Consulting Journal: Techniques - Describing objectives

Techniques: Describing objectives

by David Blakey

Defining objectives can be hard enough. The way that you write them down can make it harder.

[Monday 19 November 2001]

There are several techniques for recording and displaying objectives. There are also books that describe how to define objectives. I do not intend to deal with either of these in this column. Instead, I want to look at a problem that is sometimes created by the way in which objectives are presented.

Imagine that you are about to write a book. Before you start, you will prepare a synopsis of what you want the book to be about and of the messages that you wish to convey in the book. You will also prepare some other objectives.

You may want your book to have an index. You can write this as an objective: "A list of significant topics, showing their page numbers."
You may want your book to have a glossary: "A list of technical terms, with definitions."
You may a list of authorities. "A list of authors, with full titles of their publications."

When you came to describe what you wanted your publisher to include in your book, you would probably not state your objectives as

A list of
1. significant topics, showing their page numbers;
2. technical terms, with definitions; and
3. authors, with full titles of their publications.

This statement is not equivalent to a statement of your three objectives. It defines a single objective, with three characteristics. Imagine the difficulty that readers would have with a single list that served as index, glossary and bibliography. What you want is actually three objectives, each with a single characteristic. You want your index, glossary and bibliography to be three separate items.

This is an obvious and very simple example. It is hardly likely that you would really combine these three objectives so that you defined a single list for all of them. But, in some definitions of business objectives, this same combination of objectives can occur without anyone noticing.

Imagine another situation. You are in a meeting to define some objectives for advertising. You have to know whether the meeting is about "objectives for advertising for the next 12 months" or about "objectives for an advertising campaign."

If it is the first, then you will be able to define the objectives as

a campaign to ....
a campaign to ....
a campaign to ....

These objectives might be achieved by three separate campaigns. They might be achieved by a single campaign. They might be achieved by two campaigns, and there are three ways of placing the three objectives into two campaigns. We will have five options, covering ten possible advertising campaigns.

If the meeting is about "objectives for an advertising campaign", then one single campaign must be capable of meeting all the objectives. This will make the conduct of the meeting significantly different. If a first objective for the campaign has been proposed and generally accepted, then any subsequent proposed objectives will be judged on their compatibility with the first objective. Any new objective that is not compatible with the first objective is likely to be rejected.

The whole direction of a meeting can therefore be dictated by the chairman's opening remarks. Even if the meeting is called "Setting objectives for advertising", an opening statement of "We are here today to set objectives for an advertising campaign" can precede a very different meeting from one opened with the words "We are here today to set objectives for advertising."

You should take care that you do not misdirect any meeting that you chair and that you do not group lists that you write.

One final point. If you work in an organization where your written work undergoes "quality assurance", your lists may be "corrected" by someone not very familiar with the subtleties of the English language. You should always check that their attempts at "quality" have not destroyed your attempts at value. You should not allow them to replace n objectives with a single objective with n characteristics.

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