There is a misunderstanding that goals are the most important aspect of both personal life and business. If you achieve your goals, you win at life. But goals are just what we use to measure our progress towards the end results. It’s what the goals represent that is important.
Why goals fail?
More often than not, the goals we set fail to have any impact on our work in the long run. Even when using well-crafted and smart goals. Even when using popular and effective goal setting methods like Objectives and Key Results?
Why?
OKR coach Christina Wodtke has tweeted: “Success is having an impact” If all you measure for yourself and your company is if the goals are met, boxes ticked, you’ll probably find that the end result is not what you desired. And your goals will fail to deliver.“
This is the main reason goals fail to have an impact. It’s our mindset. We assume that accomplishing goals and getting measurable results equals success. It does not.
The mindset.
I’m not saying you don’t need goals. Of course you do. But I’d say the goals are like coordinates in Google Maps. You set them, you find a route that takes you there and you can see how far away you are. However, your aim is not to get to the end point. Your aim is what you’ll do when you get there.
Inspiring employees with Objectives and Key Results.
With Weekdone Team Compass you can use the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) methodology to to set inspiring and impactful goals for your company.
Showing employees how their day-to-day tasks move thee company towards a common unified vision. That in turn improves employee engagement, motivation and, in turn, productivity.
How we set goals.
When I start setting goals for the upcoming quarter for myself and my teams, I first decide what it the impact I’m trying to create. Why are we doing what we’re doing?
For instance, for a marketing team, it might be getting more new customers, to sell more of our product so that we could grow as a company. Based on that we can set a goal to “increase new sales leads.” This is an easily understandable Objective for which we can then add measurable key results like “publish 5 articles” or “be present in 10 tech conferences.”
With that approach, you can make sure that the metrics for success are something that have a real impact on the entire company.
Try out Weekdone with your team now. So that everyone in your company would understand, why their work is vital for everyone’s long term prospects.