Management by Objectives (MBO)

“It’s just another tool. It is not the great cure for management inefficiency… MBO works if you know the objectives, 90% of the time you don’t.”
Peter Drucker

Management by Objectives (MBO) is an elaborate, systematic, ongoing program that helps employees to understand their objectives at organizational and personal level.

MBO principles:

  1. Cascading of organizational goals and objectives
  2. Specific objectives for each employee
  3. Shared decision-making process
  4. A predefined time framework
  5. Performance evaluation and feedback

Advantages of MBO:

  1. Motivation -employees’ involvement in the goal setting process increases job satisfaction and commitment
  2. Better communication – the evaluation sessions and feedback are supposed to do that
  3. Clarity of goals – SMART
    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Achievable
    • Realistic
    • Time-related

From my experience with MBO, I can tell you that it did not work for me. Mostly because nowadays the manager that set the objectives often already works in a different company when time for the employee’s evaluation comes.

Incoming search terms:

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