How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Seite 367
GOALS, OBJECTIVES AND TARGETS
Strategic planning is a very important business activity. It is also
important in the public sector areas such as education. It is practiced
widely informally and formally. Strategic planning and decision
processes should end with objectives and a roadmap of ways to achieve
those objectives.
The following terms have been used in strategic planning: desired end
states, plans, policies, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and actions.
Definitions vary, overlap and fail to achieve clarity. The most common of
these concepts are specific, time bound statements of intended future
results and general and continuing statements of intended future results,
which most models refer to as either goals or objectives (sometimes
interchangeably).
One model of organizing objectives uses hierarchies. The items listed
above may be organized in a hierarchy of means and ends and
numbered as follows: Top Rank Objective (TRO), Second Rank
Objective, Third Rank Objective, etc. From any rank, the objective in a
lower rank answers to the question "How?" and the objective in a higher
rank answers to the question "Why?" The exception is the Top Rank
Objective (TRO): there is no answer to the "Why?" question. That is how
the TRO is defined.
People typically have several goals at the same time. "Goal congruency"
refers to how well the goals combine with each other. Does goal A appear
compatible with goal B? Do they fit together to form a unified strategy?
"Goal hierarchy" consists of the nesting of one or more goals within
other goal(s).
One approach recommends having short-term goals, medium-term goals,
and long-term goals. In this model, one can expect to attain short-term
goals fairly easily: they stand just slightly above one's reach. At the other
extreme, long-term goals appear very difficult, almost impossible to
attain. Strategic management jargon sometimes refers to "Big Hairy
Audacious Goals" (BHAGs) in this context. Using one goal as a steppingstone to the next involves goal sequencing. A person or group starts by
attaining the easy short-term goals, then steps up to the medium-term,
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