Zero is a terrible target that destroys culture and morale.

When I hear about companies and their zero targets it makes me shudder, I feel sorry for the people involved in the organisation knowing that they can never succeed. It doesn't matter if you call it a target or a goal, zero means zero.

According to the merriam-webster dictionary, Zero is "the absence of all magnitude and quantity", in other words it's empty. It also says it's the absence of measurable quantity, which I really quite like and something I continually raise in my arguments against a zero target. Make no mistake, setting a zero target can have a devastating impact on the performance of your organisation, it's culture and it's morale.

A Zero target is a cop out

Setting a zero target is a bit of a cop out, isn't it? There isn't any analysis required, there is no reviewing of data, trends, no need to understand the underlying causes or factors involved, you just want zero.

It's a nice blanket easily rolled out marketing phrase, "we want to have zero" insert KPI name here "this year". It certainly makes for great marketing posters and easy speeches, but really there isn't much in the way of reality behind it is there?

If you ask someone to justify their zero target, what tends to come out is a string of statements with very little substance in the way of real tangible data, but it's often phrased in a way that is designed to suggest you are a horrible person if you are willing to accept anything other than zero.

Great examples of the zero targets are of course "Zero harm", "Zero injuries", "Zero Lost Time Injuries (LTI)","Zero non-conformances", "Zero customer complaints", "Zero downtime", Zero Waste and the ever-growing in popularity "Net Zero".

The impact of Zero on your culture and morale

About 12 years ago, I was involved in a rather robust conversation with the head of Health & Safety at a company I worked for at the time. The entire leadership team were round the table talking about the targets we would set at a leadership level and then cascade them down to our teams. The H&S target was simple, she said, it's zero harm, anything else just says we are willing to hurt people. Most people round the table rightly took offence to that comment, but she stood firm. 

Nope, we are not going to plan to hurt people on my watch, which was another great emotional dig. The reality was that the previous year we had managed to half the number of accidents we had had on site and from the number of serious and lost time accidents by 75% but were still hurting people. Rather than going out with a message that we had made great strides but still had a way to go, it was again target zero.

That's when I probably put my foot in it, I asked, so are we going to remove every bit of paper from the company?... she looked at me blankly, because we know that paper is by far the leading cause of paper cuts in the company and well, a cut is an injury so if we want to have zero we need to remove the cause so let's get rid of paper. I was of course being a little flippant, which she rightly pointed out, but the point was that zero was an impossible target. The minute someone cut their finger on a bit of paper, the target is lost. If you are in a company of 50 or 100 or 500 or more people, someone will get a paper cut and so your target is gone.

Zero LTI's is another great one, this often results in people who have been hurt being rushed back to work in a different role o 'light duties' to avoid the dreaded LTI number. What not report restricted days working as well if LTI reporting is so important?

What does that do to respect for your target? If everyone knows it's an impossible target, will they truly pay attention and get invested in it? No, they won't, and if they aren't invested then you are not going to drive any improvement, just disillusionment.

Zero targets drives fear and reporting underground. If I do have a small accident, will I report it if I know it's going to pop the target? What about zero non-conformances? Will things get reported, opportunities for improvements be found or raised if we say we don't want any? What message is that sending to the business?

These zero targets result in one thing, people nodding and saying well, that's pointless, how will we ever achieve that! Then they go back to what they were doing.

What about Net-Zero targets for your environmental approach? Net Zero is good, right? No, it's not! Net Zero is an accounting approach to carbon. If you produce 8000 tonnes of carbon from your operation this year (and we mean everything from your raw material supply chain to managing your packaging waste) then you can offset that by use of any carbon capture or carbon credit you like and hey presto you are net-zero. You have still put 8000 tonnes of carbon out that will absolutely have an impact.

If your offset is a forest in Greenland and you are in New Zealand, does it help? If your 8000 tonnes of CO2 is in a very small targeted area, how does that offset really help? What about the other greenhouse gasses and pollutants that you can't 'off set'? Don't get me wrong offsetting is better than nothing, but it's a shell game and doesn't really drive down your CO2 or other green house gas emissions, because, well, it's off set, so we are all good right? No, and your team sees this as well, they understand that you're still pushing out CO2, and it's not declining, so how can they trust that or any other metric you put up?

The reality is your people even if they don't appear to be are paying attention to your numbers, and they are, are making judgements on them. They are deciding if you are to pay lip service to something, if you are really invested in improving things, or if you are just playing at it and pushing out sound bites and platitudes.

They know that if your target is zero and their pay is linked to it then they are screwed, why would they try? Why would they stay? Equally, what would they say about your organisation to others when they are asked?

Setting your goal at a zero target creates unrealistic expectations and pressures on your employees, that leads to a really unhealthy working environment and undue stress (which actually would blow out your zero harm target anyway).

Set real targets

If you want to drive improvement in anything, then the very first thing you need to do is to admit, and publicly admit, where you are. What is the current reality. You must think about the things that are driving that result, what are the leading indicators that generate your KPI or target, those are the areas to focus on. What are the trends within those indicators, are they going up, down, static, are they statistically in or out of control?

Once you understand what you are grappling with, you can ask really hard questions about your organisation and be honest with everyone. There are limitations on every organisation, capacity, skills, environmental, political and financial ones, these all need to be factored in. That way, you can really set a target that it is possible (not easy) to meet.

It means you understand the levers that you must play with, and you can talk about them and get people involved in understanding them, they can help you set the target and help you deliver the improvements.

Be clear about the improvement or change in target you want, we want to go from X % to y % by this date, we want to have an X% improvement by this date which is measured by... giving crystal clear clarity about the change you want is important and helps everyone get involved.

Setting real targets mean you need to be a leader; it means your team are invested and are going to help you go after it. They are engaged, and engagement is the key to changing the world.