Executive Leadership training in LucerneAmbitious targets: how can managers keep numerical results from taking priority over quality?
Setting a demanding target seems like a basic management responsibility. For SHR's “Leadership d'excellence” programme, however, the question deserves closer attention: how can managers direct effort without encouraging shortcuts?
1. What the literature establishes
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham (2002, American Psychologist) review research showing that specific, difficult goals generally support performance more effectively than simply asking people to do their best. Their effectiveness depends, among other things, on goal commitment, ability and available feedback. Goals direct attention, mobilise effort and sustain persistence: they do not replace the conditions needed to succeed.
2. When hitting the target becomes an end in itself
Maurice E. Schweitzer, Lisa Ordóñez and Bambi Douma (2004, Academy of Management Journal) show experimentally that unmet goals can encourage people to overstate their own performance. In their experiments, this tendency is particularly pronounced when people fall just short of the target. The mechanism highlights a specific management risk: the desire to appear successful can compete with the requirement to report work accurately.
3. The premature conclusion: abandon targets
These findings mean neither that ambition is harmful nor that every numerical target produces dishonest behaviour. Instead, they suggest distinguishing between the target, acceptable means and aspects of work that the indicator does not capture. For a leader, making quality requirements and non-negotiable rules explicit is a reasonable precaution, rather than a safeguard proven by these studies alone. (our executive and employee training programmes)
4. What the evidence cannot establish
Experiments on performance reporting do not reproduce the full complexity of a lasting employment relationship, internal controls or responsibility towards a client. The review of goal-setting research also highlights how task complexity changes the conditions for effectiveness. Neither the frequency of misconduct within a company nor a universal solution based on adding a quality indicator can therefore be inferred.
5. A practical check in Lucerne
In the canton of Lucerne, tourism, hospitality, regional financial services and industrial SMEs provide a relevant setting for examining this tension, particularly in family-run businesses with short decision-making paths and strong regional ties. As a hypothetical example, a hotel in Lucerne could pair its target for handling requests quickly with a check that those requests have actually been resolved, rather than merely closed administratively. Over one month, a log would record each request's processing time, any reopening and the reason, after which the team would examine whether shorter processing times coincide with more reopened requests. This exercise could provide a practical application of SHR's “Leadership d'excellence” programme: checking what the target leaves out without treating the observation as causal proof. To go further: explore the Executive Leadership training in Lucerne in the canton of Lucerne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Executive Leadership in Lucerne
- executive leadership
- Lucerne
- research
- training lucerne