Hierarchy of goals. Requirements for goals. Target beginning in the organization's activities

First of all target start in the organization's activities arises because an organization is an association of people pursuing certain goals.

The organization itself does not and cannot have goals. Goals have individual people who try to achieve them with the help of the organization. Naturally, at the same time they must give up something, sacrifice something for the benefit of the organization. The desires and aspirations of individuals, i.e. their goals are usually in conflict with the goals of others. It is this contradiction that management resolves by establishing the organization's targets.

When we talk about the target principle in the behavior of an organization and, accordingly, about the target principle in the management of an organization, we usually talk about two components: mission and goals. Establishing both, as well as developing a behavior strategy that ensures the fulfillment of the mission and the achievement of the organization's goals, is one of the main tasks of top management and forms a very important part of strategic management.

When goals are set, a two-way exchange of information is necessary to ensure that each person understands his or her specific goals. In addition to clarifying performance expectations, two-way communication allows subordinates to communicate to managers what they need to achieve their goals.

The main areas where subordinates require the support of their managers to complete assigned tasks are:

Information.
Clarify the relationships between levels of authority and responsibility.
Support from regular staff.
Horizontal and vertical coordination.
Financing, materials, equipment and labor resources.

Types of goals:

according to their hierarchical status:

goals of top management,

middle level management

· lower level management

· individual goals of performers.

based on their attribution to one or another main structural unit:

· production,

· financial,

· promising,

· personnel,

· innovative,

· research,

· administrative.

according to the criterion of time perspective:

· long-term (prospective),

· medium-term

· short term

two general groups:

· External

· Internal

based on the order of their implementation, priority:

· especially priority (urgent)- priority - the so-called hot ones,

· priority

· deferred.

based on their relevance to one or another stage of the organization’s “life cycle”:

· goals associated with the design and creation stage of the management system;

· goals associated with the stage of breakdown (“growth”) of the system;

· goals associated with the stage of mature stable, sustainable functioning;

· goals associated with the end-of-life stage of the system

depending on the number of persons they belong to:

· global(organizational),

· local(group)

· individual goals

by the clarity and certainty of their statement on structured:

clear - so-called well-definited goals,

· "blurry", unstructured goals.

Hierarchy of goals

In any large organization that has several different structural divisions and several levels of management, a hierarchy of goals develops, which is a decomposition of higher-level goals into lower-level goals. The specificity of the hierarchical construction of goals in an organization is due to the fact that:

higher-level goals are always broader in nature and have a longer time horizon for achievement;
Goals of a lower level act as a kind of means to achieve goals of a higher level.

For example, short-term goals are derived from long-term ones, are their specification and detail, are “subordinate” to them and determine the activities of the organization in the short term. Short-term goals set milestones on the way to achieving long-term goals. It is through the achievement of short-term goals that an organization moves step by step towards achieving its long-term goals.

The hierarchy of goals plays a very important role, since it establishes the “coherence” of the organization and ensures that the activities of all departments are oriented toward achieving top-level goals. If the hierarchy of goals is constructed correctly, then each division, achieving its goals, makes the necessary contribution to achieving the goals of the organization as a whole.

* goals of a higher level are always broader in nature and have a longer time interval for achievement;
* goals of a lower level act as a kind of means for achieving goals of a higher level.

The hierarchy of goals plays a very important role, since it establishes the “coherence” of the organization and ensures that the activities of all departments are oriented toward achieving top-level goals. If the hierarchy of goals is constructed correctly, then each subdivision, achieving its goals, makes the necessary contribution to achieving the goals of the organization as a whole.

Directions for setting goals

There are eight key spaces within which an enterprise defines its goals.

1. Market position. Market goals may be to gain leadership in a certain market segment or increase the enterprise's market share to a certain size.
2. Innovation. Targets in this area are associated with identifying new ways of doing business: organizing the production of new goods, developing new markets, using new technologies or methods of organizing production.
3. Performance. More effective is the enterprise that spends less economic resources on the production of a certain amount of product. Indicators of labor productivity and resource saving are important for/any enterprise.
4. Resources. The need for all types of resources is determined. The available level is compared with the necessary one, and goals are put forward regarding the expansion or reduction of the resource base, ensuring its stability.
5. Profitability. These goals can be expressed quantitatively:

achieve a certain level of profit and profitability.

6. Management aspects. The short-term profit of a business is usually the result of entrepreneurial talent and instinct, as well as luck. It is possible to ensure profit in the long term only through the organization of effective management, the absence of which, according to many experts, hinders the development of Russian enterprises.
7. Staff. Goals regarding personnel may be related to maintaining jobs, ensuring an acceptable level of remuneration, improving working conditions and motivation, etc.
8. Social responsibility. Currently, most Western economists recognize that individual firms should focus not only on increasing profits, but also on developing generally accepted values. Actually, this is related to the introduction of the concept of “stakeholders” of a business, the development of measures to create a favorable image of the company, and concern for not causing damage to the environment.

That. We have identified the key areas within which the company sets its goals. Naturally, when setting goals, it is very difficult to bring together the multidirectional interests of the subjects of influence. The owners expect the organization to provide high profits, large dividends, rising stock prices and security for their invested capital. Employees want the organization to pay them high wages, give them interesting and safe work, provide conditions for growth and development, provide good social security, etc. For buyers, the organization must provide the product at the right price, appropriate quality, with good service and other guarantees. Society demands from the organization that it does not damage the environment, helps the population, etc. When setting goals, a difficult task is posed - to find a compromise between these multidirectional interests of the subjects of influence.

At the next stage of the strategic management process, the strategic goals of the organization are determined, i.e. goals set by the organization's management to strengthen its position and competitiveness.

Defining goals is a very important stage of planning, since all subsequent activities of the organization will be subordinated to the achievement of these goals. Thus, a goal is a specific state of individual characteristics of an organization, the achievement of which is desirable for it and towards which its activities are aimed. The goals of the organization are determined after receiving the mission statement, i.e. the mission, on the one hand, makes it possible to establish what goals need to be set so that the activities of the enterprise correspond to its mission, and on the other hand, it “cuts off” some of the possible goals. Setting goals translates a company's strategic vision and direction into specific objectives related to the firm's production and performance. Goals are the commitment of management to achieve certain results within a specified time.

Requirements that properly formulated goals must satisfy.

1. Reachability. The objectives must include a specific challenge for employees. They shouldn't be too easy to achieve. But they also should not be unrealistic, beyond the limits of the performers.

2. Flexibility. Goals should be set in such a way that they leave room for their adjustment in accordance with changes that may occur in the environment, as new opportunities arise for the organization.

3. Measurability. Goals must be formulated in such a way that they can be quantified or assessed in some objective way. If goals are not measurable, then they give rise to discrepancies, complicate the process of assessing performance results and cause conflicts.

4. Specificity. Goals must have the necessary characteristics that make it possible to unambiguously determine in which direction the organization should move. The goal must clearly state what needs to be achieved as a result of the activity and within what time frame.

5. Compatibility. Goals must be specific in time:

 long-term - for 5 or more years;

 medium-term - from 1 to 5 years;

 short-term - for a period of up to 1 year.

Long-term goals are formulated first, and medium- and short-term goals serve to ensure them. Long-term goals must be consistent with the mission, and short-term goals must be consistent with the long-term (hierarchical compatibility). Goals must also be compatible in the areas of their establishment (in the area of income, work with clients and employees, social responsibility). Compatibility requires a growth goal and a stability goal.

6. Acceptability for the main subjects of influence that determine the activities of the organization.

Depending on the specifics of the industry, the characteristics of the state of the environment, the nature and content of the mission, each organization sets its own goals, specific both in terms of a set of parameters of the organization, the desired state of which acts as the goals of the organization, and in the quantitative assessment of these parameters. However, despite the situational nature of fixing a set of goals, there are 4 areas of activity in which organizations set their goals: income of the organization; work with clients; employee needs and welfare; social responsibility.

For factors of production, goals are set in terms of the use of enterprise resources: financial, labor, material, etc.

There are several differences between mission and organizational goals:

 time aspect: the mission has no time criterion; goals have deadlines;

 focus: mission - external environment; goals - internal environment;

 specificity: the mission is defined in general terms; goals - specific;

 measurability: the mission is relative; goals - absolute, quantitative.

Below are examples of long-term goals of famous companies.

Alcan Aluminum Company: “Produce aluminum at minimal costs, keep the Standard and Poor Index above average.” (Standard and Poor is a stock index of the 500 most actively traded stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, published by Standard and Poor.)

General Electric Company: "Become the most powerful competitor in the world, number 1 or 2 in market share in every area of the company's business."

The most important goals for strategic management are the growth of the organization. They reflect the relationship between the rate of change in sales volumes and profits of the organization and the industry as a whole.

Depending on what this ratio is, the organization's growth rate may be rapid, stable, or contracting. Accordingly, 3 types of growth goals can be set: rapid growth; stable growth; abbreviations.

The goal of rapid growth is attractive, but very difficult to achieve. In this case, the organization must develop faster than the industry. To cope with rapid growth, you need to:

 deep knowledge of the market;

 be able to choose the most suitable part of the market and concentrate your efforts on it;

 have sufficient resources and be able to use them well;

 be able to control processes occurring in the organization;

 have experienced managers who know how to take risks.

The goal of sustainable growth assumes that, when achieved, the organization grows at approximately the same pace as the industry as a whole. At the same time, the organization strives to maintain its market share unchanged.

A variation of growth goals is the goal of diversified growth, which involves the further development of the company based on the development of new types of activities, often not related to existing ones, which will allow it not only to increase the scale of its activities and the degree of presence in the market, but also to increase financial stability (if the main types activities cease to generate profit, then capital can be redistributed between other areas of activity).

The goal of reduction is set by an organization when, for a number of reasons, it is forced to develop at a slower pace than the industry as a whole, and to reduce its presence in the market. Such a goal does not mean that crisis phenomena are occurring in the organization. For example, after a period of rapid growth, downsizing may become necessary.

The goal setting process involves the implementation of 4 stages.

Identification and analysis of processes that are observed in the environment.

Goals should be flexible, but this does not mean that they should be tied to the state of the environment only through constant adjustment and adaptation to change. Management must strive to anticipate what state the environment will be in and set goals in accordance with this anticipation.

Setting goals for the organization as a whole. Here it is important to determine which of the wide range of possible characteristics of the organization's activities should be taken as its goals. Next, the tools for quantitatively calculating the size of goals are selected. This takes into account what goals the organization had at the previous stage and how much the achievement of these goals contributed to the fulfillment of the organization’s mission. The decision on goals must be consistent with the resources that the organization has.

Building a hierarchy of goals. It is expected that goals will be defined for all levels of the organization, the achievement of which by individual units will lead to the achievement of overall organizational goals. At the same time, the hierarchy should be built according to both long-term goals and short-term ones.

Setting individual goals. In order for the hierarchy of goals within the organization to acquire its logical completeness and become a truly effective tool in achieving the goals of the organization, it must be brought to the level of the individual employee. At the same time, the organization’s employees receive an idea not only of what they have to achieve, but also of how the results of their work will affect the final results of the organization’s functioning, how and to what extent their work will contribute to achieving the organization’s goals.

The process of decomposing top-level goals into goals of lower levels, or the process of reducing goals of lower levels into goals of higher levels, involves the construction of a tree of goals. Here, depending on the established subordination of goals, a clear “goal-means” relationship is recorded. This dependence determines which goals in practice act as means to achieve other goals.

The specifics of the hierarchical construction of goals in an organization are due to the following:

 higher-level goals are always broader in nature and have a longer time horizon for achievement. They are formed on the basis of the organization’s mission and detail it into a system of specific qualitative and quantitative indicators that must be achieved;

 Goals of a lower level act as a kind of means for achieving goals of a higher level. At the same time, it is important to ensure exact correspondence between the goals of adjacent levels.

Tasks occupy an important place in the hierarchical structure of the organization's goals. The distinction between goals and objectives is based on the level at which they operate in the organization. The tasks also relate to individual divisions of the organization or its branches. Objectives are more short-term in nature than goals, as they are related to planning current activities. This often results in tasks that are multiple in nature because they are operational in nature and may vary depending on the company's line of business.

The relationship between the mission, goals and objectives of the organization is shown in Fig. 6.

Rice. 6. The relationship between the mission, goals and objectives of the organization

Tutorial output:

Lysochenko A.A., Sviridov O.Yu. Theoretical foundations of strategic management: Textbook / A.A. Lysochenko, O.Yu. Sviridov. - Rostov n/d.: Assistance–XXI century, 2016. - 420 p.

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Hierarchy of goals

In any large organization that has several different structural divisions and several levels of management, there is hierarchy of goals, which is a decomposition of higher-level goals into lower-level goals. The specificity of the hierarchical construction of goals in an organization is due to the fact that:

Higher level goals are always broader in nature and have a longer time horizon for achievement;

Goals of a lower level act as a kind of means for achieving goals of a higher level.

For example, short-term goals are derived from long-term ones, are their specification and detail, are “subordinate” to them and determine the activities of the organization in the short term. Short-term goals set milestones on the way to achieving long-term goals. It is through the achievement of short-term goals that an organization moves step by step towards achieving its long-term goals.

Requirements for goals

1. Goals must be achievable. They should not be unrealistic or beyond the capabilities of the performers. An unrealistic goal leads to demotivation of employees and their loss of direction, which has a very negative impact on the organization’s activities.

2. Goals must be flexible. Goals should be set in such a way that they leave room for adjustment in accordance with changes that may occur in the environment.

3. Goals must be measurable. This means that goals must be formulated in such a way that they can be quantified or can be assessed in some other objective way as to whether the goal has been achieved. If goals are not measurable, then they give rise to discrepancies, complicate the process of assessing performance results and cause conflicts.

4. Goals must be specific, possessing the necessary characteristics so that it can be unambiguously determined in which direction the organization should move. The goal should clearly state what needs to be achieved as a result of the activity, in what time frame it should be achieved and who should achieve it.

5. Goals should be compatible. Compatibility assumes that long-term goals are consistent with the mission, and short-term goals are consistent with the long-term. But hierarchical compatibility is not the only direction for establishing goal compatibility. It is important that goals related to profitability and establishing a competitive position, or the goal of strengthening a position in an existing market and the goal of penetrating new markets, the goals of profitability and philanthropy, do not conflict with each other.

6. Goals should be acceptable for the main subjects of influence that determine the activities of the organization, and primarily for those who will have to achieve them. Since buyers (another subject of influence on the organization) currently play a key role for the survival of the organization, managers must take their interests into account when setting goals, even if they lead to a reduction in profits by reducing prices or increasing costs to improve the quality of the product. Also, when setting goals, it is necessary to take into account the interests of society, such as the development of the local living environment, etc.

Hierarchy is the sequential arrangement of elements of something common in relation to each other. The important point is that at the top step there should be something important, and at the bottom - small and insignificant. Elements can, for example, be ordered from large to small, from difficult to reach, from powerful to weak.

Hierarchy of management

Hierarchy occurs, in particular, in public administration.

In this sense, it is a system based on command and subordination, and consisting of a large number of levels. Any parts of public administration can be represented as elements. For example, officials and legal acts. can also be considered an element of the system. Based on the above, a definition can be formulated. A management hierarchy is a system in which some people give orders and others carry them out. Every person has encountered it in one way or another.

Necessity and inevitability of management hierarchy

In large groups that are larger in size than small companies, an organization of power is certainly formed, which can be represented in the form of a hierarchy. This happens in any large corporation or organization. Do not forget that the state, which represents a certain form, is also subject to hierarchy. This system is necessary for order to reign in the world. Public administration cannot exist without hierarchy.

Social hierarchy

Social hierarchy is a set of filters through which not so much wise, educated or highly moral individuals can pass to the top, but rather those who are well-versed in society and cultured.

You can argue for a long time whether this is fair or not, but in reality this is exactly what happens. The hierarchy is a forge of individuals that society needs. Only she can play this role.

So, hierarchy is a set of social filters, the first of which are relatively easy to pass through, but as you move upward they become more and more rigid, therefore, not everyone reaches the last step.

Hierarchy of needs

A. Maslow said that human needs can be distributed from simple to complex, and the desire for something higher can appear only after a person receives satisfaction from the lower. For example, when he feels protected or eats.

The pyramid looks like this:

This includes eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.
Need for security. This is orderliness, confidence in the future, independence, security, freedom from fear and fear.
The need for belonging and love. This is communication with relatives, friends, forming your own circle.
Need for recognition and respect. A person must respect himself. It is also good if others treat him with respect. The individual strives for fame and prestige.
The need for self-improvement. The individual must develop and do mainly what he has a predisposition for.

Scientist's opinion

So, the hierarchy of needs is a system of desires that a person strives to realize throughout his life.

What did Maslow himself say about his pyramid? He believed that a lower desire should be satisfied before a higher one appears and begins to disturb a person. This should happen normally. Maslow also noticed an interesting pattern: when minor needs are satisfied, the individual begins to desire something more complex and sophisticated. At the same time, the scientist emphasized that this rule has exceptions. Some people, for example, believe that self-improvement is more important than love. And others satisfy minor needs and do not strive for anything else, even if they are not happy with everything. Maslow believes that all such anomalies in the development of an individual arise as a consequence of neurosis or in the case of pronounced depressing external factors.

Hierarchy of goals

The hierarchy of goals is a system consisting of several steps. What does she look like? It’s very simple: small targets are located on the lower steps, and larger ones are located on the upper ones. Writer Harry Adler, who created a book called “NLP. Modern psychotechnologies,” talked a lot about this. He argues that any goal must be presented in a kind of hierarchy, where the lower is subordinate to the higher. It is very useful to do this. The goal hierarchy is a pyramid that shows what is important to an individual. It allows you to better understand and get to know the individual.

How to arrange goals in a pyramid?

At the top of the pyramid there may be information about some desire or value of a person, for example, achieving peace of mind.

This intention cannot exist on its own; to fulfill it, it is necessary to paint the bottom of the pyramid with smaller goals. For example, in the center there may be the inscription “have enough money”, and at the bottom - “improve your education” or “move up the career ladder”. And the pyramid should be completed by a set of everyday goals aimed at fulfilling the desires located in the middle. This is all easy to imagine in your mind. We should not forget that hierarchy is what allows a person to organize and systematize his life.

It is quite understandable that goals located at higher levels may at first seem illusory and vague. But the tasks below should be quite clear and tangible. This is a very important condition.

Why is it necessary to build a hierarchy of goals?

Each person should create his own pyramid of goals and check how much everyday tasks that take so much effort help in realizing the central and highest desires. By completing this exercise, an individual can learn to wisely distribute time, which, as a rule, is always short. Hierarchy is a saving straw for a person who rushes between his many affairs and does not have time to do anything.