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Topics Covered
- Brand strategy
- Alex Zanardi
- Ford
- Aspirational targets
- NHS
- Wells Fargo
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Talk Citation
Micheli, P. (2022, November 29). Target setting [Video file]. In The Business & Management Collection, Henry Stewart Talks. Retrieved October 11, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.69645/AGVS8593.Export Citation (RIS)
Publication History
Other Talks in the Series: Introduction to Performance Management
Transcript
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0:00
Hello, I'm Pietro Micheli.
I'm a Professor of Business
Performance Innovation
at Warwick Business
School in the UK.
Welcome to the fourth talk
on performance management.
The topic today is
target setting.
0:15
Targets as we will see,
are typically numbers,
percentages or ranges over time.
In many instances,
what organizations do
and politicians
for that matter is
to really set something
that is aspirational,
it's not necessarily related
to the past results
of the organization.
Sometimes targets are
set just as a means
to encourage people
to look at something
positively even though
they're not necessarily
based on facts or
previous performance,
in other cases instead,
they're used very well.
There is plenty of
evidence that shows
that targets can
actually function
in many different ways
to really inspire
and motivate people to
achieve better performance.
Let's have a look
at a few examples.
I'll start with a positive
one, and then I'll see
a few negative ones
to try to understand
why and how targets
work or they don't.
1:07
The first example comes from
the World of Motorsport.
It's not strictly speaking
a business example but it
captures a number
of points that are
very important when we
talk about target set.
The first photo is
the one of a crash.
As you can see, this happened
in the early 2000s and
the driver involved was
an Italian driver
called Alex Zanardi.
He was quite known as a
driver in Formula One
but also he was quite a
charismatic character
and so known to people
in Italy so for us
he was a key person in
the World of Motorsport.
Unfortunately, it was
a terrible accident
and he lost his legs.
It was tragic in many different
ways as you can imagine.
Zanardi then reinvented himself
and being very competitive,
he got himself into
playing a role
in a different sports
called handcycling.
You can see him here in action.
Even though he was getting
progressively older,
in his forties and
eventually in his fifties,
he started to compete at the
highest level and he won
various medals in the
paralympics in London 2012.
He won two golds and a silver.
In Rio, he also won
a gold and silver,
you can see him here
wining in Rio 2016.
Then he competed in many
other sport events
like Arrow Man,
he did various
marathons and so on.
Sadly he then had
another accident
so he is recovering
at the moment.
But essentially the story
of Zanardi is amusing
in relation to target
setting because what he did
especially in preparation
for the later events,
Rio 2016 for example,
he almost was double
in age compared
to his competitors and so he
really had to be as
efficient as possible.
He worked really hard
with his coach to try
to understand how to be
as efficient as he could.
They identified a certain level
of performance that he could
achieve that was essentially
stretching him but
it was achievable,
what in jargon we could
call challenging but achievable.
That's really a key
notion in target setting,
something that stretches us
but something that
we can achieve.
He figured out that,
235 watts which is
the unit of power,
was something that
realistically he could
achieve in that
competition, and he did.
He trained for that and
eventually that was
indeed what led him to
succeed against the others.
You can imagine
that in sporting
competitions of this kind,
people may accelerate
at the beginning,
maybe have a dip in the
middle or at the end
and so trying to be more
efficient can give you
that one, two, three,
maybe five percent extra
lead that allows you to win,
and that's what he did.
This story is
positive in the sense
of setting a target
that is specific,
it's 235 watts, not a lot or
do your best for example.
It's something that
he was involved
in so he had a part to
play in the process,
it was challenging
but achievable,
and it's certainly something
that motivated him.
This is a very good illustration
of what target setting could be
and also how this
can motivate people
to achieve higher
levels of performance.