Sorry we missed you!

If music be the food of love…play on.

It’s a beautiful line because it understands something timeless about humans, when something nourishes our soul, we want more of it. Connection, harmony, peace.

Now let’s bring that line into a very modern, very commercial reality.

If targets be the food of sales… don’t overload.

Recently, the road we live on has been closed at one end, meaning a diversion. 

On three separate deliveries, form three separate orders, each one gave us the “sorry we missed you” text. Even thought I had left instructions to “leave in a safe place” When I called to say I was home the next delivery had an :unable to deliver” with a picture of the road closed sign.

Finally when a package was delivered and I managed to speak to the driver, he explained that he was already over his “delayed and undeliverable quota the day before so just added to it”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth many delivery companies don’t want to face: targets don’t motivate. They fuel the drivers behaviour and when you over-fuelled, especially with the wrong petrol or diesel, it doesn’t create performance – it creates burnout, corner-cutting and quiet disengagement. Or how I would describe it as the “quiet-quitting” (59% of the workforce according to the Gallup report State of the Global Workforce 20203)

No role shows this more clearly than courier and delivery drivers.

On paper, the logic seems acceptable –  more drops. BUT, this means tighter windows., higher daily delivery targets, this then leads to missed drops, speeding drivers, inefficient service and higher complaints.  Because speed does NOT equal efficiency.

Humans aren’t spreadsheets and drivers aren’t robots. They’re people navigating traffic, weather, customer emotion, technology glitches and let’s face it, their own energy levels and all at the same time.

From a Human Behaviour lens, this is where things unravel.

Targets activate different responses depending on personality, values and context. For some drivers, especially those wired for pace and achievement, targets can feel like a game to win. For others, particularly those who value stability, fairness or pride in doing a job properly, constant target increase feels like a moving goalpost they can never quite reach. Same target. Completely different internal experience.

And here’s that truth bomb – when targets tip from sustainable to stretch into strain, human behaviour changes.

Drivers stop taking breaks because stopping feels like failure. Safety becomes negotiable because “just one more drop” feels necessary. Customer service shifts from connection to transaction. This is not because people don’t care, but because overload narrows thinking. Under pressure, the human brain goes into survival mode, not service excellence.

This is where many organisations (not just delivery companies) unintentionally sabotage their own brand.

They say they want reliability, safety and customer service / trust. But the behavioural message drivers receive is: numbers matter more than humans. Over time, that message always wins. Culture is driven by the leadership behaviours, not values on a poster on the boardroom wall.

There’s also a myth worth challenging here and that is “removing or softening targets will reduce performance.” In reality, the opposite is often true. When targets are designed with human capacity in mind, i.e., factoring in the route variability, real-life obstacles and recovery time, drivers don’t slow down, they stabilise. Consistency improves, errors drop and retention rises. Suddenly, performance becomes sustainable again, instead of strained.

The smartest organisations are starting to shift the question from “How many deliveries can we squeeze out of a day?” to “What conditions allow drivers to perform well day after day?” That’s a very different conversation and one rooted in behaviour, not bravado.

So yes, targets still matter, they give direction, create focus and set clear priorities.

But just like music, the beat, the quality AND the volume matters.

Too quiet with a tinny sounding beat and there’s no energy.

Too loud and sassy beat,  it becomes noise people want to escape.

If targets are the food of sales, especially in courier and delivery environments, leaders must learn when to play on and when to turn the dial down. Because performance isn’t about how much pressure you can apply. It’s about how well you understand the humans carrying the load. 👑