Paper and Open Communications

Hi!

It has been quite a while since I blog'ed something. It also appears that most of the blogs that I read have been slow to post new updates. Guess everybody is getting busier with life.

I have been getting busy with work, working over the weekend preparing a proposal. In fact, paperwork and proposals and reports have been stacking up all over my table a bit too fast, a bit too much.

One of the interesting aspects of my job is that one day you may be looking and evaluating a 1 million Big Mac company and the next day you are rushing to put out a report on a 25 million Big Mac company. And as time passes on, reports and proposals and evaluations start to overlap, and the next thing you know *wham* you are at home looking at your 1 million Big Mac company because the 25 million Big Mac company was *urgent* and had to be finished ASAP in the office.

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I also have been relooking the communications in my bank

A) This is your target = 2 Big Macs, and to achieve that, you have to make 10 calls a day and even if you achieve 2 Big Macs after 1 call, you still have to make the remaining 9 calls; because that is the way we do things. If you have achieve your low target that we set, we want you to go and achieve more that is why we make it compulsary for you to make 10 calls a day.

B) This is your achievement target = 20 Big Macs, it is a high target and to achieve that, you have to make 10 calls a day because realistically you will not be able to achieve it without 10 calls a day.

Is it not more honest/transparent if the company used method B instead of method A when dealing with their sales team? If I were on the sales team, I would prefer the company to be more honest with the target that they set rather then them setting a lower target but forcing me to make the calls even when I have achieved my target.

Bad management thinking? or bad communication strategy?

A former HR consultant says that it is bad communication strategy on the company's part and that maybe it is a weird way of accentuating the positive (high possibility achieving the 2 Big Macs target) vs giving too daunting a challenge (20 Big Macs).

My opinion is that a company should be upfront with what they want their staff to ultimately achieve and be realistic about what the staff can achieve and challenge/reward accordingly. I wonder whether I would run a company the way I suggest...