Performance targets are identical to the puissance at the Horse of the Year Show. You know the one - the high-jump competition, where the poor, dumb horse is brought into the ring, asked to clear a massive red wall, and as a reward for its heroic effort is promptly brought back and asked to do it all over again, only higher.
I’ve never felt anything but admiration for those puissance horses which, not so dumb at all, swiftly realise that the game is a bogey. Why on earth should they bother straining heart, sinew and bone to leap higher than their own heads, only to be required to jump even higher? And then possibly higher still.
Hard work and willingness, ponders the clever horse as he chomps in the stable that night, clearly bring only punishment. And so next time he’s asked to canter up to the big red wall, he plants his front feet in the ground and shakes his head. And says, what do you take me for - an idiot?
Thus it is with work-related targets. Most of us will in the course of our careers be subject to performance assessments, where we are examined against the objectives we were set the previous year, then tasked with new ones.
Yes, you’ve done very well, our managers say. Asked to make sure that 150 lorries an hour leave the depot; or 20 people get elective hip replacements every day; or that ten babies with drug-addicted mothers remain alive, you have met your targets. Thanks to you, the system has flowed freely, and I, your boss, have not only escaped catastrophe; I’ve also been able to take the credit for your work. You’re a star.
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I’m so pleased with your performance, in fact, that I am going to give you a big pat, tell you are terrific and then set the bar higher for next year. Think puissance. This time I want you to make sure that 175 lorries leave the factory, 25 hip replacements take place and 12 vulnerable children rely on you.
It is at this point that things can go wrong. Will the workers, like the show-jumper, continue to try their best, even if they injure themselves in the process, or will they dig in their heels sourly and refuse to leave the ground? Sometimes it can be a very close call.
As everyone who ever passed Go knows, objectives should always be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (given the resources) and time-defined. But SMART - especially the “achievable” bit - is not always that smart, because all too often objectives are driven by a higher political agenda, and the views of the frontline worker are ignored.
The art of setting targets is to create ones with a likelihood of success, but where the work is challenging. Setting targets that are plainly ridiculous does not motivate people; it merely confirms their opinion of their bosses (and their political masters) as idiots and bullies. It breaks their spirit. They will apply no energy or enthusiasm for a task that is futile, and either adopt a policy of sullen defiance, or suffer a private breakdown.
Target setting should also be intelligent, but often isn’t. Some years ago head teachers were told not to exclude too many children. They met the target, but it was completely artificial; it simply meant they could not exclude the children that needed exclusion. (Which would in turn impact badly on normal children’s schooling, and affect exam performance tables. But no matter, the target was met.)
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Target-worship, as we all know, is a religion founded by the Conservatives and followed ferociously by new Labour. Tony Blair set up the risible Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) in No 10, the pinnacle of the whole delivery industry - representing thousands of managers and millions of pounds dedicated to, well, raising the height of the red wall and whipping the horse in the hope he would jump it.
I can bring to your attention what is happening in the NHS in Scotland, where the target culture is as destructively evangelical as it is in the rest of the UK. Later this month we will get official confirmation that NHS Scotland has met the exhausting and unprecedented waiting-times targets that were laid down for it three years ago. Every patient in the country will wait only 18 weeks between seeking a GP and referral to a consultant. No one will wait more than four hours in A&E. Unofficially, the trophy is in the bag.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, who has been even more zealous than her Labour predecessors in pursuit of health targets, is - rightly - praising the heroic efforts of NHS staff, but she is also terrifyingly relentless. She’s already set new targets - by 2011 all NHS patients must wait no longer than 18 weeks between GP referral and actual treatment. The service has another three-year mountain to climb.
The right targets, she says, force the system to respond. They should always be challenging. We cannot rest on our laurels.
Which is true, but in so many areas we have reached the point when the pressure becomes pressure for its own sake: when it amounts to institutional bullying and causes mental ill health and leaves the workforce sour and miserable. Unremitting targets ultimately result in exhaustion and jiggery-pokery, not greater efficiency. Last week, in the Scottish Parliament, the Liberal Democrats embarrassed Alex Salmond, the First Minister, by producing a letter written by a hospital consultant to a patient telling her he had been instructed by management to remove her from his waiting list in order to meet targets. Within hours, miraculously, the doctor declared he had been under no pressure to alter waiting lists inappropriately. Bullied into the volte-face? Never! But absorb the clear message - nothing will stop the delivery industry from delivering.
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Oh, the bar may be set at what the politicians regard as a reasonable height. Aspirational enough to keep them all in power. From the perspective of the weary horse, however, we’ve reached the point where whipping doesn’t work, but a carrot and a short rest just might.