Last week we began a mini-series on how to create goals that your teams will actually accomplish. I began to outline the importance of making a goal influenceable, predictable and measurable to increase engagement with teams and employees. 

I wanted to share with you today, the foundational framework of effective goal setting within teams:

Clarify

It requires teams and organisations to:

Define the vision - What is the over-arching reason or purpose from which we are executing this goal?

Identify the top priority - What exactly are we setting out to achieve?

Clarify the vision… or the WHY

When you think of great leaders and organisations, who comes to mind? Perhaps Lincoln, Walt Disney, Martin Luther King? What about Apple, Zappos or Google?

All great organisations start with paramount thinking of ‘WHY.’ They pursue an ideal future before they set out defining a strategy. The ‘why’ in all human beings drives all ‘how’. The purpose must precede the goal or objectives. This is a super important point in creating organisational clarity and employee commitment.

All employees are seeking to obtain meaning and need a sense that they are progressing in their job, serving a mission that’s bigger than themselves.

“A report by Gallup demonstrates that 63% of employees today are ‘not engaged’ and 24% are ‘actively disengaged’ in their jobs. This essentially means that 87% of employees have no passion for their work, lack motivation to get the job done, and are unhappy” - FORBES

Creating a stronger purpose for the business gives a renewed sense of passion and direction for each of those within the company and ultimately affects the customers and the products.

Possible challenges:

The current leadership model is outdated. On a fundamental level, the culture is heavily invested in “ME” (self interest) instead of “We” (a community with a shared responsibility).

Time has not been taken to assess the organisation’s current purpose and direction. Amidst the whirlwind of strategy and busyness of the company it’s easy to be moving fast, but not necessarily deep.

“If you as a leader cry “Lets go forward!” you’d better know where you are going”- Brendon Burchard

Clarify the strategy… or the WHAT

The stepping-stone of the vision will be the goals, objectives and strategies to reach it.

Possible challenges:

Having too many priorities in any given time leads to dilution and distraction of what’s most important. Based on the law of diminishing returns, at some point the number of goals or KPIs put forward will become too many. Instead of enhancing productivity, it will actually inhibit it. Announcing an abundance of goals and prioritizing more than 1 to 2, leads to goals and objectives being executed in a mediocre way, if actually accomplished at all.

Questions to consider:

1. Is there a pressing need, a vision that provides direction on creating outcome-based goals - activity with a theme and purpose for the long term or simply activity-based goals - narrow sited activity that seems attractive or financially viable for the short term?

2. What is your team looking to achieve in the next 12 months? How well does your team take gigantic vision and turn it into bite size goals that are influenceable, predictable and measurable?

3. Have there been challenges with communication in your team in working together towards outcomes? Perhaps working with different personality styles in the group or employees who don’t respond to your style of communication?

Would love to hear from you…