Managerial Leadership:

Management by Objectives

Management by Objectives (MBO): Starting With Yourself

Knowing What To Do, How To Do It, and Getting It Done

Setting Right Objectives

To practice Management by Objectives (MBO) effectively, managers need to identify and set objectives both for themselves, their units, and their organizations. Ensure that you set the right objectives if you want to achieve the right results. The objectives should be achievable and challenging. Never set your staff unachievable targets – it will be demoralizing for them.

Starting with Yourself

Self-control is the tool of effectiveness. The effective executive knows what to do, knows how to do it, and (above all) gets it done. In all three phases, the effective executive exercises intelligent self-management, starting with the management of their own time. They use that time systematically for work that only they can do, and for the decisions that only they can take, while delegating non-core jobs to others. They establish priorities by putting first things first – and ignoring the secondary things.

Making a Contribution

Your contribution within the context of the organization needs to be properly understood. Be aware of what is expected from you and why. That awareness will determine you ability to contribute to your organization. Ask yourself what you should do, rather than simply doing what you are told to do.

Identify your strengths to be able to use your own unique powers to contribute to what needs to be done. Carry out the Strength – Weakness – Opportunities – Threats (SWOT) analysis on yourself. Build on your strengths and opportunities while avoiding threats and weak areas.

Management by Objectives (MBO):

Setting Standards

If you want to improve as an MBO manager, don't stick to your current contribution level. Adapt your contribution to change, build on opportunities to enhance your abilities and performance further.

Never be satisfied by present standards of performance, whether other people's or your own. Search for superior performance examples and make bettering that level your benchmark.

Executing Management by Objectives (MBO)

Aim to accomplish "impossible" things based on the following key elements:

1. your individual talent

2. having a true "stretch target", and

3. achieving your chosen contribution.

Break down execution into four decisions:

1. what to do;

2. how to start;

3. where to start; and

4. what goals and deadlines to set.

Make it your practice to plan systematically, never failing to address these four decisions, and always work to a realistic deadline.

Try to find a "key" to a specific aspect of the operation that would unlock the full potential of the enterprise leading to successful achievement of the objective.

Managing for Results

The only place where meaningful management results can be won is the outside world. Managing for results is expansion of Management by Objectives (MBO) into the marketplace. It is the theory and practice of how to produce results on the outside, in the market and economy.... More

To achieve these results, you should develop a solid, sound, customer-focused, and entrepreneurial strategy, aimed at market leadership, based on innovation, and tightly focused on decisive opportunities... More

Bibliography:

1. "The Practice of Management", by Peter Drucker

2. " Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", by Peter Drucker

3. "The Frontiers of Management : Where Tomorrow's Decisions Are Being Shaped Today ", by Peter Drucker

4. "The Effective Executive", Peter Drucker

5. "Managing for Results," Peter Drucker

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