Hard setting goals is
Setting goals is really difficult to do well!
Note: this is a patchwork of experiences and not any individual callouts, though the timeliness of it is inspired by Leda Glyptis #LedaWrites on goal setting season!
We’ve all been there — the new strategy and goals are presented and you’re confused and uninspired trying to figure out what exactly it is you’re trying to achieve, other than, well, everything!
I want it all
I want it all
I want it all
And I want it now
Without shamelessly piggy-backing on a theme already expertly explored by Leda, summed in a way that I’m sure does no justice to the original, the three points for success when setting goals are — a single, energising + achievable, consciously-set goal.
This has been percolating in my mouse wheel brain for the last couple weeks. I 100% agree, but there’s something else that’s been an itch I couldn’t quite reach until it clicked. Bare with me.
There’s something that’s always bugged me about frameworks.
Guidelines, textbooks, methods, methodologies, John from Finance’s suggestions.
They don’t include a simple fact that’s often implied but never explained — implementing these things well can be really, really hard!
I might do something wider on frameworks in general in future, but focusing right now on goals — goal setting is a really difficult thing to do, well… well.
Whether it’s the strategy, the alignment, the collaboration, the communication, the ‘cascading’, or just literally being capable of articulating things in a readable way — it’s a multitude of skills.
One that too many who are asked to set goals are not actually super skilled in.
This isn’t a slight. It’s not a dig. I’m not shitting on anyone. And it’s not to say they can’t do it — the point is the difference between good enough and great. It’s a hard truth — we’re all asked to do things we’re not good at every day. It’s the nature of the professional world we live in.
Think about that amazing Senior Engineer or Business Analyst or Ops Lead who was promoted into a ‘management’ position with no training, coaching or support and expected to do a totally different job while also continuing to do their existing one.
More often than not, this is the genesis of your organisation’s goal-setting. The thing is, Strategy & Performance Measurement & Management are whole sets of skills that some people give their entire lives to understand and excel in.
But you do it because you’re supposed to and some leadership working group comes together and fires in a couple poorly aligned and loftily-worded ambitions into a spreadsheet and calls it done while they get on with their actual job.
Now, this story isn’t to argue whether or not that is their job, but more that often people aren’t appropriately equipped to do their roles well. Not that they can’t do them at all. Well. There are chasms between ‘is done’, ‘is good enough’, and ‘is great’ or ‘done well’. And the former can often cause more damage than good.
So to be able to achieve a great standard of a single, energising and achievable, consciously-set goal, you need to have at least some skill or capability in setting goals in the first place.
Anyone can set a goal. It’s easy. MAKE MORE MONEY. Simples.
But it’s not actually that easy. As self-evident by the many poorly-set goals in circulation.
It takes a lot of effort.
And time.
To do this well, it takes effort, time, and dedication.
It’s not a quick one-and-done on a Friday “away day” (in the office) where you try to out-ambitious each other.
But we don’t usually give it the time it deserves, despite, ironically, goals invariably being delivered late by SLT.
It takes some hard thought.
It’s not just a continuation of the previous goal because you couldn’t think of anything better to write. It takes time and space to think purposefully about specific goals amidst the contemporaneous context within which the goals are set.
It takes focus.
Your goals are not your roadmap.
It’s not your deliverables. It’s not your outputs. It’s not a to-do list. It’s not business-as-usual. It’s not just describing the outcomes of what you were going to do anyway. Your goals shouldn’t just read like “Do my job for the next 12 months”.
They should clearly articulate what you need to achieve to drive the business forward and be just as explicit on what you’re not going to do.
It takes alignment.
It’s not just “MAKE MORE MONEY” over and over — it should actually be aligned to a cogent and coherent strategy. I can’t reiterate this enough — GOALS + STRATEGY = When 2 become 1. You cannot have an effective one without the other. They are the sum of their parts.
It takes understanding of cause and effect.
Look, I’m biased. I was trained on the Balanced Scorecard and it’s had an effect on my worldview. So let me make it as clear as I can:
Financial goals are outcomes of other efforts.
They are not directly addressable.
Financial metrics are MI not key results.
The key to note is that the things you do in People, Process and Customer combine to create the intended outcomes in Financial. Do those things right and you will reduce expenses in financial (if your hypotheses hold water) — but that’s the monitoring element, not the objective/goal element.
It takes collaboration.
Cascading does not effect goals make (usually).
There’s a caveat here and it’s related to all of the other points. Cascading can work in some circumstances. Where it doesn’t is if it’s a random set of poorly defined goals that you had no involvement in and can’t see a way to support.
If the goal is MAKE MORE MONEY and you’re a Junior Analyst mostly writing small functions for some backend team in DevOps, how are you supposed to be engaged and informed and understand how to meet goals like these let alone write your own goals on top?
Time. Effort. Focus. Collaboration. It’s not just difficult for you to set goals — that same level of effort has to be consistent throughout the organisation or it’s a pointless exercise!
It takes follow-through.
It’s not just “MAKE MORE MONEY” but everyone continues to do what they were doing before — if your goals don’t CHANGE something in what or how you do things, they’re not goals, they’re by-products.
Similar to an earlier point, goals aren’t just your roadmap or to-do list. They’re drive, focus, direction — a rallying cry. If you’re just doing what you’re doing, why bother setting goals anyway? It’s a waste of time and adds nothing.
It takes prioritisation.
Again. This is not your roadmap. Not your to-do list. Not your day-to-day job. Your goals actively prioritise doing this thing over that thing. Or, actively decide you’re not doing this thing or that thing. Whatever it is, goals provide clarity of thought when done right. If done right, goals empower everyone to say “No.”
It takes a lot of buy-in.
Do you believe in magic in [the company’s] heart?
How the [goals] can free [you] whenever it starts
And it’s magic if the [goal is set well]
It makes you [bought in] like an old-time movie
People need to BELIEVE. They want to believe in something that makes them get up in the morning and can’t wait to deliver. They want purpose. It’s so over-used and cliché but it’s still beautiful — the anecdote of the janitor at NASA who said their job was to put people on the moon. Find me one set of OKRs that had that level of alignment throughout the organisation where you work and you win a (figurative) prize!
It takes engagement.
People need to be actively doing things towards the goals and measuring and monitoring and driving and delivering. If you set goals in January and start working towards them in November, you’ve plain done it wrong.
It takes knowledge and expertise.
No, not everyone can set goals out of the box. We’re not all inherently capable. It takes training, coaching, experience, and sometimes, facilitation. Find those people, coach them, help them, invest in them.
And lastly, it takes Leadership.
Doing all of the above takes Leadership-with-a-Big-L, not management. Goal-setting is about inspiring direction, not demanding results. This is by far the hardest part of goal setting.
So, what can I do?
Challenge. Manage up. Engage in the goal setting process and ask why. Check for strategic alignment. Ask to be involved in setting them. Ask to provide feedback to affect change. Tout the benefits of collaboration. Challenge the quality of the statements and make suggestions. Ask questions to truly understand how this relates to your work. Challenge if it’s nothing to do with you and ask how you can help achieve the company objectives.
Ultimately, challenge positively, but critically.
