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Remember MBAware in the 90’s? Well, maybe you don’t. How about management by objectives in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s? How about Deming and quality circles? What happened to those models for management and general productivity, and what does it have to do with project management today? The MBO model sort of came and then left, without leaving much of an overt or visible impression on most. It seemed to exit from the fore-front of management focus by the downsizing and work group turmoil and market downturn of the early 90’s. Yes, every organization has to set goals, but organizational effectiveness was going to be accomplished by macro efforts such as down-sizing, not a style of managing, a way of organizing what topics and agenda to focus upon in a given day.

With the upturn of the market and the start of the Internet gold rush, management by objectives slipped further into the past. The term “management” itself seemed to lose a sense of compelling interest. Riches were made based upon technology, upon acquisitions, upon something new, upon association with the WEB, not (for heaven’s sake) management of work effectiveness.

The premise of this article is that project management is an evolution of MBO theory, and in need of evolvement in specific directions itself… not necessarily more standardization. A second premise is that the previous models have all been eclipsed in history because their assumptions did not take into effect certain aspects in the workplace reality. The assumptions proved over time to be quite limiting, forcing the evolvement of management models with a new or improved set of assumption modifiers. The third premise is that the current model of project management is also limited by its assumptions, with recommendations for needed change and expansion to the model.

In effect, all of the work models to be discussed emphasize a certain perspective as key to achieving a goal or objective. Project management integrates certain perspectives pushed to the center of workplace thinking, and then adds its own emphasis. Each has a weakness in the assumptions that are included in their emphasis. Let’s start by reviewing some history, albeit in a summarized manner.

Goals

Humans seem to need goals to achieve extraordinary outcomes. The connection between goals and elevated performance has been in the literature as long as writing has been a part of civilization. In the last 50 years there have been more than 300 studies completed demonstrating repeated findings, or “basic truths” if you will, about humans and goals. Truths incorporated in repeated findings that:

1. People accomplish beyond their historical norm when they use goals.
2. People respond positively to stretch goals that they judge to be reasonable or attainable.
3. People stay attached to goals when leaders support a goal process by both modeling the
goal related behavior and providing feedback relative to goal progress.

What hasn’t been written as clearly is, “What happens when setting objectives or goals doesn’t work?” What happens when its effect on organizing behavior and achieving results is relatively nil? Why are goals so significant for some and relatively unused and apparently unneeded by others, both in and out of work? In this white paper we will be using goals and objectives interchangeably. We will use the term of goal to generally describe a goal or objective for the purpose of describing in broad terms the process of defining some outcome to be accomplished that is not presently within reach.

Let Managepro tell you more MBO Software products.

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White paper prepared by Rodney Brim, Ph.D.

CEO, Performance Solutions Technology, LLC

www.ManagePro.com

Copyright 2004; all rights reserved

References:

One Minute Manager, by Spencer Johnson and Ken Blanchard, 2000.

The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge, et.al., 1994.

Out of the Crisis, by Edward Deming, 1986.

Performance Solutions Technology, LLC

Providing software applications that help manage the information necessary for a coordinated, collaborative, strategic work force

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