to be specific. The best thing to do is to state what you want the sales to be. You could do this as a monthly average or an overall total.

What do you mean by “drive”? This is a popular word in objectives, but it is almost meaningless. Generally with an objective like this the important thing is the amount of sales by the end of March.

“Drive” gives a vague notion of how it is to be done. But you could end up having a lot of arguments about whether you had “driven” sales or not. Objectives are just there to tell you what you need to achieve, not how to do it.

So there is no need for the word “drive”.

With these changes the objective could be something like:
Increase sales to £3.5m by the end of March.

You don’t even really need the work “increase” here but some people like to leave it in. Without it you have:
Achieve sales of £3.5m by the end of March.

Example bad objective 5: Assist the marketing department with the recruitment and selection of new administrators.

The problem with this objective is that you have no idea what assistance you need to give,nor how your assistance will be measured. When you see objectives like this, you need to find out exactly what you personally need to achieve.

 

Once you know what you are responsible for you need to have specific objectives around those areas. So the objective could be:
Design an advertisement for the administration job in the marketing department that gets at least 20 applicants meeting the agreed criteria by 1st February.

Or:

Ensure interviews for administration posts are only carried out by those managers who are able to meet the company interviewing standards.

Or:

Ensure the marketing department has all the materials it needs in time to recruit five new administrators by the end of March.

Example bad objective 6: Ensure all complaints are handled in a timely manner.

There are two problems with this objective. You don’t know what “handled” or “timely” mean in this context.

 

“Handled” could mean that you have responded in some way or it could mean that the customer is entirely satisfied, or something in between.

“Timely” is completely useless as far as objectives are concerned. In this case you need a “linked” time. That is a time that is linked to another time. So you need to says something like:

Ensure all customers who have complained get a response within at least two days of their complaint being received.

Or

Ensure at least 90% of all customer complaints are resolved to the customer’s satisfaction in the first phone call.

Need help with your objectives? Get our Quick Start Objectives Sheets – tailored to your job. If your job isn’t there, let me know and I’ll do yours for FREE.

As always there’s a full money back guarantee. If you don’t like it we’ll refund your money no quibbles. 

 

To your continued success

 

Nancy