jen briggs

In a meeting, we were discussing how few people set goals, and I’m wondering why???

I’ve heard myriad excuses in my time – the most common is that people don’t have time. Another is a small-minded excuse that front-line jobs just need to get tasks done, and goals are not a consideration for certain types of work. The most insidious reason for nonuse is that goals are a tedious tool of bureaucracy. But, peel apart those reasons, and it isn’t the goals that are tedious – it’s that prioritization and development of human ingenuity inside a firm is a weakness. In reality, people with good goals are more productive, and goals are part of a well-run performance management process.

More specifically, my theory for misuse or underuse of goals is that we’ve taken too many shortcuts. We spend too little time writing too many bad goals. But, goals, when used well, support progress.

Let’s consider some fundamental mismanagement issues:

Timing

We’ve been brainwashed into setting goals by a calendar year. That’s not how growth works. Fiscal years are how financials are reported, taxes paid, etc. New Year’s Eve goals are utter failures. But, human progress doesn’t consider the fiscal year – that’s not how growth works. Goal setting, even in the work context, is a personal experience. There are some best practices but no rules. The best practice on timing is to do what the business needs and what you can do. If a person is new at a task or goal, they may need more compressed timelines and more milestones or touchstones to guide them through learning. More abstract plans will have subgoals and will be long-term. No matter how you look at it, goal setting is a tool to help drive personal and business performance. The objective is not the goal. The goal is there to drive the objective. Also, most goals are additive and focus on what we will do more of. Some goals should be about what we will stop doing and by when.

We can’t find time. We can’t make time. But we can prioritize it. 

Understanding

Simon Sinek has made popular finding our why. Goal setting is no different. Goals need to be motivating. Yes, we all have sucky goals and un-fun tasks, but they should serve a higher purpose. I’ve had some bad jobs, but they served a role in the arc of my life. When I was a maid at a truck-stop hotel, I was highly motivated for my $3ish/hr wage. Why? My daughter needed things. And, in that moment, my role in cleaning other people’s messes served the purpose of being a provider. The M in SMART is about your why. Why is it motivating to you? The motivational aspect of goal development will help you stay on track when the going gets rough. Each of us is a unique combination of competencies, traits, experiences, skills, and knowledge. The context of a goal needs to consider these things to make them useful. We need to understand why. 

Planning

There will never be a perfect plan. Goals serve to give structure and clarity to our road ahead. Some goal-setters get too rigid around the S in SMART. COVID19 has changed our lives, and as much as people hope to get back to normal, hope is not a plan. Normal is gone, and our perception of change is forever altered. The S in SMART needs to be directional toward success but cannot be so rigid as to close off our peripheral vision in scoping out risks and opportunities. 

Hope is not a plan. But, you can’t have a plan without hope.

Long-term organizational planning used to be five years. Now, it is two to three years or shorter, given the various impacts on your business – inflation protection, growth drivers, valuation challenges, choice changes, workforce planning, etc. Individual goal planning should have been 12-16 weeks, but now it is likely 4-12 weeks. Planning has changed. Some roles in organizations will be disruptors. These functions work on different timelines. Others are about quality and consistency and may have more stability and longer horizons. The bottom line: planning is based on strategy, and strategy is based on vision. They are not rudimental based on a calendar.

Informed

Goals need to be developed based on an individual’s development level and the needs of an organization. Far too many people are developing goals based on job descriptions. In our modern world, job descriptions still fill a purpose, primarily when recruiting. After hiring, the individual can shape the position and stretch toward the role of organizational citizen. Employees can and should make more independent decisions, develop autonomy, coordinate more with others, and collaborate for brighter ideas. Better goals will be informed through business literacy [yes, OBM] and development level on various tasks and goals. Goals can easily and quickly become a bureaucratic exercise when a more holistic viewpoint does not inform them. Far too many goals focus on quantitative change because we can measure it, not questioning whether we should be measuring it. Informed goals also include qualitative progress that drives behaviors that result in higher performance.

I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize that our biases should also inform goals. Goals can help us frame our work to become better people with more objective, soundly-rooted perspectives.

Demanding

Goals help with accountability; bottom line. For that reason, goals have inadvertently become a tool for monitoring deficiency and not allowing for failure. A suite of goals demands performance from us, leading to punitive consequences. Sometimes consequences are a good thing. High-performance companies have a symbiotic relationship with high-performing people in conditions where winning is important, but so is psychological safety. When goals support accountability, goals should advertently become a tool for growth. On the spectrum of failure, some actions warrant harsh consequences, and others warrant high praise. Monitoring is one thing. Choosing how to react to monitoring is another.

There will be people who are more inclined to write goals and others not. We always need to question our inclinations and move toward intention and impact. Every day, I have tasks that I need to complete on my whiteboard. Every week I have things I want to accomplish. Every several months, I have objectives I strive for. Every year I have a vision that I reaffirm.

A goal is simply the objective of a person’s ambition or effort. 

Don’t forget the saying … “If you do not have goals, you are doomed forever to work for those who do” (attributed to several people). But, that is an old convention that assumed organizations would be only hierarchical. There is a reality of daily habits, tasks, and meetings. However, in advanced organizations, we also know that are networked and coordinate and collaborate daily. In a volatile and changing world, we will build better. We can change the paradigm of static jobs to be a portfolio of goals. We can be a part of a culture that levels up our capacity and soulfulness and builds corporate value. We can inspire one another and use that energy of inspiration to distinguish ourselves for our customers and to our marketplace. 

The future is not just for the lucky few. The future can be for the ambitious many.