In January, many companies are setting annual mission targets. In the process of setting goals, data analysts will be more or less involved.
This is another headache errand, and I often work hard to finish a page, and the leader's sentence: "Think about it again" or "I see it like this" is overthrown. I am often asked to use scientific and reasonable methods to demonstrate that the leader’s decision to tap his head is correct...makes the newcomers miserable. Today, we systematically explain how to do the annual mission goals.
1. Difficulties in making annual goals
The core reason why the annual goal is difficult to achieve is the conflict of interest between the superior and the subordinate. Often:
1. The leaders wanted to set high targets, but they felt that they couldn't achieve it, so they looked for reasons to shirk.
2. The lower departments want to make merits, but they can build a memorial archway. The leaders disagree and suppress them all.
3. The new leader is not familiar with the situation, so he throws out the goal-setting pot first to see the limelight.
In short, it is troublesome when the ass decides the head. When the brain is working, everyone hopes that an objective and fair analysis can point the way. When the ass works, everyone starts to attack the analysis results, vowing not to stop until their goals are achieved. And data analysis happens to be easily caught between departments. That's why it is difficult to do.
What to do?
2. Basic ideas for making annual goals
Some classmates gave up resistance directly and lay flat as a prostitute: "The boss said that it is just what is it. As long as you are willing, what is your love." The last time I heard this statement was when watching the costume drama male protagonist visiting the brothel... As a professional data man, I definitely can't give up resistance directly, otherwise not only my professionalism will be lost, but also a huge hole will be left for the dismantling task later. When you are forced to use scientific methods to demonstrate the leaders’ goals of slapping their heads, you have to retreat.
The key to solving problems is to exclude uncontrollable, unmeasured, and uncalculated external factors and subjective factors. Make the objective facts clear. List the possible objections one by one, and use data to support or deny. In this way, the effect of data can be maximized, and at least one version of relatively objective basic data can be given. The rest of the departments, between the upper and lower levels, let them fight by themselves (as shown below).
How does it work? Take a look now
3. Examples of making annual goals
First of all, the annual goal must be agreed with the leader and colleagues in various departments before it can be confirmed. So don't think about doing it with an algorithm model. The process is too complicated and cannot be linked to business actions, and you will definitely be sprayed to death. At this time, you can use the hypothetical deduction method to add internal and external factors on the basis of past business trends.
The first step: make the past business trends and determine the tone for next year.
For example:
● As shown in the case 1, the business itself is in its life cycle
● As shown in the case 2, the business itself has seasonal fluctuations and is in a rising period
● As shown in the case 3, the business itself is affected by investment and has explosive growth
Once the basic trend is in place, we can set the tone for next year: expected rise, steady, and decline. And this step is supported by past data and will not be attacked.
Step 2: Add internal control factors and modify the basic trend.
Internal and external factors will affect the performance trend. When considering, give priority to internal and controllable factors. Because external factors are both difficult to quantify and uncontrollable, they can easily fall into a metaphysical war when they are drawn to the outside world.
When looking at internal factors, there are also priorities:
● Level 1: Consider the leaders' positioning for business development: expansion, conservative, and contraction.
● The second level: consider business capital and manpower input: increase, remain unchanged, and remain unchanged.
● The third level: consider the changes in technology, plans, and capabilities of the business department.
Revise the trend for next year based on the above three points.
First consider positioning, because this is the biggest weather vane. If the management has given up on the development of a business, the follow-up resources, technology, and manpower will certainly not be continuously invested. Therefore, the performance of the indicator is that the trend is worse. If you still want to continue to develop, you may invest more resources, and there will be a better situation (as shown below)
Secondly, consider the input and output, because this is the focus of the annual goal setting. The business is not afraid of high goals, but afraid of not only demanding high goals, but not giving resources. Just shouting to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy, not giving guns or bullets, this is how good. So here is the key to setting goals.
If the required target and the planned investment increase in the same proportion, it is much less difficult to set the target. As long as the growth rate is increased and the past trend is based on the same proportion, it can be doubled (or slightly increased in ROI). If the leaders require data analysts to predict the target for next year, they can also predict on the basis of the input-output ratio unchanged, and then wait for everyone to pick it up (as shown below)
This is true as long as there are no signs of ROI decline or diminishing marginal benefits. If this sign appears, you need to remind the management and business departments to pay attention: no miracle can be achieved by vigorous efforts, and technical upgrades/method updates need to be considered
The worse situation is that the increase in leadership expectations is far higher than the increase in investment. At this time, scolding wars between various departments and between superiors and superiors will be triggered. As a data analysis, there is no need to personally end the game. Instead, it provides objective data for your reference. At this time, you can list the ROI of the past months so that everyone can see: The ROI that the leader expects is full, partial, and occasionally exceeding the overall level (as shown below).
As for whether the business can change its fate and whether it can magnify the advantages, it is a question for them to think about. At this time, the problem of inaccurate data prediction was successfully transformed into whether the business has the ability to do well. Data can only assess objective conditions, and cannot measure people's initiative in advance. Data analysts can watch the quarrel between business departments at this time, and just wait for the conclusion to revise the data.
With the first two steps, the discussion of the third step is a matter of course. In fact, the business department rarely accepts: "The boss doesn't give input, I think of super technology to turn things around." So the discussion in the second step is the focus.
After completing the second step, the annual target has a basic shape (as shown below)
Step 3: Consider external factors and adjust the performance trend line.
Unless the industry is faced with overwhelming changes in regulatory policies and the overall situation, internal control factors will be given priority. External factors are more of a reference for chattering. For example:
1. Weak industry growth: need to collect market capacity data
2. Major actions by opponents: need gossip + opponents’ performance trends
3. Major changes in policies and regulations: need gossip + observation of past policy effects
In short, the above factors are difficult to quantify directly, so it depends more on whether there is really data support and whether to prepare additional contingency plans for them. When doing routine tasks and goals, it is still based on internal factors.
But what is interesting is that in 2020 and 2021, external links will be major issues! The travel restrictions caused by the new crown, declining consumption power, and industry involution are so obvious that the trend line of almost all industries is different from history.
In this case, making New Year’s plans can only rely on patting your head to a greater extent, just like no one can say now, where will a few more cases pop up? Will there be mandatory restrictions on the Spring Festival? At this time, when making annual goals, you can use the data in the recovery period from July to September last year as a reference, and then make a backup plan.
Four, summary
The annual mission goal is itself a process of consensus among various departments. Therefore, the data is of greater significance as a reference. It is necessary to leave enough room for inter-departmental discussions to clearly list the problems and topics. If the leaders require: Put aside business considerations, first predict the possible natural growth in the future, then you can make a model to predict, as a benchmark value. In short, the method follows the purpose, and the best method is suitable for the current business scenario.
In addition to setting goals, assigning goals is also a common problem. If you are interested, pay attention to the official account [Ground Qi School]. We will continue to share the main points of decomposing goals. Stay tuned.
The down-to-earth teacher Chen, master of mathematics science, business management from 985 universities, data science management expert, has 11 years of rich experience as data director and senior consultant.
Served large enterprises such as Ping An Bank, China Guangfa Bank, Tencent, and created online and offline integrated digital transformation solutions for traditional enterprises such as Vinda Paper, Overseas Chinese Town, Guangqi Honda, and World Union Real Estate.
The creator of the public account [Grounding Qi Academy] has independently launched a series of data analysis courses, which has more than 20,000 students and is well received.