Objectives

• The mission of the organization must be translated into the sound

organizational objectives.

• In formulating objectives that serve the mission of the organization, the

strategic group will need to further refine "what we want to do" by

committing to specific, measurable actions that include realistic

deadlines.

• The key to writing good objectives is that they describe the desired

end result of your organizations activities as opposed to simply

describing "what you'll be doing". If the description of end result is not

clear, finite and measurable the objective statement will not serve it

purpose. A simple test of the clarity of an objective is to get a

disinterested party to read it and tell you what it means.

Sound objectives must have the

following four elements.

1. Observable and measurable.

Sound objective statements use strong action verbs that can be

readily observed and measured, such as "to establish", "to

acquire", or "to attain". Too often objectives are written with

weak verbs, such as "to improve" or "to sustain", which do not, by

themselves, describe a specific end result. Verbs that indicate a

process, like "to increase" or "to develop" are acceptable if

specific performance indicators are included in the objective.

Some examples of this would be "to increase the percentage of

service delivery from 10% to 30%" or "to expand our market share

from 15% to 25%.

2. Quantifiable

The objective statement should commit to specific quantities

that, when measured, will determine whether the objective

has been obtained or not. For instance, the objective "the

organization will establish more provincial branch offices" is

active but not measurable unless, of course, one new

provincial office would be considered sufficient for "success". A

quantifiable version this objective would be "the organization

will establish six more provincial branch offices".

3. Qualifiable.

Often objectives fail to include clear performance criteria that

describe "success". Although these criteria can render the objectives

rather long at times, the lack of these "qualifiers" will usually render

the objective powerless. Keep in mind that the measurement of the

objectives is often being done by a second party who may not share

your understanding of the desired end result.

Take for example "the organization will provide support services to

ten environmental action groups in the Western Region". This

objective is active, and quantifiable but there is no indication of

what the quality of the "support services" should be. Therefore any

services provided would be acceptable - probably not!

A longer, but much better objective statement would be "the

organization will provide support services to ten environmental

action groups in the Western Region so that each will be able to

formulate measurable action plans and produce acceptable annual

reports to their funding organizations”.

Limited in time

Without the notion of how much time will be allowed for the

objective to be achieved - forever is time enough. Including

the time limits let you know when "success" can be measured

and lets the implementers know how long they have to meet

their objectives.

The elements of time, quantity and quality allows you to

construct powerful objectives that are also realistic. Normally

time limits are expressed as a preliminary phrase in the

objective, such as, "by the end of the fiscal year", "within six

months" or "in the first trimester".