A number people are expected to reach, arrived at by rounding up last year, explained to nobody. It changes what your team does every night, and almost no venue can say where it came from.

Somewhere there is a number people are expected to reach. A weekly figure, a monthly one, a count of something.

⚠️ Ask where it came from and the usual answer is that it is roughly last year plus a bit. ⭕ That number is changing what your team does every night, and it was never really decided.

⚠️ What this page cannot tell you

⛔ Whether you may set a target at all, what may depend on reaching it, what happens to pay if somebody does not, and how any of it must be documented are employment law questions with specific answers where you are.

⛔ This page recommends no target and takes no view on any arrangement. ⭕ Ask an employment adviser before setting one, changing one, or attaching anything to it.

⭕ What follows is the operational half: whether the number is reachable, whether it points at the right thing, and whether anybody can explain it.

Where the number usually comes from

Four origins, and none of them is analysis.

Last year, rounded up

⇒ ⭕ The most common by far. ⚠️ It embeds every condition of last year — the staffing, the trade, the weather — into a figure that will be applied to a different year.

A number somebody heard elsewhere

⭕ From another venue, a former manager, a supplier. ⚠️ ⭕ Their room, their prices and their trade are not yours, and the number carries all of that with it.

The figure that makes the budget work

⚠️ ⭕ Set backwards from what the business needs, which is a legitimate way to plan and a poor way to set a target. ⭕ Needing a number does not make it reachable.

And a number that was once reached by one person

⇒ ⭕ Somebody had an exceptional run and it became the standard. ⚠️ ⭕ An outlier turned into an expectation is the most demoralising of the four.

⇒ The Standard That Only Exists In Your Head

What an unreachable number does

⭕ It does not produce more effort. It produces four other things.

People stop aiming at it

⚠️ ⭕ A number nobody has ever hit stops being a target and becomes decoration. ⭕ Everybody keeps working; nothing is aimed anywhere.

The people closest to it feel worst

⇒ ⭕ Somebody at 90% of an impossible figure fails every week. ⚠️ ⭕ They are usually your strongest person, and they are the one being told they fell short.

⇒ Why Your Best Staff Leave in Month Four

It gets reached the wrong way

⛔ ⚠️ Any number can be hit if the method is unconstrained. ⭕ Pushing what the guest did not want, or against their interest, reaches the figure and costs you the guest.

⇒ The Guest Who Always Asks For A Discount

And it stops being mentioned

⭕ Managers quietly stop bringing it up because the conversation is unpleasant. ⚠️ ⭕ At that point it is doing nothing at all except sitting there.

What a number points at

⭕ This matters more than the level, and it is decided by accident.

A total points at volume

⇒ ⭕ Whatever is counted is what people will produce more of. ⚠️ ⭕ If it counts sales and nothing else, that is what you will get — including the sales you would rather not have.

A per-guest figure points at the guest

⭕ It rewards making one visit better rather than making more visits happen. ⚠️ These are different behaviours and the number decides which one you get.

⇒ The Average Spend That Is Not An Average

A returning-guest figure points at next month

⇒ ⭕ Slower, harder to game, and closest to what the business actually needs. ⚠️ ⭕ Almost nobody uses it, because it takes longer to move and cannot be seen nightly.

⇒ What a Regular Is Actually Worth

And a number with no ceiling points at exhaustion

⚠️ ⭕ A figure that rises every time it is met teaches people that hitting it produces a harder target. ⭕ They will pace accordingly, and they are right to.

The five questions before setting one

⛔ Ask your adviser first about whether and how. These are the operational ones.

Has anybody actually reached it

⭕ Not could-in-theory. Has somebody, in the last year, in this room. ⚠️ ⭕ If nobody has, it is not a target — it is a statement about the future.

What share of people reach it

⇒ ⭕ If it is nobody, it is unreachable. If it is everybody, it is not doing anything. ⭕ Somewhere between is where a number does work.

Can somebody influence it

⚠️ ⭕ A target that depends mostly on how busy the room is measures the room, not the person. ⭕ People know this immediately, whatever they are told.

What happens when it is missed

⛔ ⚠️ This is the question that turns it from a measure into something else — take advice before attaching anything to it at all.

And can the person explain it

⇒ ⭕ If they cannot state how it is calculated, they cannot aim at it. ⚠️ ⭕ This is the same failure as an unexplained share of earnings.

⇒ The Split Nobody Has Explained

What tends to work better

Four alternatives, all cheaper than a number nobody reaches.

Show the figure without attaching anything

⇒ The Weekly Number Your Staff Never See

Set the target against the person's own trend

⭕ Better than last month, for them. ⚠️ ⭕ Everybody can reach it and nobody starts from an impossible distance.

Count something slower

⇒ ⭕ Returning guests, requests by name, a monthly figure. ⭕ Harder to game, and it points at the thing you actually want.

And name the method, not only the number

⚠️ ⭕ "Reach it this way" is a target. "Reach it" is an instruction with the method left out, and the method is where the damage happens.

⇒ The Rules You Enforce Only Sometimes

Reviewing one that already exists

⭕ You almost certainly have one. This is how to look at it.

Count who reached it, for six months

⇒ ⭕ A simple tally. ⚠️ ⭕ If it is nobody, the number has been decoration for six months and everybody knew except the person who set it.

Ask three people how it is calculated

⭕ Three different answers means it is not a shared target, whatever is written down.

Look at what got worse while it was being met

⚠️ ⭕ Repeat visits, complaints, the people who left. ⛔ ⭕ A number met at the cost of the next month is not a number met.

⇒ The Two Weeks Before Someone Quits

And decide whether it is still the right thing to count

⇒ ⭕ Conditions change and the number rarely does. ⭕ Reviewing it on a date is the whole discipline.

⇒ The Report You Open Every Monday

What good looks like

The origin test

Ask where the number came from. ⇒ A reason means it was set. "It's always been that" means it was inherited.

The reach test

⚠️ Count how many people reached it last month. Nobody means unreachable; everybody means inert.

The explanation test

Working     — three people describe the calculation the same way
Not working — three answers, and the written one is a fourth

Three to hold

1  Whatever is counted is what you get more of — including what you did not want
2  Nobody reaching it means it is decoration; everybody reaching it means it is inert
3  A number met at the cost of next month is not a number met

Where the record has to sit

The figure, where it came from, who has reached it and how often, and what else moved while it was being pursued — with the other operating records rather than in a manager's head. ⛔ Settle with your adviser whether you may set one and what may depend on it before anything else. Kept there, you can see within six months whether it is reachable and whether it is pointing at the right thing. Kept nowhere, a figure inherited from a different year quietly directs what your team does every night, and the person closest to reaching it is the one you are most likely to lose.