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Managing by Goals & Objectives - Is it a business management model for you?
For many of us, the pursuit of a business management model based upon goals and objectives is both an aspiration and a direct movement away from current practice. This is true whether managing a single department or a portfolio of projects across multiple divisions and/or continents. Let's take a moment to first look at why it sounds like such a good idea, but is so difficult to implement, then we'll look at solutions.
Problem:
Work, for most of us, is a multi-tasking juggle of to-dos, meetings, phone calls, commitments, deliverables, people?s expectations and deadlines all day long. More than ever, you work within a complex, multi-demand environment. An environment in which:
- You have less time and fewer resources to achieve increasingly higher levels of results.
- It is a stressful process to store and retrieve information key to being successful from a variety of tools and places, e.g. email, to-do lists, reports, and spreadsheets, not to mention our memory.
- Addressing the multi-tasking juggle of work with a collection of tools makes it difficult to keep our priorities moving forward while maintaining visibility on upcoming deadlines. Not having one common work-space from which to work, causes our effort and attention to be fragmented, making it a challenge to avoid details slipping through the cracks.
- Management has a need for greater visibility and accountability to objectives and initiatives, whether strategic or operational.
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Solution:
You need a software that's designed with an executive or manager in mind. One that flexibly tracks all of your projects and all of the people working with and for you. We deliver that type of software system for identifying the top goals or projects for each business unit, for each direct report, and the ability to view the plan to reach those objectives and the feedback that comes from accessing regular progress updates and performance metrics... all without having a meeting. Software that starts very simply by organizing and tracking the ?What, Who, When and How are we doing?? questions.
PST?s portfolio of management software includes ManagePro, MProWeb, MPro-Link and Review Writer, all of which are developed with the objective of:
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Organizing collaborative, coordinated work effort around goals and roles, and their supporting action plans, tasks, and results
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Linking a) strategic goals, b) executing daily operations, and c) managing individual performance.
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Simplifying user's multi-tasking work environment by providing a one-stop, single source information, project and performance management system for the fragmented and multi-tasking business environment.
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High-visibility tracking, follow-through and focus, by putting the information that managers need to respond to today?s business realities at their fingertips.
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PST tools provide a better way to work, and that means an embedded change process in the transition to the improved performance that comes from using an MBO approach. Invariably, most of the organizations we work with around the world are task and urgency based, not goal, role and plan-based in how they approach and deliver their work product. That continues to this day in-spite of numerous studies demonstrating that using goal setting, planning and execution improves performance. Typical project management tools ask for an exhaustive lists of steps and tasks to build a solution based upon the assumption that a thorough checklist holds the most value for organizing work. While appreciating that perspective, and using it, at PST we've designed software to allow executives and managers to focus on the bottom line first. What do you want to happen or where do you want to go? Then build a plan to get there, and work (track) the plan.
Our research suggests that most executives and managers use a collection of information management tools that emphasize meetings, recall (memory), email and to-do lists. These are tools that will not adequately support an MBO approach, and they include:
- Memory to get organized and retrieve information, and keep ourselves alerted as to what needs to happen.
- Meetings and checking in, whether on the phone, in the hallway or in a conference room as a vehicle for getting status updates and uncovering areas that need attention.
- Writing things down? in lists. e.g. we may have switched from a yellow pad to a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, but essentially we're still copying what the Egyptians had available in their written language and parchment paper.
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As time and distance shrinks, and the amount of information to manage expands, these tools become less and less effective? with several results:
- Fire-fighting goes up,
- Meeting time requirements go up, and
- Visibility on follow-through and results goes down,
- Management feels increasingly and persistently behind.
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Bet you?re finding the process of finding the right software a time consuming challenge
Straight talk to managers shopping for project & performance management software - 7 key steps to selecting the right software.
Including...
 Start with what you know, then...
Honor the 80-20 rule and ...
The software must solve the BIG 3
After the facts, you must resolve 2 fears
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PST?s software provides a much more efficient and effective means of managing and ultimately of delivering goal and objective-based results. ManagePro & MProWeb, in particular, use four high performance MBO fundamentals to boost individual, team and organizational performance:
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- Transform work from a role and respond to the latest crisis, to a ?Plan your work and Work the plan? discipline. Everything at work is structured around a simple but powerful process and discipline of:
- Identify and keep in focus the objectives of your Goals and Roles
- Build and work a visible Action Plan to achieve those objectives
- Regularly document Results.
- Leverage information, agility and effectiveness of people by using a
?One input- multiple use output? documenting process. Reuse information
in the software for progress updates, to-dos, result tracking, reporting
and performance reviews.
- All information is tracked and organized in a central management solution
that is cross referenced against existing goals and action plans. Details
do not slip through the cracks, and meetings become both shorter and
more efficient.
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- Follow-up and follow-through are both improved using the visibility and drill-down capability of color coded scorecards on the execution of all objectives, results tracking, the presence of plans and checklists and their status. All of it brings an immediate impact on accuracy of feedback from top to bottom while literally creating, ?One Place where it all comes together!?
There's a lot more to address about business management solutions, what works and what doesn't. If you would like more information on the history of MBO, please read our White Paper on the subject at: https://performancesolutionstech.com/FromMBOtoPM.pdf.
Next Steps:
We invite you to click on the options below to determine if the PST products and consulting services are a good fit for your needs.
 1. Click here to get more information about our strategic and performance solutions
2. Click here to download demo software
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