Quotes About MBO

For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs. Accordingly, an MBO system should set objectives for a relatively short period. For example, if we plan on a yearly basis, the corresponding MBO system's time frame should be at least as often as quarterly or perhaps even monthly.

The one thing an MBO system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small. In practice, this is rare, and here, as elsewhere, we fall victim to our inability to say "no"—in this case, to too many objectives.

Continuing stasis is a consequence of the first flawed assumption at the heart of MBO: the ingenuous belief that success of the overall organization can be viewed as a simple arithmetic combination of lower-level objectives. The assumption is almost impossible to implement unless nearly everything is in steady state.

Believers insist that dysfunction is not an intrinsic flaw of MBO, but a simple matter of poor implementation. When dysfunction occurs, they (our era's new commissars) refine and redefine the objectives and try again. After five decades of experience with MBO, its believers are still refining and redefining and still waiting for results. I'm ready to call MBO's constant failure intrinsic.