John Linton ......usually missed because the time to meet them is poorly utilised?
The second week of the new financial year began on Friday and like all long term projects the best way of ensuring ultimate success is to get as much progress made as soon as possible before you let too much of available the time 'slip through your fingers'. Very few people I have met and worked with over the years seem to grasp this pretty obvious concept and doubtless that is why in all aspects of life so many reasonable targets are missed. Like almost everyone else I have ever met I have also missed many targets over the decades but not because I didn't understand the need to break down any long term target in to a series of daily, and sometimes less, targets.
From my personal observations over the years, targets are missed for two, possibly three generally ascribed, reasons - the one I cited above where so many people waste too much time and what was an eminently achievable target is missed because not enough of the available time is used to meet the target. The second, and possibly more common, reason is that the people setting out to achieve the target actually don't believe it's possible to achieve and don't make any real effort to achieve it. This happens when poorly qualified or poorly skilled people set targets based on unrealistic understandings of the circumstances and is possibly as common as the time wasting reason for targets being missed.
So, as this new twelve month period begins (the period being defined quite arbitrarily by the ATO) the first thing that has to be planned for is that although the ATO has defined the period in terms of financial reporting and all public companies have to follow a financial calendar based on a financial year - all months are different with different events and pressures. So we, and everyone else, find ourselves starting a new reporting year when most of Australia is distracted by school holidays. It also, obviously, starts when many people (especially in small business) are devoting most of their time to sorting out last years paperwork and, those that bother, spending time planning for the new year. This is just one period when achieving revenue or other numbers is not a 'straight line' process and must be dealt with by different companies in different ways. The other most obvious 'soft spots' for a significant percentage of non-leisure oriented businesses in Australia are December 15th to January 31st, the period around Easter and all weeks in which there are public holidays. Pretty obvious stuff.
But none of this simple knowledge is what causes targets to be missed as they are in so many cases. As I remembered from my pleasant reminiscing last Thursday evening - the overwhelming reasons that targets are missed are not caused by bad planning, time wasting or even by setting unrealistic targets in the first place. Targets are missed simply because the people to whom targets are assigned (or set by themselves) simply don't make any real effort to reach them beyond the mundane time filling day approach. It seems that too many people to whom targets are given (even when they set those targets themselves) don't do any real work in making them 'happen' by correcting whatever is wrong with their current ways of working. From 'day one' their response to queries as to why the targets for which they are responsible are not happening is a litany of 'don't really know excuses' and other winged statements (all of which ignore the actual facts that are available) that leaves people who have to listen to such nonsense feeling either helpless or enraged....both equally useless emotions.
This, as far my personal experience has shown me, and as my conversation last Thursday evening brought back to my mind, is always the case. There is no solution other than to realise that some people will respond to the challenges that a target oriented world sets and some people won't - no matter how capable, knowledgeable or talented they may be in all sorts of other ways. If you have any doubt that this is the case then you are not paying attention to what is going on around you. There is only one solution. Replace people who don't meet agreed targets as soon as it is evident that targets are not being met. The better solution is to put in place a better hiring/placement methodology that will minimize the number of times you hire/place non-target oriented people in positions where meeting all targets is an absolute requirement which they are congenitally unable to understand.
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16 - the age of consent in most countries - though I don't think that was known to many of the females I grew up with during early adolescence.