Creating goals and objectives with targets and measurables for self-evaluations

[Sandy Simpson]

I work as the Advanced Quality Coordinator for a large corporation. Every year we have to establish goals and objectives for the next year and report on the goals and objectives that were assigned the previous year. My main duty is Document and Print control. I respond to hundreds of internal and external emails every day. (I had 673 just this past Monday) Yet at the end of the day, my Inbox is empty.
My question is, considering that my day-to-day duties are the same every day, and take up most all of the day, how do I come up with creative goals and objectives with targeted measurable?
Also, if a goal and objective given to me for the previous year was not met because of circumstances beyond my control, how can I be held responsible for its incompleteness?

 

[Bev D]

Hey Sandy! I see you are in Fort Wayne...I was raised in Huntington but now live in Maine.

You raise a sensitive issue.
personally I think that you manager should establish your goals, but whatever...why do you need to get creative? Seems like you job is to "keep the trains running on time"...so you could simply establish a goal that expresses how many requests you will handle on any given day within some reasonable time frame. By reasonable I mean possible given the complexity of the requests, when they come in to you and what the business needs. Give yourself a bit of a buffer for extenuating circumstances. for example you might say you will handle up to 675 requests daily and they will be resolved within 4 working hours of receipt.

This maintains the status quo. perhaps your organization is supportive of continual improvement so you might add a goal to improve the system. either to reduce the need for so many requests, or to speed up the process of answering requests by eliminating waste from the process or maybe some form of self service, or some other action...

As for the issue of being held accountable for things 'beyond your control', this an age old issue with management that views work as disconnected processes. they refuse to acknowledge that a business is a system of interconnected actions and they don't align the goals of everyone in the organization towards a common goal...you might try having a heart to heart with your manager about the specifics...

 

[Steve Prevette]

You may want to take a look at http://www.efcog.org/wg/esh_es/Statistical_Process_Control/docs/tyranny_of_targets.pdf