How can you ensure PM goal alignment is understood by all employees?

What I’ve seen in practice with SMEs is that the business owners themselves often don’t have a clear vision for the company. This is especially challenging in situation where there are multiple owners and their visions are not aligned. It is important to define and clearly communicate the company vision and strategy. This sets course for the business, so everyone can row in the same direction! ????????♀?????♂?

PM is a crucial aspect of any organization's success. But to truly maximize its potential, it is essential that every employee understands and aligns their goals with the broader organizational objectives. Ensuring PM goal alignment is a shared responsibility between management and employees. Clear communication, contextualization, SMART goals, collaboration, continuous feedback, training, celebrations, and a supportive culture are all integral components of achieving goal alignment. By implementing these strategies, organizations can empower their employees to understand and align their goals with the broader organizational mission, driving success and growth.

Simply, alignment can be ensured by regularly reviewing the company vision so that it's crisp and impelling. Subsequently, all levels of management need to play their part in breaking the vision down, along with their teams, to a point that every employee sees clearly how they fit into the bigger scheme of things - in other words, what role they will play to realize the ultimate vision and what specific activities and behaviour will translate into vision-realisation. The rest of the time is spent on execution and regularly assessing how the team and individuals are faring, in order to identify corrective actions, build on successes as well as celebrate wins.

While most goal setting is top down, and you must explain how the team/employee goals link to company strategy and plans, you can involve employees in identifying areas which they think will add value to the function or business. This helps employees be more involved in aligning goals and they will own the goal alignment process. It is important that you explain to everyone clearly, how their work, and objectives are linked to the overall goals of the company. This makes goal alignment more effective. Something that explicitly most managers dont do.

I think goal is an invitation of an event where everyone tries to contribute reaching in their own vehicle. Some people travelling on cycle, car etc. The faster you reach to that event the more you would contribute.

Continuous learning, keeping up with new technologies meanwhile also bonding, socializing in order to foster collaboration are essential in every company. This year for example we organized feedback workshops in order to encourage colleagues to give more often STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) model feedback. We are still in the process of learning how to give and receive more effectively constructive feedback but I have definitely seen improvements. We still have to work on having a feedback culture but we are on the right track and I encourage others to do so as well in order to reach goals. People are more engaged, we align as a team to reach company goals. This way we can adjust as well that everybody is on the same page.

In my experience, traditional methods often fall short when ensuring performance management goal alignment is understood by all employees. It's not about flooding them with complex documentation or lengthy meetings; but fostering a culture of dialogue. Encourage two-way communication where employees not only receive goals but actively participate in shaping and understanding them. It's about co-creating objectives, not just receiving them—making alignment a shared responsibility rather than a top-down directive.

To be effective in people management, you must learn to identify your team member's expectations and meet these expectations by exercising your role as manager. 1. Clearly explain the task. Do not attach an overly rigid framework, this discourages personal initiatives 2. Define clear objectives (concrete results to be achieved, deadlines and validation criteria) How would you meet these new expectations? You may suggest training, regular monitoring and a debrief of performance. Develop necessary skills, supervise the work and assess contributions. Managerial practices that come into play: - Offer renumeration (financial & nonfinancial compensation e.g working conditions, time management, training opportunities - Guide career development