GOALS MANAGEMENT – USING

GOALS TO IMPROVE TEAMWORK

AND PERMFORMANCE

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Organizations with a High Level of Goal Clarity are Four Times More Likely to Have Strong Business

Outcomes

Research from Bersin by Deloitte states that organizations with a high level of goal clarity are

four times more likely to have strong business outcomes. Why? Organizational performance is

governed by how well people communicate. And, paradoxically, as organizations succeed and

grow, their ability to communicate

becomes more difficult. The chart at

the right shows why. A team that

grows from three to 25 people

increases by eight fold – but the

number of possible communication

paths increases 117 fold! Simply

put, most organizations outgrow

their own ability to collaborate and

execute.

Define clear goals, and your team can cut through this complexity. Goal setting matters!

Responding to Change

The ability to set goals and manage them is an essential tool for managing change.

Organizations are subject to change at an unprecedented pace. Externally, change is driven by

many factors organizations can’t control, such as technology, competitors, and other market

forces. Internally, change is driven by innovation, growth, employee demographics, and other

dynamics.

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Change requires effective and

timely adjustments in priorities –

and priorities that people can

adjust to. Good goals will clarify

what is to be done, when, and by

whom. Organizations that do not

have a system for defining,

agreeing on, communicating, and

managing goals are at a severe

disadvantage to those that have

this capability.

Agility vs. Firefighting

The ability to define what needs to be done and

then manage getting it done is a skill every

team member can and should have – not just

top leadership. The scope and time horizons of

each individual’s responsibility will vary by job

level, but the necessity to adjust priorities to

circumstances and to separate the important

from the urgent is everybody’s everyday job.

Good goal setting is a unique human trait for

envisioning a desired future and agreeing to

work toward that future. Without good

communication and clarity, the culture breaks down into

an unproductive “firefighting” environment.

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Alignment Up, Down, and Across

Sometimes leaders wish goal setting were as easy as starting at the top of the organization and

then breaking goals down in succeeding levels. That is part of the story. But in all

organizations, much of the work is cross functional. In fact, most things that customers value

are a result of cross-functional collaboration. The ability to define goals using a common

language and approach greatly reduces the friction involved in building collaboration, not only

within a department but especially among large cross-functional projects, committees, or

process teams. In addition, it helps bridge the communication gaps that occur vertically in an

organization.

Bottom line? Without good goal setting, organizational complexity overwhelms

communication effectiveness.

Plans are nothing. Planning is everything (sustaining goal clarity).

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Making Goals Matter

Every human being seems to have an innate desire to engage in something meaningful,

whether at home or at work. As organizations grow, however, it becomes easier and easier to

become disconnected with what individuals are doing and how their activity ties into the

organization. And since what the organization is doing changes, that disconnect results in

resistance to change, which eventually results in individual and collective disenfranchisement.

The formation and management of goals is a significant tool for helping people go through

what we call the “engagement cycle” (or change management cycle). Capturing the hearts and

minds of people requires that they understand what is being proposed, why it is important,

and that they have to the skills and training to fully engage. This is just an alternate way of

looking at what is involved in defining and executing a goal.

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Creating Organizational Agility through Frequent Goal Reviews

and Revisions

A proven approach for making your organization more responsive and receptive to change is

to introduce an organization-wide framework for reviewing, revising, and tracking goals. This

framework builds an organizational rhythm that fosters regular communication and creates

accountability for knowing the status of goals and what needs to be done next.

A plan is out-of-date by the time it’s produced. But the Six Disciplines program is built on the

principle embodied by President Dwight Eisenhower who said, “Plans are worthless, but

planning is everything.” In other words, the value of producing a plan is the understanding

produced while collaborating on the plan. The Six Disciplines program cultivates your team’s

sense of shared purpose and creates a culture of communication, collaboration, and teamwork

by regularly reviewing and revising plans. Not for the purpose of producing more plans, but to

increase your team’s agility in quickly changing conditions.

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Strengthen Teamwork through Social Goal Setting and Collaboration

Almost all work in an organization gets done by groups of

people. When you work alone, you can slide by with fuzzy

definitions of what you are trying to do. But groups bog

down, waste resources, and become frustrated when they do

not have a clear understanding of the project at hand. But the

more a team interacts when forming and executing goals, the

more effective the team is. This constant communication not

makes the team more efficient, it leverages each team

member’s unique ability and provides accountability and

motivation that can only occur when doing things together.

Good goals are essential to this process.

Five Keys to Successful Goal Setting and Execution

Clarify the Goal-Setting Process

Get agreement and train everyone on how goals are defined and managed, including the

overall process for strategic plans, department, and individual and cross-functional plans.

Simplicity Vs. Goals Gone Wild

Don’t set too many goals. One error we frequently notice is that teams and individuals

swamp themselves with too many goals. We recommend boiling down your project list (for

example) to the “vital few” goals, which we define as your top-three goals.

Frequent Review and Revision

Review and revise plans frequently. Research confirms that organizations with the

discipline to review and revise plans more frequently (e.g., quarterly or monthly)

outperform organizations that only review their plans annually.

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Grow plan building skills

Invest in equipping everyone with the ability to know how to define goals and plans. This is

a basic organization-wide skill for getting everyone on the same page.

Grow plan execution skills

Once created, your team needs to know how to manage their goals and plans. Again, plans

are never “right”; their greatest value is how they grow your team’s understanding and

sense of shared purpose. Invest in equipping them with the ability to manage their goals

and plans.

OKRs – Objectives and Key Results

“OKR” is a term that originally described a specific approach to defining a goal. It was coined at

Intel years ago, and it encourages the discipline of separating a qualitative statement of

objective, such as “Great Launch of our Product Line X,” from a clear statement of “key

results” for that objective, for example, “1,000 new customer within 90 days of launch” or “X

social media hits by xx/XX/XX.” We generically refer to this process as goal setting to avoid

introducing terminology that varies from organization to organization. The bottom-line is that,

whether you use the term OKRs, or some other term, such as goals, objectives, outcomes, or

KPIs, in the end, clarity and alignment require a clear indication of the results of any goal.

Build Stronger Managers to Performance Coach and Develop

Your Teams

Much more important than goal tracking software is the expertise required to define clear

goals and to understand how to manage those goals in a team-driven environment. Frontline

managers need to develop appropriate performance coaching skills to help their team

members set clear objectives and work together to complete them.

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Rapidly-changing organizations require

collaborative teams that understand what

needs to be accomplished and what kind of

innovating thinking it will take to get the work

done. This requires a different type of

leadership, from top to bottom – an agile,

coaching culture, not the traditional command-

and-control supervisory culture of old.

Six Disciplines software supports mobile goal

tracking with leadership development and

execution management processes that help

your team managers be more effective.

Why Six Disciplines

Our approach is different (in 3 ways):

1) We provide ‘process completeness’ by uniting strategy, operations and front-line

engagement practices into one system.

2) We provide ‘solution completeness’ by weaving together a proven excellence framework,

leadership development, coaching and software into a single service. The result is a new

type of management system that equips leaders to engage everyone in shared purpose in a

lasting way.

3) We stick around. Our ongoing coaching model means that we stick around to help make

your organization better and better over time.

Four assurances it works:

1) It has been field proven in over 150 clients since 2001.

2) Clients tenure is 7 years and increasing,

3) We guarantee it works by having no long-term contracts (30 days) and

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4) Independent research of more than 2400 organizations world-wide confirms that

systematic management approaches in general work, IF they are fully implemented.

Next Steps

To quote Stephen Covey, the next step is “to seek to understand.” The best way for you to do

that is to have a discovery phone conversation with one our Six Disciplines Certified Coaches

so we can understand your needs and answer your questions. Our promise to you is that after

we understand your situation, we will tell you with all honesty whether our management

system is a good fit for your organization. Let’s connect today. Give us a call at (866) 344-8517.

About Six Disciplines

The Six Disciplines Company, founded in 2001, is head-quartered in Findlay Ohio and uses regional coaches to deliver our services. Six Disciplines (our offering) is a management system for purpose-driven leaders. This system equips leaders to engage people in shared purpose – unlocking potential, increasing fulfillment and improving performance. This system provides leaders with: 1) Six proven processes --for aligning strategy, operations and individuals around shared purpose 2) On-the-job training -- that introduces and reinforces 30 leadership competencies 3) Ongoing, onsite coaching -- to guide and provide lasting results and 4) Mobile software --to manage plans, dashboards, continuous communication and collaboration. For more information contact: Nathan Strong (nastrong@SixDisciplines.com)

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