GOALS MANAGEMENT – USING
GOALS TO IMPROVE TEAMWORK
AND PERFORMANCE
Goal Clarity Increases Likelihood of
Top Performance by Four Fold
Organizational performance is
governed by how well people
communicate. Paradoxically, as
organizations succeed, they grow
faster – and their ability to
communicate becomes more
difficult. The chart at the right
shows why. A team that grows from
three to 25 people increases by
eight fold – but the number of possible communication paths increases 117 fold! Simply put,
most organizations outgrow their own ability to execute.
The ability to define clear goals helps cut through this complexity. Research from Bersin by
Deloitte states that organizations with a high level of goal clarity are four times more likely to
have strong business outcomes. Goal setting matters!
Responding to Change
The ability to set goals and manage them is an essential tool for managing change.
Organizations are subject to change at an unprecedented pace. Externally, change is driven by
many factors organizations can’t control, such as technology, competitors, and other market
forces. Internally, change is driven by innovation, growth, employee demographics, and other
dynamics.
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Change requires effective and
timely adjustments in priorities –
and priorities that people can
adjust to. Good goals will clarify
what is to be done, when, and by
whom. Organizations that do not
have a system for defining,
agreeing on, communicating, and
managing goals are at a severe
disadvantage to those that have
this capability.
Agility Vs. Firefighting
The ability to define what needs to be done and
then manage getting it done is a skill every
team member should have – not just top
leadership. The scope and time horizons of
each individual’s responsibility will vary by job
level, but the necessity to adjust priorities to
circumstances and to separate the important
from the urgent is everybody’s everyday job.
Good goal setting is a unique human trait for
envisioning a desired future and agreeing to
work toward that future. Without good
communication and clarity, the culture breaks down into
an unproductive “firefighting” environment.
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Alignment Up, Down, and Across
We wish goal setting were as easy as starting at the top and then breaking goals down in
succeeding levels. That is part of the story. But in all organizations, much of the work is cross
functional. In fact, most things that customers value are a result of cross-functional
collaboration. The ability to define goals using a common language and approach greatly
reduces the friction involved in building collaboration, not only within a department but
especially among large cross-functional projects, committees, or process teams. In addition, it
helps bridge the communication gaps that occur vertically in an organization.
Bottom line? Without good goal setting, organizational complexity overwhelms
communication effectiveness.
Plans are nothing. Planning is everything (sustaining goal clarity).
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Making Goals Matter
Every human being seems to have an innate desire to engage in something meaningful,
whether at home or at work. As organizations grow, however, it becomes easier and easier to
become disconnected with what individuals are doing and how their activity ties into the
organization. And since what the organization is doing changes, that disconnect results in
resistance to change, which eventually results in individual and collective disenfranchisement.
The formation and management of goals is a significant tool for helping people go through
what we call the “engagement cycle” (or change management cycle). Capturing the hearts and
minds of people requires that they understand what is being proposed, why it is important,
and that they have to the skills and training to fully engage. This is just an alternate way of
looking at what is involved in defining and executing a goal.
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Creating Organizational Agility
through Frequent Goal Reviews
and Revisions
A proven approach for making your organization more responsive and receptive to change is
to introduce an organization-wide framework for reviewing, revising, and tracking goals. This
framework builds an organizational rhythm that fosters regular communication and creates
accountability for knowing the status of goals and what needs to be done next
The Six Disciplines program is built on the principle embodied by President Dwight Eisenhower
who said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” In other words, the value of
producing a plan is the understanding produced by the collaboration required to produce the
plan. The plan itself is usually out of date by the time it’s produced. The Six Disciplines
program is deeply rooted in creating a culture of communication, collaboration, and teamwork
by regularly reviewing and revising plans. Not for the purpose of produce more plans, but to
increase understanding and agile response to changing conditions.
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Strengthen Teamwork through Social
Goal Setting and Collaboration
Almost all work in an organization gets done by groups of
people. If you are working alone, you may get by with fuzzy
definitions of what you are trying to do. But with a group, it
is impossible for people to work together effectively without
a shared understanding of what the group is trying to
accomplish. Effective teamwork is enhanced by much shared
(social) interaction in the forming and executing goals. This
not only makes the group more efficient, it leverages the
differences of the team and provides peer accountability and
motivation that can only occur when doing things
“together.” Good goals are essential to this process.
Five Keys to Successful
Goal Setting and Execution
Clarify the Goal-Setting Process
Get agreement and train everyone on how goals are defined and managed, including the
overall process for strategic plans, department, and individual and cross-functional plans.
Simplicity Vs. Goals Gone Wild
Don’t set too many goals. One error we frequently notice is that teams and individuals
create too many goals. We recommend boiling down your project list (for example) to the
“vital few” goals, which we define as your top-three goals.
Frequent Review and Revision
Review and revise plans frequently. Research confirms that organizations with the
discipline to review and revise plans more frequently (e.g., quarterly or monthly)
outperform organizations that only review their plans annually.
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Grow plan building skills
Invest in equipping everyone with the ability to know how to define goals and plans. This is
a basic organization-wide skill for getting everyone on the same page.
Grow plan execution skills
Invest in equipping everyone with the ability to know how to manage goals and plans once
these have been created. Plans are never “right”; their greatest value is shared
understanding. The process of working the plan is what maintains that shared
understanding.
OKRs – Objectives and Key Results
“OKR” is a term that originally described a specific approach to defining a goal. It was coined at
Intel years ago, and it encourages the discipline of separating a qualitative statement of
objective, such as “Great Launch of our Product Line X,” from a clear statement of “key
results” for that objective, for example, “1,000 new customer within 90 days of launch” or “X
social media hits by xx/XX/XX.” We generically refer to this process as goal setting to avoid
introducing terminology that varies from organization to organization. The bottom is that,
whether you use the term OKRs, or some other term, such as goals, objectives, outcomes, or
KPIs, in the end, clarity and alignment requires a clear indication of the results of any goal.
Building Stronger Managers
to Performance Coach and
Develop Your Teams
Much more important than goal tracking software is the expertise required to define clear
goals and to understand how to manage those goals in a team-driven environment. Frontline
managers need to develop appropriate performance coaching skills to help their team
members set clear objectives and work together to complete them.
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Rapidly-changing organizations require
collaborative teams that understand what
needs to be accomplished and what kind of
innovating thinking it will take to get the work
done. This requires a different type of
leadership, from top to bottom – an agile,
performance-coaching culture, not the
traditional command-and-control supervisory
culture of old.
Six Disciplines software support mobile goal
tracking with leadership development and
execution management processes that help
your team managers be more effective.
Why Six Disciplines?
Six Disciplines is unique in managing the goal-setting process because it is an excellence
program that supplements goals setting with a strategy execution methodology, professional
on-site coaching, and integrated leadership development. All these capabilities will not be
needed upfront, but the fact that they are available when you need them and designed to
integrate seamlessly with goal management will save you time and money in the future.
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Next Steps
To quote Stephen Covey, the next step is “to seek to understand.” The best way for you to do
that is to have a discovery phone conversation with one our Six Disciplines Certified Coaches
so we can understand your needs and answer your questions. Our promise to you is that after
we understand your situation, we will tell you with all honesty whether our organizational
excellence program is a good fit for your organization.
Copyright © 2016 Six Disciplines. All rights reserved.
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