The Purpose of Business Objectives

Any business will have number of objectives, each describing a desired future condition toward which efforts are directed. An objective is a statement that clearly explains actions to be taken or tasks to be achieved by an organisation. If the objectives are accomplished, then the business should be a success.

The purposes of objective setting are, to establish a standard for evaluating the success of the business and set priorities for its management and staff. Objectives help keep management and staff focused on achieving set targets and keep them away from distractive activities that drain business resources.

The business objectives are always derived from the mission statement of the organisation and the business objectives explain “what” and “how”.  The objective of the Business Objective should be task-oriented.  It should clearly explain what to be achieved and how it should be achieve.  There should not be any room for ambiguity.  The effective objectives will always have verbs such as execute; reduce; increase; establish; implement etc.  Words such as facilitate and analyse should be avoided in business objective statement.

The life span of the business objectives could be short term as well as long term.  However, short term objectives should always lead towards the long term objectives. The objectives should always be flexible and can change as business progresses.  This is mainly because of uncertainties in the market place.  What is good for the business today may inappropriate for tomorrow.  One should not be afraid to re-define the objectives based on factual situation.

The objectives should be reasonable and achievable.  The success of the objective always depends upon ability align organisational resources.  We come across ambitious missions statements and objectives and the organisation may not be geared up to accomplish those objectives. The end result is tragedy. The objective should be simple and easy to understand by every one.

The objectives should be task oriented.  It should encourage and challenge all concerned in the organisation to attempt and achieve the targets.  This enables the organisation to measure its capabilities at the end of any specific time frame.  What we measure is what we get.

Some people want to achieve what they do not know but they are very firm that they want to achieve what they don’t know, they lack clarity but they are determined to achieve what they are not clear.  We often hear from the bosses that the task executed by the subordinate was not satisfactory.  However, we do not get to know why it is not satisfactory and how it can be improvised.  The purpose of the business objectives is to eliminate that anomaly.

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