The Sales manager of AMK Enterprise, Robert Cliff (Cliff) stepped out of the conference hall in a deep thinking mood after an important meeting called by the CEO. The meeting was attended by the heads of various departments in the company and was convened to discuss the targets for the coming year. Cliff had a formidable sales target to achieve and wondered how he would be able to meet those almost impossible goals. This fear was further intensified by the fact that the productivity levels of employees in the company had been falling. Cliff was under tremendous pressure from the management to improve the performance of his team. He also had to deal with the decreasing levels of employees' morale in his 24-member team. As a first step, Cliff informed his team members about a meeting that he planned to hold the next day. He then drafted a plan of action that he intended to discuss with his team.

The next day, Cliff began the meeting by informing his team members about the corporate meeting he had attended. He then said, "We have a difficult task ahead for this year, and your participation and involvement is essential to achieve the goals". He then invited suggestions from his team members regarding the role to be played by each of them. The meeting then progressed on to setting of individual targets for by each team member as, it was felt that this would help in accomplishing the organizational goals. Specific goals were, therefore, set and agreed upon by all the team members. The team aimed to increase their sales revenues by 18% over the next twelve months. They sketched out a plan of action to achieve the targets set for the team and decided that they would meet monthly to monitor their progress.

One months later, the team met again and received their progress. Cliff also gave a feedback on the performance of every member of the team. The team then collectively identified the areas of improvement and decided upon the measures they would take to overcome their deficiencies. This continued for the rest of the year. The final review meeting was held just before the yearly corporate meeting attended by the top management. The team was surprised to see that they had achieved their targets. Thus, effective planning and control mechanisms helped the team achieve their goals, and this in turn, helped in the achievement of the organizational objectives. Besides, the employees were also motivated as the management gave adequate recognition to their involvement and participation in achieving team goals. The target to be achieved by the team was highly challenging. This further motivated the team members as they had better opportunities to prove their problems solving skills. Thus, the outstanding performance of the sales team helped the organization achieve in the long term.

Q1: Does the team goal stated in the above case meet the criteria for well-formulated goals?

Q2: Discuss the various MBO practices adopted by Cliff in the above case. How effective were they?