Fran, try this as a starting point: “a performance target is a level of performance we are aiming to reach in the future.” This is from my blog post https://www.staceybarr.com/measure-up/what-are-benchmarks-baselines-targets-and-standards/
We want to avoid targets being about numbers to hit each week or month or year. The best targets are ones that describe a level of performance that is better than we are currently able to produce, with whatever process design or resource levels we currently have. Great targets inspire us to lift that level of performance, by improving or streamlining or redesigning our processes or resource use.
And targets need to give us time for that change to happen. So good targets are set for the future, and we use XmR charts to visualise our progress toward that future. We look for signals in the XmR chart to tell us we are indeed changing performance, and that we’re doing it fast enough to reach our target by the date we set it for in the future.
And we need to watch out for the psychology of targets too. Missing a target is not a bad thing, because we either lifted performance at least somewhat higher than it was, or we learned about the type of change that doesn’t work. And we then set a new target and try again.
And a bunch more on targets here: https://www.staceybarr.com/?s=targets
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