Goal Management

The idea of using goals as the lifeline between a company's grandest vision and an individual employee's daily actions has been around for decades.

So why do only 14% of employees know their company’s objectives?

It's not like organizations don't bother to set goals — 65% of organizations have an agreed-upon strategy. But, creating a strategy is easy. Executing it is a whole other ball game. Less than 10% of all organizations succeed in executing their strategies.

Delivering solid results over the long-term is what makes a company (and its leaders) great. But the secret to consistent performance, are the people who make the strategy happen at the ground level.

That's where cascading goals can help if you use them right. 

What Are Cascading Goals?

Cascading goals are a framework to get everyone in an organization aligned with the big picture organizational goal, and to make sure they know what to do by breaking strategy into clear tasks and deliverables. Goals are seen in a "cascade" with clear objectives. This makes it easier to communicate and document strategy, while eliminating confusion over who owns what, when a goal needs to be accomplished, or even how to achieve a goal.

According to Billy Elliott, Country Manager of the Top Employers Institute in Africa, “Unless organizations take specific steps to cascade goals throughout the organization and align these with employee goals, the best laid plans will come to nothing. To drive true purpose and effectiveness in the everyday lives of employees, the company strategy needs to be filtered down to each level of staff."

Cascading your goals is how you achieve that "filtering down" so that no one in the organization is ever confused about what to do or when to do it.

The Pros and Cons of Cascading Goals

Like all things in life, business and HR, there are two sides of every story. The magic of cascading goals will be quickly lost, if you fail to use them intentionally.

While cascading goals are a great way to break down your company's vision into actionable chunks employees can bite into, they're also inherently hierarchical and can become prone to the kind of bureaucratic workflows and tunnel vision that have upended many an industry dinosaur.

Pros

• Align business objectives with employee goals
• Increase transparency and accountability when shared publicly
• Reduces workflow redundancies, conflicting objectives and unclear responsibilities

Cons

• Prone to blanketing diverse departments under one generic goal
• Can become a time-intensive red tape exercise where the real goal becomes muddled
• Can become rigid and outdated if not actively tracked and followed up

Stuart Hearn, commercial director at HR software company Vaado Software (previously HR director at Sony Music Publishing) sums it up perfectly in an interview for HR Magazine:

"If performance management is taken seriously within the senior team and they lead by example, then this tends to cascade through the organization. In organizations where the process is HR-driven and senior management is not committed to performance management, it tends to be more of a box-ticking exercise."

With cascading goals, any attempt to "set it and forget it" will backfire. Let's take a closer look at how to use cascading goals for good (rather than superfluous HR "box-ticking").

Alternatives to Cascading Goals

There are other goal setting types out there, it just depends on the level of effectiveness your company is seeking.

Tactical goals - Tactical goals are tied to strategy-mind organizational goals, which outline what must be achieved within the organization via tactical goals and objectives. If there's a tactical goal to reduce total costs, the different company sections will set tactical objectives to offset whatever number they need to meet that goal.

‍Operational goals - Operational goals focus on employees' responsibilities. If X number of sales need to be hit within a quota for a sales team, the sales manager may have an operational objective of increasing sales by whatever percent is marked. One of the problems with this mindset, though, is observing goals and aiming too high at the risk of losing workers. ‍

‍Superordinate goals - Superordinate goals are goals typically used to resolve conflict. This is a method to relieve tension between groups. The point of this practice is to create camaraderie, trust, and friendship, potent motivators for groups to resolve differences and cooperate. Everyone here must champion that this is a mutually beneficial practice to see the company thrive.

3 Must-Know Tips for Effective Cascading Goals

If you're doing it right, your cascading goal process won't stop after the CEO sets those initial goals.

Here are a few ways to break free of the linear approach and make your cascading goal setting process equally as dynamic as your business (and the people in it).

1. Get Real about Your Goals

Don't overload your performance management process with too many organizational goals — but don't force autonomous departments to adopt one blanket goal, either.

Think about the top 3 things you really want to achieve and be SMART (e.g., Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Based) about how you set out to achieve them at every level of your cascading goal process.

2. Check Your Alignment

Alignment is key. Rather than investing all your energy at the front-end (setting up a strategic top-level goal and then walking away), give each department and employee some autonomy in setting the goals that make the most sense for them.

Make sure everyone is completely clear on what tasks are assigned to each goal, then set firm deadlines, performance metrics, and dates and reminders for check-ins.

3. Always Follow Up

Creating a strategic goal may feel like a lot of work for your CEO, but it's nothing compared to the burden your employees will feel if they don't have the tools and support they need to achieve those goals.

Always align goal reviews with performance reviews and make it a point to ask your people if they're getting the resources they need (including training, mentorship, and clear and specific feedback) in order to keep moving toward their goals.

An online performance management system take the hassle out of formal performance reviews. That matters because most performance review systems are a hassle. According to SHRM, 95% of managers say they’re dissatisfied with the performance management process. 

The process becomes more complex as organizations increase review frequency and add employees. Not only is it hard to conduct the reviews, but also to document the reviews—a critical part of the process for employee performance management and compliance.

Online performance management systems like PerformYard can help.

What is an Online Performance Management System?

An online performance appraisal system is a digital platform that gives HR leaders, managers, and employees all-the-time access to performance management information. Tools like PerformYard help companies conduct and document performance management meetings while tracking goals and progress. 

Most of these systems exist in the cloud, accessible wherever employees and their managers may be. Remote access has become a major benefit of these systems since the shift to remote work, but there is a range of other benefits that companies and HR leaders gain through the use of an online performance management system.

What Are the Benefits of an Online Performance Management System? 

Traditional performance reviews rely on tedious administrative processes to track, document, and communicate performance review information. HR leaders have to remind managers to fill out reviews. The HR person may have to collect reviews in their email or a cloud storage drive. It's hard to see data from all the reviews in one place, which means it's difficult to gain any insights.

Online performance management systems remove that administrative burden and provide additional benefits. 

1. Promote a more transparent company culture

Online performance management systems allow broad access to information about employee performance—and how it aligns with company performance. This transparency ensures everyone knows how they and their colleagues contribute to company success. More transparent company culture is created through:

Continuous feedback

Though some companies still conduct formal reviews annually, online employee performance management systems allow for continuous feedback throughout the year. Continuous feedback is a best practice contributing to organizational success. Managers, employees, and HR leaders have 24/7/365 access to feedback on employee performance.

Clear goals

Having an in-person performance management conversation is a great idea, but only if you can document the discussion. Leaving it to chance that both manager and employee will recall specifics leads to miscommunication. Online performance management systems track goals to ensure everyone understands what needs to be accomplished.

PerformYard's digital performance management system displays goals on employee dashboards. Every employee and manager can see goal progress throughout the year and use the data as a reference point in meetings.

Frequent feedback

Employees need frequent feedback to perform effectively. Online employee performance appraisal systems provide a convenient, seamless, and accessible way to document that feedback. Some companies default to using email to provide feedback, but that approach fails to tie feedback to the overall review process.

In PerformYard, it's easy to give feedback within the platform. That feedback is stored in the employee's dashboard where it's available to view during the employee's annual or quarterly review.

2. Align individual goals with company goals

In some organizations, employees may work hard but fail to align their work with company goals. That’s a waste of resources—both time and money. Online performance management systems ensure that individual and company goals are aligned. 

Real-time goal setting helps employees work on tasks that support department, division, and organizational performance. Dashboards with progress tracking allow employees and managers to monitor performance and make course adjustments. Reports provide quick visual insights into progress.

Cascading goals

Optimum performance management happens when goals cascade from the top of the organization down to the front lines. 

1. The organization’s strategic objectives drive goal-setting for senior leaders. 
2. Senior leaders create and assign goals to their direct reports, and so on, down through the organization. 

Cascading goals can also be viewed horizontally to quickly visualize and track interdepartmental dependencies. 

Goal progress tracking

Online performance management systems provide a clear line of sight into individual and organizational performance, visible to everyone in the organization. Traditional methods of goal progress tracking are often siloed and not up-to-date. Online tracking provides visibility, real-time reporting, and easy access for all. 

3. Get manager buy-in on the review process

We admit it; performance review and evaluation are not at the top of most managers’ lists of the things they enjoy most. In many organizations, there are good reasons for that. Performance management can be burdensome— especially when managers are responsible for multiple employees. 

Online performance management systems reduce the friction of performance management, leading to manager buy-in and enhanced value for all.

Email notifications

Email notifications help keep managers on top of the deliverables and dates associated with managing their staff members and providing regular feedback. PerformYard updates employees and managers with email notifications every time a review is due, as seen below.

Simplicity

Online performance management systems automate the administrative elements of the performance management process. These systems ensure documentation and provide easy access to information when needed.

PerformYard is designed to turn your existing review process into a simple system. The platform doesn't force you into a complex performance review system; it makes it easier to run your existing system. Click here to learn how easy it is to set up PerformYard.

4. Streamline review scheduling

Coordinating the calendars for two people—let alone two dozen—can be challenging. Online performance management systems use automation to take the complexity out of the review scheduling process. No more struggling to run reviews on work anniversaries

Using an online performance management platform like PerformYard relieves the administrative burdens of needing to remember work anniversaries and schedules around them. The platform will always let you know when an employee is ready for their next review.

Track multiple review cycles in one dashboard 

What are performance management systems good for if they don't make your job easier? The more employees you have to track, the more challenging the process can be. Tracking multiple review cycles in one dashboard lets you quickly see which reviews are coming.

5. Birds-eye view of employee performance

Managers often struggle to track performance across teams. 

• Who’s contributing the most? 
• Who’s lagging behind? 
• Who needs course correction? 
• Who needs more kudos? 

An online performance management system gives you a birds-eye view that you can see at any time, wherever you may be. The reports will highlight top performers and reveal which employees need help.

Managers can see historical review data

Having access to historical data can help track employee progress. It can also be a significant aid when a manager is taking on a new employee or taking over another department. With traditional systems managers would need to request and access hard-copy files that may not be complete, thorough, or up-to-date.

Managers can see employee metrics in a report

Employee metrics can help you track individual employee performance. These metrics can include goal completions, sales metrics, or anything else you can dream up. Metrics and reports also give you insights into how employee performance may vary. You can compare employees across teams or compare one department to another.

You’ll have best practices to share with others and see who may need additional training, resources, and support to improve performance. 

PerformYard helps you track and monitor the following metrics in reports:

• Reviews completed
• Employee ratings
• Goals attained
• OKRs
• KPIs
• 360-reviews
• Self-assessments
• Exit interview information
• ...and more.

What Are the Best Online Performance Management Systems? 

When choosing an online performance management system some important criteria stand out: simplicity, flexibility, and the ability to tie into your existing review process are key. 

PerformYard offers this functionality and more. Whether you need a simple solution for annual reviews or a platform that can help you manage more complex performance management needs, PerformYard has the features and flexibility you need. 

Need to help employees set and manage goals, but unsure where to begin? Download our free employee goal setting template.

Why Goal Setting Is Critical for Organizations

Goal setting is one of the most important tools that an organization can use to create change in the workplace at the individual, team, or organizational level.  

Well-set goals are the key to ensuring that change is enacted within an organization. It isn’t enough to express a desire for an outcome without setting some sort of goal to achieve it. Goals must be set and progress must be measured.

Tips for Effective Goal Setting

Setting effective goals can be difficult—especially if you’re not used to setting goals frequently. The tips below will help you to create an effective goal-setting strategy. 

1. Specify Goal-Setting Criteria

When your employees and their managers sit down to set their goals, it’s critical that they understand the criteria their goals should meet.

Criteria will vary from organization to organization, but any criteria set should ensure that goals will lead to positive change within the workforce.

Ineffective goal setting leaves you with unfocused goals that are difficult to measure and track. When criteria is specified, it’s easier for managers and employees to set realistic goals that will lead to improvement and development.

2. Ensure That Goals Are Challenging

Calibrating the difficulty of goals can be complicated. Employees will want to achieve, but they may be concerned that setting goals that are too difficult may set them up for failure. They may try to set more conservative goals for themselves in order to consistently hit their goals. 

This can be tempting, especially if your organization makes critical business decisions based on how your employees hit or miss the goals they set. However, it is important to remember that the end result of effective goal setting is positive change. 

Conservative goal setting often leads to a continuation of the status quo. If a recruiter made 20 hires last year without breaking a sweat and sets their new goal as making an additional 20 hires, it's likely that no change or employee growth will occur by achieving that goal.

Goals need to be challenging. They should push employees slightly beyond their current skill set. 

Conversely, these goals should still be attainable and realistic. If an employee worked diligently one year and made 100% of their target for the year, doubling their target for next year may not be realistic.

This calibration takes time and is best done through partnership between the employee and their manager.

3. Set Up a Process to Track Goals

Goals need to be tracked throughout the process. And tracking should be more than simply checking in at the end of the process to determine whether or not the goal was achieved. This does not set up the employee for success.

There are several different ways to track goals, but the most important thing is to make sure the system you use is used across your entire organization. 

If one team is using Excel spreadsheets, another Google Docs, and another the Notes app, it will be difficult for HR to compile everything when review time rolls around. Here are two options for setting up a system to track goals across an organization:

Manual Methods

HR can implement a manual system across the company to set and track goals. An example of this would be spreadsheet software, such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. 

Each employee could have an individual spreadsheet that they and their manager had access to. These sheets would then be saved within a team folder that is then nestled within an organizational folder. These sheets could be easily accessed by those who need the information (managers, HR) while being housed in a centralized location.

Dedicated Performance Management Software

Building out multiple spreadsheets, making sure everyone has the right permissions, and following up on progress via email can quickly get complicated.

Performance management software lets employees set and track goals, complete frequent check-ins and formal reviews, and solicit and complete feedback in one dedicated, centralized platform.

With performance management software, employee goal progression can easily be turned into clean charts and dashboards. This provides executives, management, and team members the understanding of where employees are at in relation to their goals.

4. Frequently Revisit and Reassess Progress

Imagine that you had a goal of saving $10,000 this year. You checked your bank account on January 1, then didn’t check it again until December 31.

What are the odds that you saved that $10,000? Probably almost zero.

Just as it's difficult to hit financial goals without checking in on your progress, the same is true for organizational goals. It’s important for managers and employees to discuss goal progress regularly. 

Frequent check-ins will also help employees recalibrate their goals. Maybe the original goal was to create 48 email campaigns in 6 months, but after the first monthly check-in, the team determined this was unrealistic, and the goal was altered to 24.

Goals are dynamic concepts that ultimately drive positive change. If they are no longer driving that change, they are no longer effective. Use these frequent check-ins to make sure the goals are serving employees and their development. 

These tips will help you create an effective goal setting process for your organization. But the best way to create any goal-setting process is by setting really effective goals. 

The power of goals starts with what you choose and how you word them. Getting that step right is necessary to see any value from your goal-setting process.

Download our free employee goal setting template to get a step-by-step guide of how to set clear, effective, and inspiring goals.

When employee goals aren’t aligned with corporate objectives, employees may be working hard and may appear to the casual observer to be exceptional at their jobs, but what are they working to accomplish? 

Goal alignment in performance management ensures that everyone in the organization, at all levels, are working together to accomplish the same business objectives.

What Goal Alignment Should Accomplish

Goal alignment should promote shared values, provide greater transparency into what’s happening at an organizational level, and provide context to help employees to define individual and team goals.

Promoting Shared Values

Employees don’t—or shouldn’t—work in isolation. They should understand what the organization’s mission, vision, values, and strategic objectives are. 

Why does the organization exist? What does success look like? How do their individual efforts contribute to that success?

Goal alignment helps promote shared values by making sure employees’ contributions have an impact in ways that are meaningful and measurable. 

Shared alignment leads to stronger collaboration across departments and teams and creates a sense of camaraderie that can increase morale, reduce turnover, and boost productivity.

Providing Greater Transparency

All employees need insight into how they’re doing. That insight can come through direct feedback they receive from their managers, along with information about how their team, department, and organization as a whole is performing. 

Goal alignment offers greater transparency in order for employees to see the impact that their efforts—and the efforts of their colleagues—are having. Providing greater transparency ensures that goals and initiatives are taken up by everybody in the company.

Providing Context

Most employees can’t achieve success independently. They work as part of teams to achieve specific goals or objectives. 

Goal alignment helps employees understand how their individual work contributes to team and organizational goals. This context helps employees to feel more satisfied with their work and become more effective.

How to Align Personal Goals With Organizational Goals

Effectively aligning personal goals with organizational goals requires a few steps to help ensure understanding, support, and engagement. Here are three keys to aligning personal goals with organizational goals:

1. Set Cascading Goals

Starting with organizational goals, the first step in aligning personal to organizational goals is to set cascading goals that will flow down through the organization. This can be something that is done once, twice, or even four times a year. Leadership sets the direction for the organization, then departments, teams, and individuals set their goals based on that direction.

Betterment, an investment firm, found this approach to be extremely effective. They focused on just two overarching company goals:

1. Grow net deposits
2. Increase efficiency
   

CEO Joe Stein said, “We thought it was perfect, having one revenue-driving metric and one efficiency metric. It was a clear signal to the team what was most important.”

Objectives were broken down across teams, each with 1-3 goals that tied back to the objectives. Teams came back with their own numbers that were aligned to the overarching plan.

2. Track Everything in One Place

As noted earlier, providing employees with the ability to see how they’re doing on an ongoing basis is an important part of goal alignment. After cascading goals are set, set up a system to track individual, team, and organizational goals all in one place. 

Tracking everything in one place ensures that metrics are accurate and everybody is looking at the same numbers. It also helps employees remember what the organizational goals are and how their contributions are making an impact.

3. Make Metrics Available

Making metrics available for everyone to see helps every employee understand how they and their team are progressing towards company goals. Betterment did this in a couple of different ways. They sent out a regular email to all employees sharing current numbers and also posted top-line metrics on walls for the whole company to see.

This broad level of awareness “built in the ethic that there was no opportunity for teams to deviate from their goals to help another toward theirs,” said Stein. Instead, making metrics available created “a shared sense that it was all hands on deck to make sure everyone got where they needed to go.” 

The more robust the system a company has to track metrics, the easier it can be to make these metrics available to everybody. 

But even without an automated system, companies can simply email updates to employees or highlight them in recurring company meetings. 

The most important thing is that  metrics are widely and regularly made available to all employees in order for them to see how they (and the company) are doing.

Case Study: Goal Alignment in Performance Management

So what does aligning employee goals with corporate objectives look like?

InvestiNet is a full-service accounts receivable management firm. Bob Collins, the company owner, wanted all of his 100 employees to consider InvestiNet the best place they had ever worked. He recognized performance management as offering an opportunity to align work around company goals and individual strengths.

InvestiNet used a tiered system of diverse and frequently updated goals. At the highest level, the company will set thematic goals. These have a period of about 6 months and set the direction for the company. They include both core success metrics and transformation projects.

Individuals will then have semester goals. These set special focus areas for employees over the next 90 to 120 days. Everyone has up to 3 semester goals.

In addition to semester goals, individuals will also have 1-2 job specific goals. These define what the organization expects from the employee’s position over the course of a year.

Finally, everyone has at least one professional development goal. The focus of development is almost always “strengths based.” Occasionally someone will spend some time improving on weaknesses, but most often these goals are about doubling down on what already makes you special. 

Weekly touchpoints between employees and their managers focus on what employees were working on and how their work supported their goals. In these meetings, any misalignment is addressed with a focus on making a connection between daily work and the broader organizational purpose.

An annual review included employee self-appraisal with their managers’ review, but the approach they take is a litter different, Collins said, “The question is ‘did we, the organization, have you working on the right things and what were our results?’” 

InvestiNet’s process illustrates how companies can strategically drive better business results by aligning individual goals with team and organizational goals. Doing so gives employees insight into what’s important to the company and how their efforts can make a positive difference.

Resources for Goal Alignment

Looking for additional resources? Here are some resources we recommend to start your search on goal alignment. 

Betterment Tested Three Performance Management Systems So You Don't Have To

What are Cascading Goals & How to Use Them

What Is Organizational Alignment? (And How to Achieve It)

Goal setting is one of the cornerstones of organizational and individual development in the workplace. But setting goals is simply the first step in the process of achieving results. Progress needs to be measured, goals need to be met, and shortcomings need to be examined. 

The best way to ensure that your organization is completing its goals is through goal management software. Choosing the right goal management software for your organization often boils down to understanding what you want to focus on: performance management, project management, goal tracking, individual development, or something more generalized. 

To help you sort through which software is best for you, we’ve compiled a list of the best goal management software, broken down into categories based upon function. As you start setting organizational goals for 2022, you can use these goal management software systems to help measure your progress through next year and beyond. 

Let’s take a look at the best goal management software systems we’ve found. 

Performance Management Systems

Performance Management Software allows organizations to easily evaluate employee performance through a host of goal-setting features, check-ins, performance reviews, and data analysis. In a nutshell, this software lets you connect goal-setting with the formal review process in a single space. 

Instead of using one piece of software to track goal progress and another software to set up, fill out, and track employee reviews; you can use one program to run both. This reduces time spent ferrying information from one software to another come review time, and it reduces the likelihood that information will get lost in the shuffle.

Performance management software excels in supporting cascading goals for your company, tracking KPIs for employees, and driving employee development by connecting goal tracking to employee performance reviews. Employees see how attaining concrete goals equates to positive performance feedback, which ultimately drives positive compensation decisions. 

One of the great aspects of performance management software is that you can track goals at all different levels of your organization -- from the team to the individual -- across monthly, quarterly, and annual bases. This flexible approach to performance management allows you to tailor the software to your organization’s needs -- expanding or contracting the goal setting and review processes as you see fit.  ‍

Features ‍

Performance Management Software is one of the most robust and integrated types of goal management software on the market. One of its key selling points is its ability to connect goal management with performance evaluation. Let’s take a look at other key features that make performance management systems some of our favorite softwares for goal setting. ‍

Integrate Goals into Performance Review‍

The primary goal management feature of performance management software is the ability for employees and managers to set trackable, quantifiable goals that are easily integrated into the performance review process. Employees set reviews and update their progress throughout the year. Managers, conversely, can see their employees’ progress on their goals, and easily bring the completion of goals into review decisions. 

This is the heart of performance management review. Employees are empowered to set individual goals and then are held accountable for those goals come review time.

‍Flexible Feedback‍

With performance management systems, managers can customize the feedback process to turn goals into positive day-to-day actions. Feedback can be provided annually, quarterly, and monthly; but it can also be provided on a continuous basis and for specific projects. 

This ability to scale up feedback can increase productivity through positive encouragement and shout-outs; it can also help draw attention to areas that need more attention before these become significant problems. In this way, continuous feedback prevents surprises come annual review time.

‍‍

Streamline Your Processes ‍

Performance Management Systems automate and integrate so many steps in your goal setting and performance review process. Goals are set and managed within the system that handles reviews, so examining pertinent goal data for a review is a breeze. Goal setting itself can be further streamlined through automatically messaging and reminding employees that goals need to be set, along with further messages that remind employees of their goal completion progress.

The review process itself can easily be streamlined through customizing permissions and automations -- reducing the back-and-forth needed to nominate reviewers, complete reviews, and set up in-person check-ins. By automatically sending necessary forms and goal information to appropriate parties, Performance Management Systems can further cut down on unnecessary layers of red tape. ‍

Performance Management Systems: Our Picks‍

Performance Management Systems are robust softwares that automate and streamline your goal management process. Here are out top two choices for Performance Management Systems.‍

PerformYard‍

PerformYard creates a custom performance management system that works for you. 

From continuous feedback to annual goal-setting meetings, PerformYard measures progress and gets your whole organization on track with goals.

PerformYard really shines when it comes to the sheer amount of customization it offers clients. You have the flexibility to structure your review process as holistic as you’d like, from simple manager-direct hire reviews to 360 feedback processes. You can create cascading goals that communicate your company-wide strategy from the executive suite to the most junior position, and ensure that individual goals support your vision. 

The data insights that PerformYard provides at the individual, team, and company level help your organization get a crystal-clear picture of your present performance as well as your performance over time. 

These data-powered insights, along with a streamlined and customizable review process and an integrated goal management system, make PerformYard the best performance management software on the market. 

Read how Investinet used PerformYard to keep their teams running in the same direction.‍

Performance Pro‍

PerformancePro is another formidable Performance Management System that streamlines your entire performance management process. From check-ins to annual reviews, PerformancePro automates and integrates each step of your review cycle. 

PerformancePro stands out with their unique configurable goal library that lets you tie compensation to goal achievement through merit increase modeling.‍

Performance Management Systems Tie Goals to Reviews ‍

Performance Management Systems like PerformYard excel by tying goal setting and goal completion to performance reviews. These types of software are ideal for any organization looking to streamline their review process, gain insights into employee productivity, and turn the abstract concept of goal setting into a critical part of employee development. ‍

Project Management Software‍

Project Management Software breaks goals into smaller tasks that employees can track from inception to completion. 

So if your team is working on something complicated, like producing the Super Bowl, you can use project Management Software to break this up into smaller tasks (complete Dr. Dre’s contract), and then track those tasks as you complete them. 

Project Management Software is ideal when you need to focus on organizing, tracking, and completing projects -- particularly projects involving multiple colleagues. These are project-based goals, as opposed to developmental goals or quota-based goals. 

Developmental goals (I want to take 5 LinkedIn courses in my field this month) or quota-based goals (I need to hit $300,000 in sales this year) aren’t trackable in project management software. Instead, the individual projects and steps that make up these goals (complete demo for prospect, send contract to client) are the focus of project management software. 

Therefore, we believe that project management software is a good goal management option for organizations who have a strong focus on completing projects -- particularly projects that require large teams working together. 

Project management software can also complement other forms of goal management software such as performance management systems. Your overarching, yearly goals can be comprised of projects that you can track through project management systems. It all depends upon your organizational needs. 

Features‍

Project Management Software excels at helping multiple teammates collaborate on their projects. Let’s take a look at some of the key features that help teams collaborate to break projects into manageable tasks. ‍

To-Do Lists and Team Assignments‍

Project management software revolves around to-dos -- be they lists, cards, or tasks. On a user’s project board, to-do lists (comprised of tasks) can be assigned to different teammates, moved between teammates, and moved between different steps of completion. This helps all teammates understand who is working on what, what still needs to be completed, and what can be marked as completed. ‍

Team Communication‍

Project management software enables easy communication between teammates. In project dashboards, teammates can comment, attach files, affix due dates, and provide updates on each task within the goal. These updates are often automatically communicated via email or a messaging software, such as Slack, to ensure that no update is missed. ‍

Project Management Software: Our Picks ‍

Two project management software suites stand out to us: Asana and Trello. Let’s take a quick look at each to see which project management system may be best for you. 

Asana‍

Asana is a project management tool best at showing how team goals ladder up to organizational goals. In Asana, you have a centralized screen for each project -- and projects are comprised of tasks that you move from “ready-to-do” to “done.” Asana has some unique ways of viewing tasks, such as in list, board, calendar, and timeline view. Additionally, Asana has an inbox feature where all of your notifications related to projects are stored. 

Trello 

Trello is a flexible task management system that stores projects on boards. Each board is comprised of columns (to-do, doing, done), and your columns are populated by “cards,” which equate to tasks you must complete to finish your project. Workflow-wise, it is quite similar to Asana. 

Asana does offer more features, but Trello’s free plan is available to unlimited teammates, while Asana’s free plan is only available to 15 teammates per organization.

HR Suites‍

HR suites are one-stop-shops for everything HR. This means compensation, time off, recruiting, onboarding, and performance management are all housed in one single portal. 

HR suites can be a godsend for a company looking to centralize a lot of disparate features. It is very helpful to have all your HR data housed in one piece of software. When it comes to goal management, however, we’ve found that HR suites are not as robust as the dedicated goal management softwares. Goal management isn’t the focus of these softwares; it just happens to be one feature.  

Having said that, if you’re looking to incorporate goal management into your organization -- and you already have one of these fine HR suites -- then trialing out goal management through your HR suite is a great idea. 

Features‍

HR suites are one-stop-shops for everything HR for the entire lifecycle of the employee. This means hiring, onboarding, compensation, and employee development. 

As mentioned, the key feature is that this is a one-login solution for HR. You don’t need a separate system for applicant tracking, a separate system to process PTO requests, and a separate system to track goal setting. You log in to your HR suite, and you are all set. 

Because these suites cover such a vast amount of ground, they also collect a great deal of data, meaning that they can provide quite robust data analytics, as they pull from so many departments. 

There are two HR suites that have goal management tools that are worth examining: BambooHR and Sage HR. 

Let’s take a quick look at each.

Bamboo HR

BambooHR calls itself HR software with heart. It helps you through your entire employee lifecycle -- from hiring to performance management. As a one-stop-shop, it functions a little as a jack-of-all-trades, and therefore markets itself to small-and-medium businesses. This makes sense, as it allows small-to-medium businesses to handle all of their HR needs without buying a whole host of specialized software. 

For goal management, BambooHR specializes in reports. BambooHR provides managers with status reports for each employee’s goals, and it offers company-wide performance reports. It’s ideal for getting an objective view of how your employees are performing relative to their goals. ‍

Sage HR‍

Sage HR is a complete HR solution that aims to automate your HR processes and provide you with valuable data insights. It lets you handle PTO requests, track overtime, manage employee shift schedules, manage company expenses, and manage goals. 

Sage HR’s performance management software lets you break goals into three levels: individual, team, and organizational. Like BambooHR, you can track how these goals are being achieved at all three levels, providing you with some nice clarity as to the productivity of your organization. 

Goal Tracking Software‍

Goal Tracking Software is designed purely for tracking goals -- with no connection to performance management. These types of software can track a variety of goals such as OKRs and S.M.A.R.T. goals. We’ve found that these softwares are ideal for companies who are deeply committed to tracking and completing goals, but are less interested in tying goal completion to the formal performance review process. ‍

Features‍

Goal tracking software is a great way to align team goals and employee performance with a company’s vision. Goal tracking software achieves this by sharing your company strategy across the company in a central location. From there, teams and individuals can set and track goals that align with the company vision. 

These goal tracking softwares allow management to examine the goals of teams and individuals, so that your organization can see how team members' progress contributes to your overarching goals. In some cases, you can make every employee’s goals and progress viewable to their respective team or entire organization, providing transparency for your organization. 

There are two stand out goal tracking software systems we’ve found: Perdoo and Ally.

Let’s take a look at both. 

Examples‍

Perdoo is an OKR platform that promises to turn strategy into results. With Perdoo, you can share your organizational strategy, align your overarching goals with individual goals, and gain valuable data insights thanks to their robust reporting.

Perdoo also has a visual strategy planner, and lets you combine KPIs with OKRs to create detailed and focused goals. Perdoo also prompts weekly check-ins so employees are aligned on their progress for their individual goals. ‍

Ally (recently acquired by Microsoft) wants to turn your goals into results. Like Perdoo, it focuses on aligning your team with the grand company strategy. Where Ally differs from Perdoo is with their target: Ally is aimed at helping remote and hybrid teams stay aligned through the use of custom OKRs and integrations into apps such as Trello, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. ‍

Personal Apps‍

Our last category of apps are Personal Goal Tracking Apps -- we’ll call them personal apps for short. 

These apps are not organization-wide apps. They’re not great for setting a company strategy, tracking performance for a team, or helping in compensation discussions at a year end review. Instead, personal apps are used for setting and achieving personal apps. 

These apps don’t even need to be work related! They could be about running a marathon, learning a new language, or just getting more consistent at cleaning the house. 

Let’s take a look at how these apps function. 

Features‍

Personal apps provide easy-to-use and mobile-friendly interfaces that enable you to set and track goals quickly and easily. 

What type of goals? Saving money, training for a race, getting enough sleep, writing a novel -- any goal you can think of! 

These goals are typically broken down into daily progress that you track and input (how many miles did you run today?) that you can visualize across a calendar to see how your progress stacks up. 

Two of our favorite Goal Management Softwares are Strides and Habitica. 

Let’s see how they stack up. 

Strides

Strides (iOS) is a popular goal tracking app that helps you track your goals and build your perfect routine -- one that gets you in the habit of achieving your goals. It allows you to track four different types of goals: Habits, Targets, Averages, and Projects. These types are customizable, so that you can modify their names and tasks to fit the goal you wish to achieve.‍

Habitica

Habitica (iOS, Android) turns your goal into a game -- literally! Completing tasks in Habitica levels up your retro 8-bit avatar. When you level up enough, you unlock rewards such as gold and battle armor. Then, you can battle monsters in-game with your fellow Habitica players or spend your gold on more tangible rewards like streams of your favorite TV shows. ‍

Performance Management Software: The Integrated Solution to Goal Management‍

Performance management software integrates goal management seamlessly into your employee review process. This way, you tie the completion of the goal into a tangible result, which both motivates goal completion and provides deeper employee development. 

Related Questions

What Should I Look For in Goal Management Software?‍

Don’t get lost focusing on features you don’t need. Consider whether you want to tie goals to performance management, list subgoals for a project, or visualize your organization’s progress. Then, look for a software that provides the reports you’ll need.

Why Should I Use Goal Management Software?

Goal management software is more efficient than spreadsheets and email chains. Software gives your team accountability and offers features like progress visualization and feedback.‍

What Goals Should I Put In My Goal Management Software?‍

Goal management software can be used for any type of goal, be it project, performance, or personal. The best goal management tools can handle any goal that your organization needs to track.‍

Does Goal Management Software Increase Productivity?‍

Yes. Goal management software allows your employees to spend less time managing goals and more time achieving them.

Set and achieve your SMART goals through PerformYard’s “smart” goal-setting software.

Our suite of goal-setting and performance management tools will empower your workforce to create and accomplish actionable goals throughout the performance review cycle.

Align Your Workforce with SMART Goals in PerformYard

What good are goals if you can’t measure them? That is one of the biggest pitfalls of goal-setting: ensuring that goals are measurable. Organizations need to be able to measure employee progress, track this progress against benchmarks, and understand the rate at which an employee is developing. 

Using SMART goals solves this problem. SMART goals are goals that are: 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-based 
  

With a SMART goal system, you couldn’t simply create a goal that says, “boost my sales numbers.” That’s not specific or time-based, though it is measurable and relevant. 

Instead, you’d come up with a goal that might say, “increase my ad sales by 30% in the next six months.” Now, we have a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Our employee has six months (time based) to increase ad sales (specific, relevant) by 30% (measurable, attainable). 

This is an excellent SMART goal. Progress on this excellent SMART goal needs to be tracked, so that the employee and the manager know if the employee is on track to meet this goal, or if they need to make some changes to achieve the goal in six months. 

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That’s where a robust SMART goal software like PerformYard comes into play. PerformYard empowers employees to set goals, track, and achieve their goals. Managers can see employee progress, check in with employees to redirect efforts, and integrate employee goal data into the review cycle. 

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Let’s take a look into how PerformYard can empower your workforce to set and achieve their SMART goals. 

Key Features of SMART Goal Software in PerformYard

PerformYard’s goal software lets you fully customize the SMART goal setting process for your organization. You can also integrate goals with the rest of your performance management strategy. No matter if you use quarterly reviews, annual reviews, 360 reviews, or continuous feedback, PerformYard has the tools to help you set, track, and achieve your SMART goals. 

Set Individual goals, Track Individual Progress

Every member of your team can set their goals, building them out as specifically and incrementally as they wish. Goals can be placed under multiple categories, be given due dates, and even have checklists that employees can complete as they make progress on their goals. 

Within each goal, there’s space for employees and managers to leave comments and feedback, enabling clear communication throughout the review cycle. As an employee logs progress on their goal, their goal percentage will rise, providing an easy way for management to see how their workforce is progressing on their SMART goals.

Tie Goals into Performance Reviews

Come review time, PerformYard makes it easy to tie goals into the performance review process. When a manager is completing a review (be it a quarterly review, annual review, project reviews or any other type), they see every goal that their direct hire has been working on -- right in the review portal. Managers can, without leaving the review, see their employees’ progress, see where they achieved their SMART goals, and see where they may have fallen a little short. SMART goal performance can then be easily factored into the review itself. 

Performance Insights

Managers and Executive teams can easily get a bird’s eye view of how teams and individual employees are progressing on their views. Through PerformYard’s data visualizations and metrics reports, it’s easy to see where resources may need to be deployed and where others are exceeding expectations. 

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Plus, PerformYard allows you to examine any employee or team’s performance relative to their historical performance. Now, you can see that Samantha has completed 3 more goals this year than she did last year. Nice going, Samantha! 

Additional Features

PerformYard makes setting SMART goals easy and effective. Here are some other great features that our clients love. 

• Weight Goals

• Make certain goals worth more for an employee’s overall performance score

• Cascading Goals 

• Have subgoals to support individual goals, or have individual goals that support organizational goals. 

• Goal Check-ins

• Schedule monthly or weekly goal check-ins to guarantee that employees are on the right track, or adjust goals if they are no longer feasible. 
  

Excited to see how PerformYard can get you on track to set and achieve those SMART goals? We definitely are! Click here to see how we can work together!

What is SMART Goal Software?

SMART goal software like PerformYard helps organizations track goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Based. Users can assign goals to team members, track progress, and review data to make performance management more efficient.

Benefits of Using PerformYard for SMART Goal Tracking

The SMART goal system helps you focus on what is important for your employee and your organization to achieve. 

By being specific, you focus on an objective that you can clearly achieve or fail to achieve. 

By being measurable, managers and employees can track progress and see when an employee met the goal or by how much an employee exceeded the goal. 

By being attainable, you create a practical goal that an employee will be driven to complete. 

By being relevant, you ensure that each employee’s goals supports the company’s greater vision. 

By being time-based, you instill a sense of purpose and urgency, leading to a higher goal completion rate. 

SMART goals are measurable and actionable -- goals that employees can achieve, and whose achievement can be used to form the basis of performance reviews. 

PerformYard is the ideal software for combining goal management and performance review. PerformYard keeps your goals centrally located, provides updates and analysis automatically, and integrates your goals automatically into your performance management process.

This integration streamlines and improves your performance review cycle. Now, managers can see how their direct hires have met and exceeded their defined objectives during the review period -- all without leaving the performance review platform. Everything is integrated! Everything is simple. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Have a look at how PerformYard has helped some of our clients improve their performance management process. 

“PerformYard has streamlined our quarterly review process and has made feedback and goal setting so much easier!” - Vanessa from CFGI

“PerformYard has exceeded our expectations and the entire team has been an outstanding partner to us. We were able to implement an automated performance review process (goal setting, reviews, and feedback tools) in a short period of time.” - Jaymie for Dermira, Inc.

We’re really excited about how PerformYard can streamline and automate your performance management process -- from SMART goal setting to performance reviews. 

Get in touch to see how PerformYard can help you set and achieve your SMART goals!

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Resources Related to SMART Goal Setting

How to Write SMART Goals (University of California)

Why SMART Goals are Important

The Anatomy of an Effective Goal

Your Smart Goals Aren’t Smart Enough (SHRM Community)

Frequently Asked Questions

What are SMART goals examples?

SMART goals turn vague goals into concrete goals by making them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. For example, “I want to enhance customer service” becomes, “By next year, I want my customer service feedback score to be 20% higher.”

How do you set SMART goals in 2021?

Ask questions of everyone on your team about what they want to accomplish this year and where they would like to see improvement. Remember: focus on big-picture results and make each goal Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. Using a template as you make your SMART goal can help you iron out the nitty-gritty of goal setting, like what milestones you will use to measure their progress with. Once your goals are underway, you can track their progress with software like PerformYard.

What are the criteria for SMART goals?

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based so that employees have concrete, practical steps they can take to complete each task, and managers have clear data they can use to grade employee performance.

What are the pros and cons of SMART goals?

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based goals encourage teams to create goals that are achievable and measurable. This is great when it comes to measuring employee growth and performance. However, because of the focus on achievability, SMART goals can cause people to set their goals artificially low so that they aren’t penalized if they don’t achieve a difficult goal. Teams can preempt this issue by having frank conversations about balancing achievability and ambition.

HR leaders are often tasked with creating, or revising/overhauling their organizations' performance management metrics strategy, and making recommendations to senior leadership about what they feel needs to be done. That can be a daunting task. Today’s HR professionals, fortunately, have access to the data and technology they need to help them not simply “come up with metrics,” but to design a performance management strategy aligned with corporate goals and strategic objectives. That’s the way to earn that coveted seat at the table and the respect of senior leaders and board members.

So how do you get there? Here we take a look at some best practices for building a performance management metrics strategy that will resonate with senior leaders. 

Alignment to Strategic Objectives

This is where it all begins—or where it should. What your organization is trying to achieve should serve as the starting point for your consideration of the metrics to be used in performance management. Where can you find this information? In your annual report or strategic plan if your company has one. If not, through conversations with your CEO, CFO, and other members of the leadership team.

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What is the organization’s mission, vision, and values? What’s important to the organization? How does it make money (this is important for not-for-profit as well as for-profit organizations)? Unless you understand the answers to these critical questions it will be literally impossible to develop a performance management system that matters.

Focusing on Both Tactical and Adaptive Performance

Organizations long ago learned that they could quickly focus on tactical metrics to measure performance—things like absenteeism, showing up on time, etc. Some even progressed into more business-related metrics like sales, customer satisfaction scores, etc.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these types of measures. However, they don’t really give a full picture perspective of performance. Worse, they don’t provide any insights into to what extent the organization is building capabilities for innovation and future success. These are adaptative performance measures which high-performing companies have learned to build into their performance management metrics strategies.

Are you looking for people who just show up consistently? Or, are you looking for people who can adapt to a dynamic environment? Only you can answer those—or other—questions to help you determine what it is that your organization truly values in employees. Based on the answers, you would then come up with metrics to help you measure how well your employees are delivered on that value.

Overall Performance or A Focus on Key Competencies?

What constitutes a great employee in your organization? What are the core competencies and capabilities they possess that leads them to perform well? Do you know?

Many organizations manage performance at an overall level. This is the most simple way to manage performance and, again, there is nothing inherently wrong with taking this approach. However, the more you can drill down into the sub-elements of performance that really drive success, the more you can customize metrics across divisions, departments, roles, etc.

Goal Driven Performance Assessment

Another approach that organizations take to performance management is evaluating performance based on goal attainment. Those goals might be organization-wide (e.g., quarterly sales goals), division or department-specific (e.g., error rates, quality outcomes), or individual (e.g., achieving specific outcomes or deliverables).

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Finding the “Right” Approach

Your company and its strategic priorities, as well as your internal capabilities to gather and analyze various metrics, will determine the appropriate approach for you. There is no handy “one-size-fits-all” solution. And, in fact, despite widespread coverage of trendy performance management approach—like OKRs or “objectives and key results”—there is no one “right” approach, there is only your approach.

It can be helpful, though, to consider how other organizations have approached performance management, and the approaches they use to identify and use meaningful metrics while monitoring performance over time.

Wells Fargo is an example of an organization that once focused on tactical execution. An overly aggressive and singular focus on earnings led employees to take any means necessary to meet their numbers—including opening accounts without customer authorizations. That was in 2016, when the company agreed to pay $185 to settle a lawsuit with federal regulators and the county of Los Angeles. Over time, Wells Fargo has changed its approach to performance management. They provide a good example, unfortunately, of what can go wrong when companies focus only on tactical metrics.

Netflix is an organization with a strong commitment to culture. So strong, that back in 2009 then Talent Officer Patty McCord and CEO Reed Hasting, published a Netflix Culture Deck to provide clarity to the organization—all members of the organization—around what Netflix valued. They then took what some believe to be a radical approach to performance management—they were one of the first companies to boldly do away with the traditional annual performance review. Instead they shifted to a performance management process that focused on what they felt was most important—their cultural norms—and created a 360-degree, transparent (reviews are made public), and ongoing form of evaluation.

Deloitte approaches performance management somewhat differently. Like Netflix, they also eliminated annual reviews, and they eliminated cascading objectives. They shifted to a new approach that, according to an article in Harvard Business Review, has hallmarks that include “speed, agility, one-size-fits-one, and constant learning.” It’s an approach made possible by the availability of reliable performance data.

Keep in mind, though, that the approaches that have worked for these organizations may not work for yours—in fact, what worked for them probably won’t work for yours. Why? Because you’re different. You have a unique culture, unique market, unique product or service, unique vision/mission, and unique strategic objectives.

In determining the right approach for you, there are some important things you need to consider.

• Your purpose. Your starting point in considering the right approach for your organization is your purpose. Why are you doing performance management? What results do you believe it will drive in your organization?
• Can reviewers actually and accurately measure what you’re trying to measure? It’s not uncommon for organizations to measure leadership potential. But will your organization’s managers actually be able to measure leadership potential among their employees?
• Can you capture the data cost-effectively? Just because something can be measured, doesn’t mean that it should. You need to consider how it will be measured, the cost of measurement and the value of the information you’re gathering.
• Do metrics tie back to key organizational goals and objectives? Do you have a performance management system that can not only track progress against these objectives, but shift and adjust as priorities evolve?
  

So once you’ve considered all of these factors and come up with a performance management metrics strategy, your job is done, right? Wrong! Performance management isn’t a static organizational function. It’s iterative and ongoing. As you monitor metrics and have discussions around them, and as your internal and external environment changes based on anything from new emerging competition to global pandemics, your metrics will need to change. What’s important today may not be important tomorrow.

Having a process though for clearly and carefully considering the tie between performance metrics and organization performance, the options available to you, what your organization needs, and your organization’s capacity to capture the right information will help you develop a flexible approach for today and tomorrow—an approach that your organizational leaders will clearly see the value of. 

The ideas behind SMART are timeless, however if you simplify complex ideas into simple acronyms a lot is lost. That is why we think it is time to go back to the source, and explore exactly what makes SMART goals smart.

We looked at what goal science has to say about the S-M-A-R and T. SMART is still very important, but it might not be for the reasons you've been told.

S is for Specific

The reasoning behind setting “specific” goals is that we perform better when we know what to do. Think about your to do list. Which are the items that get done quickly and which are the ones that seem to stay on your list forever? If you are like me, something like “Buy a dozen eggs” will get done quickly while “Buy a chicken” might stay on my list for weeks. I have lots of experience buying eggs and can get right on it without much thought. I have never bought a chicken and having lived in the city most of my life I’m clueless about where to start.

There have been several studies that prove this. One study, out of Stanford, created two versions of a reward card for a frozen yogurt shop. The first version offered 1 free yogurt after purchasing any six flavors of yogurt in any order. The second version required ordering banana, apple, strawberry, orange, mango, and then grape in that order to receive the free cup.

The customers given the more specific version of the rewards card were 75% more likely to return to the store 6 times, complete the card and get their free cup of yogurt.

Professors Edwin Locke and Gary Latham have also written about this phenomenon. They found that as we move further outside our own area of expertise we have to engage in more and more problem solving to understand how to approach a goal. This can have negative consequences on our ability to stay motivated and complete our goals quickly.

It is a logical idea. If buying eggs is my goal I can move right to completing it. However if I am tasked with buying a chicken I will first have to engage in some problem solving, starting with my very minimal knowledge of chickens and expanding on that knowledge until I know enough to complete the task. This second process involves a lot discovery and does not always happen in a predictable way. The less I know about chickens at the start the longer and more unpredictable the process of buying a chicken will be.

You might have already noticed that buying an egg and buying a chicken are equally specific sentences. Which I did to make the point that just because you give someone a goal that sounds specific does not mean you are living up to the reasoning behind SMART goals. Specific goals should have a clear path to success for the person receiving the goal. If you’ve ever worked with a young intern, you know that specific goals mean different things to different people. For the lowly intern even getting a cup of coffee requires tremendous problem solving.

Lets return to the frozen yogurt example for a moment. There is something I didn’t tell you. The researchers also measured how many people wanted to take part in the rewards program. They presented one of the two versions and asked if the customer would like the rewards card.

Customers presented with the more flexible version (any yogurt in any order) signed up two and a half times more often than customers presented the very specific version!

We are great at completing specific goals, but we want flexible goals. This leaves us with a conflict. On the one hand employees are more likely to want to take on flexible goals that give them autonomy and let them do a little learning and problem solving. On the other hand employees will be most successful with a specific set of goals that requires no thinking, just rote action.

As a manager then we must balance these two forces. Generally goals that push employees slightly beyond their existing skill set, so that their skill set can still be applied to solving the new problem will be both quickly achieved and stimulating for the employee.

Another approach is to ask yourself, am I trying to get buy-in on a new goal or am I trying to get a difficult goal completed? If you want your team to embrace an easy but unpopular goal, consider making it a little less specific and a little more flexible so the team can embrace it and make it their own. If you already have lots of support but the goal is very difficult, consider being very specific so the team can apply their energy to exactly what needs to be done.

All that boiled was down to an "S." Before reading this you might have been forgiven for wondering why your intern still hasn't bought you a chicken.

In summary, the S in S.M.A.R.T. stands for - 

1. Make sure the person receiving the goal can see a clear path to success
2. And don't make the goal so rigid that your employee feels like a soulless automaton 

M is for Measurable

A measurable goal includes a metric or metrics that can be tracked so those involved know when the goal has been achieved. Many of us are guilty of setting goals that can’t be measured. For example maybe you have wanted to “be healthier.” Without metrics to quantify that goal it will be very difficult to know how much progress you are making or when you finally achieve "healthier." The unmeasurable goal is also an unclear goal, healthier could mean weighing less, but it could also mean running more.

When we make goals more measurable we also make them more motivating. From the last example, we might decide to throw out our goal to be healthier and replace it with a goal to complete a 5k race in under 30 minutes. This new measurable goal allows us to calculate exactly how much time we need to improve, and there is no ambiguity around if or when we achieve it. In fact there will be a triumphant moment when we cross a literal finish line.

The value of measurable goals is well understood, and Measurable is probably the most popular of the five characteristics of a SMART goal. So rather than convince you to make your goals more measurable, let me make the case that maybe your goals are already too measurable.

George Doran coined the acronym S.M.A.R.T. back in November of 1981, and in his original definition Doran is far less insistent on measurability than many of us are today. Doran said, “Notice these criteria don’t say that all objectives must be quantified...managers can lose the benefit of more abstract objectives in order to gain quantification.”

"Blasphemy!" I hear you say. But Doran is not the only one.

Drs. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham are the grandfathers of the study of modern goal-setting. These two scientists do not even include measurability in their 5 Goal Setting Principles. Instead measurability is discussed only as a way to give your goals more Clarity. For Locke and Latham measurability was important only as much as it made goals more clear, because clear goals are more motivating than ambiguous goals.

Now you might be thinking that Doran, Locke and Latham are luddites from another time. A time before big data, sensors, and tracking everything. Modern companies like Intel, Google, Uber and Twitter only care about things that are totally measurable.

Well lucky for us we know how Intel, Google, Uber and Twitter set goals. They all use a popular framework called OKRs. OKR stands for Objective and Key Results. The objective is a qualitative goal (ie not easily measurable) and the key results are several metrics that will be used to determine if the qualitative goal was achieved. Notice how the squishy unmeasurable goal come first in their framework.

The thing that Doran, Locke, Latham, Intel, Google, Uber and Twitter all have in common is that they don’t choose goals based on measurability. They set the goals that are most important for their companies first then they figure out the best way to measure them.

It is important to separate the goal and how we measure it because when we focus just on hitting certain metrics it can create perverse incentives. For example, maybe as a way to run that 5k race in under 30 minutes we drink a ton of caffeine and take a dangerous supplement. Sure we beat hit our metric, but we definitely did not achieve the original spirit of the goal which was to be healthier.

So by all means keep making your SMART goals measurable, just don’t compromise on what matters just so you have an easier time measuring. The OKR framework is helpful here. Set your goals first and let them be unencumbered by how easy or hard they are to measure. Then figure out how to make them measurable.

A is for Achievable

Oh “Achievable.” How did you get such a prominent position in the most well known framework for creating effective goals?

George Doran’s original SMART had “Assignable” as the A... but he did use “Realistic” for the R. Today the most common SMART acronym uses “Achievable.” But still, whether it is “Realistic” or “Achievable” how is this one of the 5 most important characteristics of an effective goal?

Can you imagine the conversation a rocket scientist who recently read Doran might have had with President Kennedy in the Fall of 1962?

Rocket Scientist: Mr. President I don’t feel like putting a man on the moon in this decade is realistic. What about a more achievable goal like sending a little robot up there?

President Kennedy: We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

The president knows what he’s talking about, and he’s backed up by the scientific research. In fact almost all goal research says that goals should be difficult or challenging in order to improve employee performance. “We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things...because they are hard.”

Unfortunately, SMART doesn't say anything about making our goals difficult. “Brush your teeth on the first Tuesday of every month,” is technically a SMART goal. However, since most of us are setting goals with the purpose of improving performance it seems like a strange omission.

For that reason I think it is important that we bring some nuance to the A in SMART so our goals will be better aligned with the scientific research.

For that lets turn to the work of the famous goal researchers Locke and Latham. They considered the idea of achievable goals, but only in the context of setting challenging goals.

One of the duo's most fundamental findings over their entire career was that, “the more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement.” This finding held true even when the goal was impossible.

But impossible is the opposite of achievable, what is going on here?

Locke and Latham explain it like this, difficult goals drive higher and higher performance as long as a person remains committed to those goals. For a person to be committed to a goal they must 1) believe the goal is worthwhile (we’ll cover this in the next post) and 2) believe the goal is achievable. Finally the word “achievable” in a scientific paper.

What Locke and Latham are saying is that when we set goals they should be the most difficult goal that our employees will believe is achievable, and therefore stay committed to. So yes, our goals should be achievable in the eyes of our employees, but our goals must first be challenging or they will not drive improvements in performance.

When Kennedy is giving his famous Moon Speech he is not interested in compromising on his audacious goal, he is trying to make the country believe in it, believe that it is achievable to go to the moon. Rather than making the goal easier, he is increasing the belief of his people.

Practically what this means is that when we look at the A in SMART it shouldn't make us want to set easier goals. Instead it should remind us to set the most difficult goals that we can then convince our employees are achievable. The A in SMART should really stand for “An almost impossible goal that your employees will believe is achievable.”

Subscribe to our blog to get our next post about the R in SMART - Relevant. We'll dive deeper into the idea of keeping employees committed to goals.

R is for Relevant

Remember Algebra homework? Or maybe your kid’s algebra homework?

When I think back to those days, there is one exasperated question that always comes to mind…

“But when am I ever going to use this stuff again?”

If you think for a moment about how you would answer that question from your teenage self or teenage child, you might just already understand the importance of the next component of SMART goals.

R is for Relevant, and it is the second “commitment modifier” we've talked about. Think of commitment modifiers this way…

You start a new project and you’re totally gung-ho, then things starts to get hard and the little voice inside your head says, “this is impossible” or “this is stupid.” That little voice is reducing your commitment to the goal because it isn’t achievable (impossible) or isn’t relevant (stupid).

The goal researchers Locke and Latham say "When goals are easy or vague, it is easy to get commitment, because it does not require much dedication to reach easy goals. When goals are specific and hard, the higher the commitment the better the performance."

So once we've crafted a difficult and specific goal the job is not over, we have to continuously maintain commitment to it if we want to keep performance high.

Back to the algebra homework, when the little voice inside our head was telling us that algebra is stupid. At this point a good leader, maybe a parent or a teacher, can help bring relevance to the goal by showing us why it matters. For example, “If you want to be an architect (or something else we feel is important) you’ll need to know algebra.” Or “You’re right, as a NFL player you might never use Algebra, but if you want to play in college you’re going to need to get good grades.”

One of the most important things to remember when creating goals for your team is that relevance is not intrinsic to the goal itself. People can find different relevance for the same goal.

Completing an algebra assignment could be relevant for one child because understanding and improving in math is important in its own right, while the same assignment for another student might only get completed because they seek the approval of their parents, and a third student may only do it because they’ve been threatened with expulsion if their grades don’t improve.

One of the most common mistakes managers and business leaders make when setting goals is thinking that a good goal is crafted on the page. They think, let me Google “writing good goals” and then take an hour to scribble down the team’s goals. What you can't write down is the relevance to each team member. The relevance the goal has for you is probably obvious -

“If we increase our Q4 numbers 10% I will look amazing to the boss and I will be in a good position for that promotion I want.”

But you have to remember that those things might not be relevant for everyone on your team. The algebra teacher might assign the night’s homework because “my students need more practice before they are ready for next week’s lesson.”

Meanwhile the students are doing the assignment for totally different reasons, or maybe they don’t have a good reason and aren’t doing the assignment because “it’s stupid.”

So while you might set the same goal for every person on the sales team, you may need to use several different techniques to create relevance.

Something I often hear is “because I said so," that should be relevance enough. That is true to a point, although over time your team’s commitment will start to slip if they don’t have more.

Our favorite goal researchers have a lot to say about this. From Motivation Through Conscious Goal Setting, “There are many ways to convince a person that a goal is important. In work situations, the supervisor or leader can use legitimate authority to get initial commitment. Continued commitment might require additional incentives such as supportiveness, recognition, and rewards.”

So get out there and spend a few moments with each member of your team, talk about the goals you set and help each of them find the relevance they need to succeed long term. Some will be motivated by the success of the company, others by personal power and riches, and a few may just want to avoid getting fired. Whatever it is everyone needs their own relevance or the positive impacts of your well crafted goals will quickly start to fade.

T is for Time Constrained

Time if the fourth dimension, it is a fundamental part of...of just everything. Everything you do happens over the course of time, so to set a goal and not talk about time is just crazy. Time is so fundamental to goals that you’d think we wouldn’t have to talk about it, but we do and we will.

A time-constraint is just a deadline. It could be one deadline, or it could be a recurring deadline. Maybe you don’t want to just complete 1 blog post, but you want to complete 1 every week.

Deadlines get their own letter in SMART, but in the science of goal setting deadlines are important for their impact on two other characteristics of effective goals, Clarity and Difficulty.

Setting clear goals helps us to focus our energy and motivation towards action. If a goal is unclear it can be very disorienting. Imagine you set a goal for yourself to complete a painting and sell it. On it’s surface that is a very clear goal, but if you don’t set a deadline all of a sudden the possibilities become endless. Should you practice for 1 month or 6 months before starting the painting you'll try to sell, how often should you practice, how good should the painting be before you try to sell it.

This is the type of ambiguity that tanks goals. As you start to work towards your goal, things will become difficult, your paintings won't be as good as you expected them to be and the ambiguity in your goal will become the room you need to start making excuses. "I'm still going to sell a painting, I just need more time to practice." "I'm still going to sell a painting, I just only have once-a-week to paint these days." The less ambiguity there is in a goal the less places there are for us to get lost in our pursuit.

If we imagine that our goal had been to sell a painting in 3 months, we can see how that would bring clarity and help us formulate a plan. We'd be able to start working backwards from that date and determining just exactly what we need to do to accomplish our goal. Eventually 3 months would come around and we would either succeed or fail, but either way we'd be futher ahead than if we hadn't set a deadline.

Everything you do is going to take place over time and so any goal you set needs a deadline to have clarity.

The other important aspect of deadlines is their impact on goal difficulty. Locke and Latham talk extensively about the power of difficult goals to increase output. It makes sense, if you think a goal is easy, you’re probably not going to work that hard to achieve it. If it seems really hard, but still achievable and worth doing, you’re going to give it everything you’ve got.

Time can act as a way to increase the difficulty of any goal. Think about it, almost all of us will cover 1 mile on our feet over the course of the next few days, but some people devote their entire lives to covering that same distance in under 4 minutes. It is something that all of us can do, but only becomes a motivating and difficult goal when we put a time constraint on it.

The easiest tasks benefit most from tight deadlines. This is because an easy goal can be made difficult with a deadline and therefore drive high performance. If you ask me to run a mile in the next week then I might not make any progress until the last few minutes of the last day of the week. If you tell me to accomplish the same goal in the next hour, I'm immediately kicked into gear and thinking about getting a change of clothes and some better shoes. If you tell me to cover a mile in the next 10 minutes I'm headed out the door now and I'll just endure the blisters and chaffing. The same goal with three different deadlines and therefore three levels of difficulty, drives three different amounts of effort.

The next time you set a goal don't forget time, it is inescapable.

What is Management by Objectives?

Management by objectives is a system for improving employee performance where management and employees jointly create objectives.

According to the theory, having employees offer input on goals and action plans is a way to encourage higher performance and commitment. The idea was first outlined by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management.

Drucker pointed out that employees often lose sight of their objectives because of an “activity trap”. When we get too involved in our current activities, we forget the original purpose. With MBO we jointly agree on common identified goals, which helps to eliminate the activity trap and keep us focused and aligned to our goals.

How does MBO work?

MBO is a results-driven strategic approach to goal setting. The process begins by defining specific objectives through shared discussion, then collaboratively deciding on how to achieve them in sequence. This would allow managers to pace work accordingly and create a more productive environment. As a result, employees see their own accomplishments as they complete each objective reinforcing a sense of achievement.

Ideally, employees will fulfill their responsibilities because they have personally been involved with the goal-setting process as well as brainstorming with management on how to reach them. Meeting objectives is later graded with group input and often incentivized.

Why does MBO work?

MBO’s success can be attributed to several important features. The first one is the equal participation of both managers and subordinates. This model cannot function properly unless both parties are aware of their roles and participation. Secondly, MBO emphasizes a joint goal-setting and joint decision-making feature. Superiors bring their knowledge and experience to the table, while subordinates help determine the speed and capacity in which goals can be reached.

Lastly, the MBO model ranks high on support levels. Because of its dynamic, managers and employees are forced into effective communication resulting in stronger relationships and positive work environments.

What are five steps in the management by objectives process?

There are several steps to the MBO process:

1. Identify organizational goals - Goals must be realistic and achievable, which helps to guarantee your best results.
2. Define employee objectives - Translate organizational goals to employees. The purpose is to make sure each employee is aware of the objectives and willing to participate in the process.
3. Monitor progress - Here, management needs to provide proper resources and support so employees can follow through with their action plans. Making the progress measurable is key. If you can show that objectives are being met, your employee will likely experience personal growth and be further motivated.
4. Performance evaluation and feedback - MBO traditionally uses positive recognition.
5. Reward Performance - After a performance evaluation, your employee should be rewarded for high performance.

Management by Objectives Advantages and Disadvantages

Management by objectives has a variety of benefits. The most obvious one is the amount of employee participation and engagement. Increased participation creates a positive work environment as employees feel the direct impact of their mutual work effort. This leads to more motivated employees and a higher level of job satisfaction. Another benefit of MBO is it develops stronger communication skills.

The model requires a substantial amount of input and feedback which helps everyone to improve their exchange of ideas. Better communication equals better relationships and clearer direction. Lastly, and probably the best pro to consider, MBO is easily applicable to any organization at all. It is not difficult to implement, no matter the type of industry or size. It can truly suit the needs of most organizations without incurring major costs.

Criticisms however do exist. The most criticized issue of Management by Objectives is its short-sightedness. Some believe MBO has the tendency to consume an entire organization’s resources solely towards achieving goals, overlooking other important needs.

This produces the mentality of achieving goals “at all costs” where employees are tempted to focus only on the finish line without considering the quality of their work. If the employee is a manager, this stifles leadership as well. Efforts become polarized as employees begin to focus only on their own set of objectives instead of the bigger picture. Another criticism is the joint approach doesn’t work well when challenges concerning incompatible needs arise.

Some would say it is too time consuming and difficult to sustain over time. The most interesting criticism might be that MBO misses the human point. Because it is organization-centric, questions regarding the managers’ personal objectives, needs, and relevance are many times left unanswered.

Reviewing the Management by Objectives

Management by Objectives is now a popular and widely used management theory. I believe its appeal to conduct business in a positive, productive work environment would catch anyone’s attention. Decisions don’t feel top-down and each member of the organization contributes equally. The synergetic approach does not lack in benefits and implementing this system is straightforward and clear.

Ultimately, keep in mind that MBO leaves behind a demand to meet both organizational and individual purposes, which can easily become problematic without proper leadership.

Organizational alignment, also referred to as 'strategic alignment', is a company's ability to get everyone on the same page about what needs to get done and how.

But importantly, it's also about a company's ability to paint the bigger picture and get every individual within the business to see themselves in it. Or, as organizational strategists Jonathan Trevor and Barry Varcoe put it in their HBR deep dive, organizational alignment is how you bridge "the gap between ambition and performance."

And if you're not hitting efficiency benchmarks or reaching your potential as an organization, you could have an alignment problem. But don't worry, there are ways to fix it.

Why Is Organizational Alignment So Elusive?

If getting your numbers back on track and fighting employee disengagement feels like an uphill battle, know that you're not alone.

Organizational alignment is an ongoing challenge for every business, regardless of shape or size. For example, investment tech startup Betterment changed their approach to organizational alignment and employee performance management three times on the road to reaching 100+ employees.

And since the beginning, massive household names like Starbucks have built their empires on organizational alignment systems in order to consistently hit growth targets and provide an awesome customer experience across some 25,000 stores in 62 countries.

With so many diverse individuals under one roof, true alignment is no small feat. But it's not impossible, either. Let's break it down to the core building blocks of a truly aligned organization.

Putting the Pieces Together

Companies with strong alignment know their goals, actions and purpose. Here's what that means.

Goals: What are we driving the business towards?

Regardless of whether you're using annual revenue goals or departmental OKRs, an aligned organization puts the proven growth metrics first and foremost.

Depending on where you are and what you want for your business, your business plans can and should vary. For more on the core elements that make a goal effective, check out our breakdown here.

Actions: How will employees achieve those goals?

Some 95% of a company’s employees are completely unaware of or confused about the business strategy. And only 7% know what's expected of them in order to help achieve company goals.

Once you're clear on the tangible results you want to see, you owe it to your employees to give them everything they need to make those results happen.

Clarify the specific day-to-day tasks, actions and behaviors at the individual and team level that, when compounded over time, add up to high-level success.

Purpose: Why is it important to achieve these goals, with this particular approach

Cautionary tales like that of Enron and Wells Fargo show us that breakdowns in organizational alignment often occur when employees are incentivized by the wrong things.

State your mission regularly and your values clearly so that every employee knows exactly what are your business goals and the behaviors that help you meet them.

Keep Trying

We all dream of spearheading the kind of organizations that make business history. Organizations where every last individual is passionately pulling in the same direction. But the truth is, business is messy, chaotic and fraught with change — and there's no magic formula that can ever make it otherwise.

But luckily, there are many ways to make sure that the above three performance points are always being met at every level of the organization. Cascading goals is a classic approach used by many — but even companies who reject the classic hierarchy (like Asana and their AOR model), can create an approach that makes sense for their unique business culture.

What matters is that you're willing to learn and adjust as you grow.

Because as tempting as it is to blame employees for angry customers or unmet targets, the reality is it's every leader's responsibility to be the guiding force that lights a clear path forward for the business, and everyone in it. After all, how can we expect employees to support a strategy they don't know exists?

Is there a difference between goals and expectations?

Surely, there is, but it can be hard to articulate.

According to a 2015 survey from Gallup, roughly half of employees say they know what is expected of them at work. That can wreak havoc on employee productivity.

In fact, in another survey from ComPsych, 31% of respondents named “unclear expectations” as their biggest stressor at work. Clearly, it's time to recognize that expectations matter. Here's why.

What Are Goals and What Are Expectations?

Goals give us a challenge to help bring out our best.

Expectations give us simple habits and a professional code of conduct. Good expectations should also help us reach those goals — in the right way.

Think of a goal like the finish line. Expectations are the the daily actions, attitudes, practices that help you get there.

Maybe that's why companies like Netflix and Amazon have notoriously firm (and some might say harsh) expectations of their employees.

But how much do expectations (which can be anything from your tardiness policy to unspoken collective judgments on an employee's level of dedication) impact your team's ability to meet a goal? And how far are you willing to go to uphold your expectations?

Expectations are critical because they lay the groundwork for your company's culture. And what works for the Netflix, Amazon or even "lovey-doveys" like Zappos and Asana, may not work for you.

What Do Your Expectations Say about You?

Sometimes expectations are documented in black and white "rules" or "guidelines". Many times they're completely unspoken. Either way, they send a clear message about what's important to you as a company.

And while they may seem like simple things we can expect from any job, they’re actually much bigger than that.

They're the basic rules for the entire social system that keeps the office running.

In many cases, it's a system that works just fine. But what happens when your top performer violates the dress code? Do you let it slide or do you stick your values and address it?

Recently Wells Fargo has gotten in a lot of deserved hot water for the Fake Account Scandal. The rampant fraud that occurred across the organization shows what can go wrong when leadership sets very aggressive goals and then has very lax expectations of how employees reach those goals. Before long the implied expectations can become, meet your goals at all costs...even fraud.

Aggressive goals are important, but an organization also needs expectations if it is going to remain true to itself as it pushes to meet difficult targets.

Get Clear on What Really Matters

CEO of education platform Varsity Tutors, Chuck Cohn suggests making your expectations crystal clear (and well-documented).

"Creating a cultural identity can seem like an amorphous task that is potentially boundless in scope. Step one to push through this challenge is creating a simple and easy-to-articulate vision for what you are trying to accomplish and what sorts of behaviors, attitudes, and approaches are (and are not) valued by your organization. Try to explicitly describe, both to yourself and your team members, the culture you wish to create. This should exist in written form so as to prevent the message from being distorted."

Many leaders’ identities are so intertwined with their business that they don’t see the need to articulate company values. But employees have a different live experience and won’t share a leader’s values perfectly. It's unfair to assume that they should just "get it".

Keep your expectations clear, simple and documented (or frequently communicated) so everyone knows what matters. Or at least, so they can see where you're coming from when you pull them aside for a one-to-one.

Bring Your People in Close

Finally, your expectations shouldn’t be yours alone.

Much like goals, expectations are a moving target. They need to be set and reset in tandem with your employees and managers. Regular check-ins and reviews can help you keep your finger on the pulse of the values and expectations that are effectively moving your teams toward their goals, and alert you to those that could use a little rethinking.

While expectations can definitely be personal and tricky, they cut to the core of what a business does and who its people are. The good news is, we can choose to be just as intentional about setting and resetting high-performance expectations as we are about setting goals.

We've all heard the mantras: "A goal without a plan is just a wish," "Goals are dreams with deadlines," and the shamelessly cloying, "Reach for the sky!".

Those are great for social media memes and personal development book covers, but what should goal setting actually look like at work? You know, in practical terms.

We all know we should be setting big, juicy, inspiring goals for our companies and people, but because of the sheer size of this topic, we have no clue where to start. SMART goals, OKRs, Golden Circles, etc. — there are so many ways to break down a goal. But beyond the HR headlines and endless acronyms, what do these goal-setting frameworks have in common?

Let's get back to basics and take a deeper look at the core fundamentals that make a goal great.

What's the Purpose of Goal Setting?

Most of us think we know the purpose of goal setting, but unfortunately, life, business and bureaucracy have a way of consistently muddling the water. In fact, experts estimate that only 36% of organizations have a company-wide approach to goal setting.

Those of us who have attempted to set goals in the past — whether that be departmental revenue targets or those infamously doomed New Year's weight loss resolutions — would likely agree that setting the goal is the easy part. The brutal truth is that for a goal to make it beyond lip-service status, it must be adopted and upheld at every level of the business.

Here are the basic principles behind every great goal-setting framework.

The 4 Basic Functions of a Good Goal:

1. It motivates and inspires employees
2. It facilitates strategic planning
3. It provides guidance and direction in daily tasks
4. It helps evaluate and improve performance

The 3 Main Tenets of Goal Setting:

1. A goal is better than no goal
2. A specific goal is better than a broad goal
3. A challenging and specific goal is better than an easy goal

What Are the Different Types of Goals (And How Do You Choose)?

Now that you know the fundamentals of why, let's dive deeper into the how and which.

You may already have a hunch that what works for Google may or may not be what's right for your company. Still, we now have more options for goal-setting than any other generation in business history, and deciding on something as powerful as THE north star for your entire company is a critical call to make.

After all, it may look great on paper, but what if it stops making sense as soon as the rubber meets the road? Luckily, there are some shared characteristics between the majority of proven goal frameworks.

The 3 Main Types of Goals:

1. Absolute goals - These are usually the hard numbers: things like revenue, number of users, number of hires, time to hire, etc.
2. Relative goals - These goals measure how your company stacks up in the marketplace and are usually things like market share or rankings.
3. Sustainment goals - These goals let you know you're still on track to other big goals. These can be things like employee turnover, customer satisfaction, churn rates, etc.

The decision to choose OKRs, OGSMs or BSQs isn't what matters most. Any good goal/ goal-setting framework will have the same fundamental characteristics built in. The important part is not to cut any corners when it comes to executing these elements in the day-to-day.

Here's What the Best Goal-Setting Frameworks All Have in Common:

• An action plan designed to motivate and guide an individual or group
• Goal-setting criteria or rules
• A time limit that's firm but appropriate
• Metrics for measuring the goal
• Focus on a set of 3-5 main goals vs. a million watered-down objectives
• Feedback and flexibility to help adapt to change

When setting a good goal for your company and the individuals who make it run, make sure your goal ticks the above boxes.

But don't forget that, as with every other element of your business, goal setting is a living, breathing process. There may be times you have to step back and really think through what works for your unique culture and business.

Logic and Clear Thinking Are Timeless Goal-Setting Tools

Tomas Tunguz, co-author of Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future says it best, “Ultimately, logic and clear thinking are probably the best tools for setting goals, and motivating an organization properly.”

At times, applying those tools may require you to adjust your expectations. Or, in the words of another goal-setting pro, Bill Gates once famously said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” (And Bill's a guy who really gets stuff done.)

If you want to go after those BHAGs (that's Big Hairy Audacious Goals, in case that one escaped your radar), more power to you! Just create a goal-setting rule that in your organization, goals are meant to be pursued, not reached. Then align that in your metrics and feedback guidelines to support that goal across the org chart.

Because at the end of the day, the most important aspect of goal setting isn't a flashy acronym or perfectly-crafted memo, it's that you and your people all have a clear target to act on.

Goals are an elusive subject. Research on how to set them, track them, and of course achieve them has dominated both the personal and business spheres for decades, maybe even centuries.

According to some of the crème de la crème goal-setting researchers, a goal "is the desired outcome of a particular behavior or set of behaviors, and therefore goal setting involves specifying the level or standard of performance to be attained, usually within a predetermined time frame."

Let's think about that last part for a minute. Goals can be incredibly motivating, but only if the time period makes sense. If a goal cycle is too short, we don't get the rush of taking those giant performance leaps. Too long and we risking working on outdated, ho-hum goals that no one takes seriously.

But how do you really know when one goal should end and the next begin?

Simple Benchmarks for Choosing the Right Goal Cycle

Spoiler alert: As much as we'd love to give you one, there is no magic formula for setting the perfect goal cycle.

In today's rapidly-changing business climate, even the time-honored quarterly goal has come under scrutiny. At the end of the day, establishing a relevant end date for your business goals is about asking yourself the hard questions, things like:

• What matters to us more, profits or innovation?
• Does why we have a goal, or how we reach it, matter as much as when we achieve that goal?
• What do we want the future of the business to look like?
• Are our goals meant to be reached? Or just pursued?

Long-Term Goals vs. Short-Term Goals

One way to simplify the process is to start by drawing a line between your long and short-term goals. Again, this will look different depending on what business you're in.

A startup may have vastly different long-term goals than a centuries-old business that functions in a slow-moving industry. For example, 10x growth within 5 years might be the kind of high-stakes long-term goal that makes sense for a sparkling new tech company. But without clear criteria for how that goal will break down in the day-to-day, you could be putting your business at risk for the sake of pleasing investors.

For a 3-5 year goal, you might need performance reviews every month, or even week to keep your teams on track. But what if you're a major contractor who's just won a big-ticket infrastructure project that will take a decade or more to complete? In that case a long-term goal might be a 20-year goal broken down into "short-term" annual or biannual goals based on project specs that are already fully fleshed out.

Here are a few examples that can help give a little more context to how you think about the right goal cycle for your organization.

Apple: 3 Annual Objectives

"I want to put a ding in the universe.” – Steve Jobs, Former CEO, Apple

Steve Jobs was known for setting massive goals. Every year, Apple hosted a strategy meeting where the famed CEO would gather dozens of yearly objectives from key staff, then narrow them down until they were left with just three. Τhose 3 goals then became the core goals for the next year.

Jobs also set expectations for how those goals were to be reached. Focus was big. He was known for demanding zero distraction. Every activity his teams undertook either supported the annual goals, or simply weren't a priority. Apple even assigned a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) to every project to make sure their teams stayed on track to hitting their yearly goals.

Starbucks: Why over When

“These goals represent our aspiration to create impact on the issues that matter.” - John Kelly, SVP of Global Social Impact and Public Policy, Starbucks

For Starbucks, social responsibility is the north star. The coffee giant's 2020 vision for social responsibility has clear guidelines and expectations. Starbucks breaks down their 2-3 year responsibility vision to smaller, more actionable goals under following headings:

• Sustainable Coffee
• Greener Retail
• Creating Opportunities
• Strengthening Communities

By stating that these are the goals for 2020 "and beyond", they're letting stakeholders know that this is an ongoing, long-term goal that they're committed to setting and resetting every couple of years.

Facebook: Non-goals Take You Farther

"Lots of times you have very good ideas. But they're not as good as the most important thing you could be doing. And you have to make the hard choices." - Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

At the end of the day, there isn't enough time to do it all.

Sheryl Sandberg has a great trick for choosing which goals really matter. Non-goals are secondary goals employees should focus on only after the main goal has been met. "You have your goals and non-goals. The non-goal is the next thing that you would do, because it's a really good idea," she says.

A rule like this might make more sense for a 20,658-person company like Facebook than a ruthlessly determined startup, but it's a form of prioritizing we could all learn from — both for the big picture long-term goals and the smaller day-to-day actions that get you there.

The oven beeps, you open the door, reach in and grab the cookie sheet. A searing pain shoots up from your burnt hand! You put on an oven mitt and try again. From that point on you always use an oven mitt when grabbing things in the oven.

That is a learning cycle, and one you may have personal experience with.

Learning cycles are made up of a plan, an action, a review of the results and an update to the plan going forward. We are very familiar with learning cycles in our day to day life, we call it learning from experience, trial and error, feedback loops, whenever we say “I’ll never do that again!” we’re referring to a particularly traumatic learning cycle.

We have all gone through millions (maybe even billions) of learning cycles in our lives. Most of what we know was learned in this way. Even the things we learn from books are just summaries of other people’s learning cycles. It is staggering to think about. Just try to imagine how many simple learning cycles were needed to get us to something like your smartphone.

Learning cycles in business

In business the idea of the learning cycle has been part of management science for as long as there has been management science. Walter Shewhart and his champion Edwards Deming introduced the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle in the 1950s which later became an important part of the Toyota Production System. Six Sigma’s continuous improvement is an implementation of learning cycles, as is agile development and the lean startup methodology. The idea has been applied to organizational control and improvement over and over again.

But why do we need all these implementations of learning cycles if it is something we all already do naturally? The reason is that while we are naturally very good at simple learning cycles, more complex problems require some higher-order thinking and organization to take advantage of. For example if we eat something that instantly makes us sick all of us are naturally equipped to learn from that experience, but if eating something contributes to us becoming sick over many years we need science, statistics and millions of dollars in research to figure it out. The scientific method by the way is another implementation of a learning cycle.

How to use learning cycles

So how do we make sure our organization is learning effectively?

We don’t need millions of data points or sophisticated statistical analysis and we definitely don’t need artificial intelligence. We can use Shewhart and Deming’s simple Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.

Plan

Start by getting together with your employees and working out what their process or approach looks like today. Then work together to establish a best first guess for how to do things better. This is a great activity for one-on-ones.

Do

Take action, interact with customers, sell, whatever it is. Remember that learning cycles are the same thing as learning by doing. At a certain point you need to stop learning from books and experts and start learning from your own work.

Check

The easiest way to close a learning cycle is to just put a time frame on it. Every two weeks hold another one-on-one to review how the last plan went and discuss potential improvements to it. Don’t let a lack of sophisticated analysis get in the way of new ideas. Data is useful, but you don’t need it for every type of learning cycle (remember the oven).

Act

Take some of the best ideas and update the plan. You’re now back at step one, that’s why it’s called a learning cycle.

That's it, that is all you need to start your team on a learning path. A simple learning cycle like this can be implemented at your organization with a few calendar invites and a word document. It’s a great practice for regular communication between managers and employees.

Why wouldn’t you harness the learning of your whole team?

Google is the most audacious company in the world. Their new projects are often so ahead-of-the-times that it can be hard to differentiate a google press release from a blurb for a sci-fi novel. Google is currently

• Running a study to understand what a healthy person looks like
• Figuring out how to make cars run on salt water
• Launching internet balloons that will bring wifi to every last inch of the world
• Sending out cars that already drive themselves
• And of course, moving us closer than anyone to the Singularity

Maybe you work for a company with goals as big as Google’s, but you probably don’t, and that’s ok. Most of us are working on goals like “Increase employee retention 12%.” Steady, incremental improvements designed to help us get a little bit better or even just keep the lights on another year.

There is nothing inherently wrong with incremental goals, but maybe we can also learn something from being a little more like Google, being a little more audacious.

Larry Says No Buffering

Hunter Walk use to work at Google, but these days he invests in startups and writes a great business blog. Hunter recently shared a post about a meeting he once had with Larry Page the founder of Google.

“Larry, this quarter we’re going to aim to reduce buffering events from X to 90% of X through…,” our engineering lead started explaining before Larry looked up from the paper we’d given him.

“You should have zero buffering,” the Google cofounder suggested.

As we detailed why of course that would be impossible because of all the things we can’t control for and the desire to manage our own bandwidth costs, I saw a familiar look settle on Larry’s face. Half-impish (as in “oooh, you really want to go down this rabbit hole with me”) and half-incredulous (as in “Each day I awake with my mind wiped of the fact most people aren’t as smart as I am and then progressively discover during the course of my meetings that you’re all idiots”).

“You should come back with a plan for zero buffering.” End of meeting.

Hunter’s team went back to the drawing board, and something amazing happened. Before, the team had been “tracking occurrences of buffering in the player and browser, trying to categorize the causes (insufficient steady state user bandwidth, connectivity interruption, overworked client CPU, etc) and prioritizing which we could intelligently solve for.” Now with this audacious goal in front of them they were forced to think differently about the problem.

They started by just finding solutions, no matter how impractical they were, for example “A totally private, worldwide high-speed internet with locally cached video and free state-of-the-art PCs for every end user.” They also considered approaching the problem from a different angle, “what if it was more of a design challenge? Imagine a quick transition animation which played when you pressed the Play button that seemed to be a UX affordance but actually allowed us to start caching the video locally so we could tolerate connectivity interruptions in the post-play experience.”

Hunter’s team never achieved the zero buffering goal that Larry had set, but they did radically change their approach and achieve much more aggressive targets then they had originally thought possible, “the nature of the discussion was changed by a simple stretch goal exercise.”

10x vs 10%

Larry’s insistence on zero buffering is called “10x Thinking.” It is Google’s first of 8 principles for their innovative culture. “To put the idea simply: true innovation happens when you try to improve something by 10 times rather than by 10%.”

It is very easy to try. Take whatever it is you are setting a goal for and instead of multiplying it by 1.10 multiply it by 10. Look at that new audacious, Google-sized goal and ask yourself, “how would we do it?”

The beauty of 10x thinking is that there is no way you will be able to reach your 10x goal by just improving what you’re already doing. The exercise forces you to totally rethink your approach, maybe even rethink the problem.

Hunter Walk says “when I talk with any startup – Google scale or not – my easiest recommendation in brainstorming and goal-setting is to not get caught up in just local optimizations, not to stay exclusively in the land of reasonable, but devote some time to 10x Impact conversations.”

So even if you’re just trying to keep the lights on it might be worth thinking in terms of 10x rather than 10%.

SMART is great, but it has become cliched. Many people assume they know what it means without ever thinking very carefully about it. That said, the science behind SMART is as relevant as ever.

The majority of the great discoveries on goal setting came from Professors Edwin Locke and Gary Latham. After two lifetimes of research these men partnered on a seminal book released in 1990 that summarized the science of effective goal setting. It is called “A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance.”

The book is full of insights and well researched ideas, but it doesn't have any catchy acronyms. Here is what the professors say about setting effective goals regardless of the methodology or acronym you choose.

The Line between Success and Failure Should Be Crystal Clear

Great goals don’t leave any room for interpretation. There should be no ambiguity in what accomplishing the goal will look like. This is because corporate goals are a form of communication, they are about two or more people agreeing on a shared destination. If the goal isn’t clear it may not be aligning everyone in the same direction.

Additionally, unclear goals can have a negative impact on persistence. People will reinterpret an ambiguous goal to make their life easier just when things start to get hard. The S, M, and T in SMART all relate to having unambiguous goals.

Goals Should Be Challenging

A person should see their goals as difficult but achievable. This leads to the greatest efforts. When we believe we can achieve a goal but know it will be hard, we feel energized and excited about the prospect of succeeding at something meaningful. Conversely if we don’t see the goal as difficult we won’t be inspired by it, and if we believe a goal is too difficult we can become overwhelmed by it and give up before starting.

Note that all of this is about perception. Great leaders often convince the people around them to believe in audacious goals they might never have tried on their own.

We Must Be Committed to Our Goals

Part of the power of goals is that they focus our attention and increase our persistence. We are more likely to follow through when things get difficult if we’re trying to accomplish a goal. However, this is only true if we’re committed to that goal.

Organizations drive goal commitment in many ways, but the best option is to inspire employees to believe in the importance of their goals. When NASA was shooting for the moon, no one had to post the junior engineer’s goals on the bulletin board to keep him committed to the mission.

We Should Have the Necessary Skills

How much a goal impacts our performance is partly related to whether or not we already have the skills to achieve the goal. Goals are great at driving persistence, but they are not as good at driving creativity and learning. The impact on performance of a goal will be moderated by how capable we already are at achieving it.

The more we know about how to achieve a goal, the greater the impact goal-setting will have on our performance.

Effective Goals Need Control Systems

Goals can be too effective. They can become so motivating that they drive your employees to cheat.

That is why it is important for goals to come with control systems. It is not enough to achieve our goals, we must achieve them in the right ways. Effective control systems include a strong culture, well-articulated expectations, or oversight.

Whatever framework you choose, be sure that your goals include the scientific fundamentals of effective goal setting. Locke and Latham have much more to say about goals in their book, it's worth a read.

Every year in the gym, it’s the same annual ritual. Empty machines in December, a packed house in January, fresh with newly resolved gym rats, followed by slowly thinning crowds in February and March.

Every year, some people stay on the treadmill and fly by their New Year’s resolutions, while others don’t make it to January 2nd, let alone the first day of spring.

Whether you’re setting goals for yourself, your employees or your company, it can be easy to get distracted and lose focus of what you planned to achieve at the start of the year. As the first quarter of the calendar year comes to a close, now is a great time to assess your progress, for better or worse, and recalibrate. 

Now is the time to check the progress of the work that’s important to you because you’ve likely hit a good sweet spot for spotting trends and changing course. If you assess too quickly, you may not have enough data to make an informed decision. Wait too long and you may miss opportunities to take advantages of trends or a rapidly changing situation.

While this philosophy is useful through many lenses – self-improvement, corporate growth – it is often ignored in the case of employee performance if frequent reviews are shunned in favor of the traditional annual performance review. The missed opportunity will not only deprive your employees of a chance to improve with useful feedback, but also can be a drag on morale.

As the weather gets warmer and the days start to get longer, take a look at your performance plan, and determine if you need to renew, refresh or reset your goals.

Consider these three sets of circumstances: 

Are you ahead of schedule toward achieving what you wanted to achieve this year? Did you underestimate what your employee was capable of accomplishing? Is your company performing at an unexpectedly high level?

Renew your plan and set the bar higher.

Were your original goals too ambitious for you or your team? That’s okay. They might just need an adjustment. Sometimes, initial goals can be formed by insufficient data or poor assumptions.

Refresh your targets with realistic expectations.

Do you need to head in a different direction than you originally planned? Has the situation with your employee changed due to a new project or responsibility? Are your chosen metrics no longer relevant?

Reset your goals to reflect the new reality.

Whatever the situation, recalibration is a natural and necessary exercise, and an important part of any performance management process. How do you recalibrate goals in your organization?

Goals are all around us. The finish line in a race is the most obvious example, but you might also see them in nutrition guidelines, a train schedule or as an actual goal on a soccer field.

In the business world, goals are the foundation of a high performance culture. They give employees direction and purpose, and, when done correctly, serve as a motivator.

Of course, goals need specific ingredients to be effective. A basketball game without baskets would be boring and uneventful. Flights that could land at any airport within 100 miles of your destination wouldn’t be very useful. The same is true for your company. Your employees aren’t likely to succeed if your business goals don’t include the necessary pieces of information for success.

To help understand how to set good business goals, imagine these situations:

Races Without Finish Lines: Every runner dreams of breaking the tape at the finish line of a big race, but what if there was no finish line? What if races didn’t have designated distances? The simple answer is that without finish lines, we wouldn’t know who won. Runners wouldn’t no how fast or slow they should run or how far to go. Even worse, without finish lines, running would lack the challenge that motivates runners.

Takeaway: Setting goals with concrete targets helps define when a goal is achieved and serves as motivation for achieving it.

Vague Dietary Guidelines: The FDA educates the public on several factors that contribute to a healthy diet. What if instead of outlining the target calories per day, servings of each food group, suggested amounts of each nutrient and adjustments for different body types, they only gave us one of these important pieces of information?

You might shoot for 2000 calories, but you would get too much fat and not enough protein. Maybe you would get to the right protein amount, but without having any vegetables, you'd miss out on other key nutrients. Without each key detail, we wouldn’t have a good roadmap towards a balanced diet.

Takeaway: Goals need to include important details such as what you want achieved and how. The best goals are also tailored to the specific person or team that will own them.

Universal Speed Limits: What if we had one speed limit for all driving situations and conditions? While this might seem fun, it would either be dangerous or inconvenient – going 55 MPH in a school zone is a terrible idea and you wouldn’t get very far with a 25 MPH limit on the highway. Further, roads change - we add lanes, or build neighborhoods around them. If speed limits didn’t account for each road’s unique and changing characteristics, they would result in dangerous driving conditions.

Takeaway: Goals should account for specific circumstances and include reasonable targets. Over time, goals should be recalibrated regularly as situations change.

Trains Without Schedules: What if trains didn’t share their schedules and ran as they pleased? You would never know when to get on one, and would have no idea when you would actually arrive at your destination. Still, as long as they got your from point A to point B eventually, the ride would be considered a success. By communicating an arrival time, you have an expectation that you can use to measure whether or not the train did good job of getting you where you wanted to go. 

Takeaway: Goals need deadlines so that you can prioritize them with other goals, and know if you achieved them in a timely manner.

Setting an effective goal can be the difference between average and great performance. Fortunately, with the right elements, creating a well-defined goal doesn’t have to be a difficult exercise. We like to use the SMART goals framework, which you can check out in our SMART Goals Tipsheet.