One way to reward performance is to provide a monthly internal memo listing each employee who has remained green each month. The management team can also set up an annual performance bonus for each employee who redeems all strategies and objectives ahead of the milestone dates. Meeting and exceeding objectives also becomes an important part of the employee’s performance review.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

When the employee and manager meet and agree on all strategies to redeem assigned objectives, they will also agree on milestone dates to complete these strategies. A yellow indicator light on the dashboard will alert the manager as well as the employee if any of these milestone dates have been missed. If the milestone date exceeds 10 business days the indicator light will turn red. A daily look at The Atlas Objectives Dashboard allows the manager and employees to stay on top of all objectives and strategies.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

Once the employee has developed their individual strategies for each objective a review meeting with the manager should be set. During this meeting, the employee will review their strategies for each objective and possible revise some strategies based upon the discussion with the manager. This will be a very productive meeting with good discussion and the net result will be agreement on all strategies to meet and exceed each objective.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

There are two basic ways to assign an objective to an employee. The first way is for the manager to assign the objective with a completion date. With this approach, the objective is a directive from the manager and the employee is expected to comply. This approach has a low success rate. The preferred way is to meet with the employee to review the objective being assigned and then ask the employee to develop their own strategies to complete this objective. In this scenario the employee has personal input, becomes vested in the Objective and therefore the likelihood of success is much higher.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

As a manager, you can use Management by Objectives to meet with your supervisor to gain agreement on you own personal goals, objectives and strategies. This will insure that you are working toward the goals that are important to your supervisor as well as his/her supervisor. You will also be able to use Management by Objectives with the employees who are reporting to you to make sure everyone on your team is working toward redeeming the goals that are most important to your supervisor.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

This is a traditional management style that very seldom yields the desired results. The reason for failure is that the employees do not have the opportunity to share in the management’s vision and goals. The employees are simply given a download of the company goals and expected to work as a team to redeem these goals. The net result is that each employee has their own ideas on what to do and it is virtually impossible to achieve a common goal when no one is working in unison.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

Management by Objectives will work in a profit, non-profit or any organization because the basis of the program is agreement and cooperation of all employees. Just think how powerful and organization can be if every member of the group was working toward the success of agreed upon goals with agreed upon strategies to achieve these goals. Management by Objectives will allow any organization to meet and exceed its annual and long term goals.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

The only employees who object to the Management by Objectives process are the employees who do not want to contribute to the success of the overall organization. Thankfully, there are usually very few employees with this mindset. If an organization does have employees who do not want to contribute toward success, it is imperative that they are identified quickly so that this situation can be remedied.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives

Management by Objectives is one of the easiest management tools to both implement and maintain. This is because everyone is involved in the process of setting the goals and objectives and everyone is involved in monitoring the progress. It is far easier and much more effective when everyone is involved in an improvement process versus just the management team.

Dan Stewart
Mr. Objectives
Twitter: @MrObjectives