Setting clear and bold targets has become part of leadership 101. We take it for granted that the first action for anyone taking over the helm of a business or team is to state or re-state targets. The rise of “management by objectives” in the 1970s drove the initial focus on target-setting and, in line with shoulder pads and lapel width, the 1990s saw a shift in management culture to ‘bigger is always better’. In 1994 Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote their highly influential best seller Built to Last. In it, they memorably wrote of the power of BHAGs – big, hairy, audacious goals. Targets were no longer for hitting but represented something bigger, a longer-term vision of the future.

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The average career length is 50 years, and according to Gallup’s State of The Global Workplace report, during this time only 1 in 10 people are actively engaged. This illustrates that within the current landscape there is a need for companies to actively pursue strategies to better engage their employees. Embedding empathy in working culture is one way of achieving actively-engaged workers but it also has the added benefit of increasing productivity and business growth. This was revealed by a piece in the Harvard Business Review, which highlighted the top ten most empathetic companies outperformed the bottom ten by at least 50 percent in productivity, earnings and growth. (more…)