Aims and objectives

1. An aim is a destination. It says what the business wants to become or achieve over several years, without attaching a figure to it.
   1. Warburtons wanting to remain the UK's leading bakery brand is an aim, because it describes a position rather than a task.
2. An objective is a task with a number on it. It names one thing to be achieved, states how much, and fixes a date by which it must be done.
   1. Increasing bread sales by 5 per cent by the end of the financial year is an objective, because on that date you could check whether it happened.
3. The two are linked, not alternatives. The aim decides which objectives are worth setting, and the objectives are how the aim is reached.

How objectives sit beneath an aim

1. One aim, several objectives: a business normally holds a single aim and sets several objectives underneath it, each covering a different part of the job.
   1. Greggs has the aim of remaining the UK's leading food-on-the-go retailer.
   2. Opening around 150 new shops in a year, growing evening sales and shortening queues at the till are three separate objectives that all serve that one aim.
2. The timescales differ. An aim may stretch over five or ten years, while an objective usually covers anything from three months to two years.
3. Objectives pass down the business. A company target is split into a figure for each department, and often into a figure for each site or team.
   1. A national sales target becomes a weekly takings figure for each individual shop, so the staff there know their share of it.

What makes an objective specific enough to use

1. Name the exact thing to be achieved. "Do better" could mean sales, profit or service, so the objective has to say which one.
2. Attach a figure. Without a number there is no way to tell afterwards whether the target was reached or missed.
3. Fix a deadline. A date lets the business plan backwards from it and stops the target being pushed into next year whenever it is inconvenient.
4. Keep it inside the resources the business actually has. A figure the cash, staff and equipment cannot deliver gets ignored rather than chased.

The purpose of setting objectives

1. They turn an aim into work. An aim cannot be handed to a member of staff as an instruction, but an objective can.
2. They give a figure to compare real performance against. At the end of the period the owner puts the actual result next to the target and can see the size of any gap, which is the only way to say whether the year was good or poor.
3. They tell staff what the business is trying to do. A written target reaches every employee in the same words, so nobody has to guess what the owner wants.
4. They help owners choose between options. Faced with two ways of spending £50,000, the owner picks the one that moves the business closer to the objective.