Cascading Objectives, Continuous Feedback, and Accountability

If you are a fan of any of the personality/skills indexes such as Meyers Briggs, Predictive Index, DISC, or others, you know that each of us has a unique personality and professional capability. These tools give you insights into how individuals and groups of people like to be led and managed, and how they perform as a team. I like to be given the goals and objectives and then let go to get them done. But that is me. Others need more information and specificity. No matter who we are, we all have a need to be led and all have the same question in common:

1. Led to what?

2. By whom?

3. Why?

4. By when?

5. How will we do it?

6. How are we doing?

Without the answer to these questions, “Anti-Strategy” will prevail. It is the result of well-intentioned people doing things without the proper guidance. Anti-Strategy often results in suboptimized performance inside the business, because of a lack of alignment to a common goal. If we do not have common goals and objectives, we will do what we think is the right thing to do, rather than focus on what is required by the company’s MIG and strategic objectives. If this happens, it is leadership’s fault.

The next steps are often where business leaders—especially middle-level leaders—fail in establishing the bridge between strategy and results. They do not do the necessary work—or do not have the skills—to effectively create and communicate goals and objectives to the teams and individuals they lead. Several important things need to happen before effective communication can occur.

Leadership needs to define what continuous feedback and accountability looks like throughout the organization. A continuous feedback system needs to be developed that may be software-based (there are some great systems on the market), or that might occur through monthly reports, Excel spreadsheets, or other tracking systems. The goal here is to let people and teams know where they stand relative to their own goals and objectives as they support the company’s MIG and business strategies. Properly defined goals and objectives will have measurable results, so feedback should be easy to provide and won’t be ignored. The feedback needs to be on a cadence required by the specific goal if a real time system is not being used.

Leaders need to have the skills to effectively cascade objectives, which is the process of creating objectives that support a larger objective. When we implemented a performance management system for a $300M company in the tech space, we needed to train leaders on how to properly cascade objectives. They had never been asked to do this and did not understand how to do it properly. They first needed to develop the goals and objectives for their teams and then break them down further for their direct and indirect reports. In this case, we use “5 Hows” to cascade objectives. By asking “how” multiple times, each leader will be able to breakdown each objective into objectives for each level of the organization.

Let us go back to the KPI waterfall and pick a couple of examples to illustrate this further as shown in the next figure.

As you can see in this example, each subsequent “How” breaks the objective down into smaller contributing activities. Each of these will have a person or team responsible for delivering these results with measurements such as % reduction, total dollars achieved, or a timeframe.

Please do not underestimate the work required to do this effectively and remember that every goal and objective needs to be measurable and tied to the company’s strategic needs. We often do a lunch-and-learn for all leaders to teach them how to properly cascade objectives.

Defining what accountability means is a thornier issue. Adding the goals and objectives to yearly performance appraisals is a good first step, but it is not timely enough to address performance shortcomings. Leadership needs to develop systems for routinely addressing accountability issues inside the organization without waiting for a performance appraisal and they should be clear on the ramifications of accountability; they must answer the question: What happens if a person or team does not achieve the result? This is an important question that needs to be dealt with carefully after answering these questions first:

1. Did we create the right goal and objective?

2. Was it achievable?

3. Did we communicate it properly?

4. Does this person or team have the necessary tools/skills?

5. Did we provide the required resources for the goal or objective to be met?

6. Is this an issue with personal performance?

After answering these questions, leadership needs to act, otherwise stakeholders will see they are not fully committed to the MIG and its supporting strategies. I have seen countless instances during my career of stakeholders not being held accountable with the result that other people try to make up for them. This creates a toxic work environment that can derail the best-laid plans.

Routine group discussions about strategic objectives and performance updates on KPI achievement are a terrific way to keep everyone focused on meeting their goals and objectives. I will speak more about this in the Measurement element of Level 3.

All middle-level leaders need to make time to communicate to stakeholders the MIG, the strategy, and the goals to which they will be held accountable. They need to get alignment and agreement from each stakeholder. Without agreement, the goal is meaningless and will be unrealized. I recommend that you develop a standard process for this that each leader will use, and then train them on how to use it with some role playing. Doing this successfully is critical to the outcome.

Individual and team discussions need to happen frequently via touch bases and formal reviews and issues need to be communicated back to the strategy steering committee to address any shortfalls in performance. Every strategic plan I have ever done has needed modification due to an unforeseen issue that arose out of open and straightforward discussions with stakeholders.

After reading this section, you should be thinking about:

1. What is our communications plan?

2. What is our strategy for cascading objectives, providing feedback, and increasing accountability across the organization?

3. Have our communications to all stakeholders been effective?

4. Have I provided the skills to my leadership team to be effective?