Goal Setting Throughout the Entire Organization

You have heard me talk about including all levels of the organization in the implementation of strategy. Goal setting is an important aspect of your change management activities and critical to alignment and agreement. The implementation of strategy needs to be team-based and every stakeholder has a role to play. Goals can be measured in numerous ways and are an important part of achieving the MIG. Some readers will have heard of a concept called a SMART goal. All goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. As discussed in the previous section, goals can be measured via KPIs, but there are goals that will not be part of a KPI dashboard, such as obtaining training, demonstrating values, and completing projects, among others. Implementing a new software platform, leading a team, building a new plant, and reengineering a business process are tactics that need to have SMART goals.

From these examples, you can see that some goals will have measurements which may be time-based and do not easily fit inside a summary of KPIs despite being important to the achievement of the MIG and its supporting strategies. Reports on goal achievement are addenda to the KPI dashboard. Team and individual goals all need to be tied to the MIG and its supporting strategies. Just like the previous football analogy, each stakeholder should have goals and measures. Members of a team should each have the team goal as their personal goal. Their performance to each goal becomes their personal scorecard. If the team does not perform well, individual performance ratings will also be affected. Team members should understand their accountability to their specific goals and objectives. They need to be fully supportive of their goals, aligned with them, agree to them and, most importantly, be able to speak to the status of a goal and its makeup when asked. This should be required of all stakeholders, including vendors.

Choreographing goals for the entire organization is not an arduous task because they typically are focused on the MIG, supporting strategies, and tactics, as demonstrated in the example in the KPI section of this book. Goal setting must be thought through and usually involves multiple meetings with senior and middle-level leaders, as well as all other stakeholders. Setting goals and agreeing to them is the quantitative basis for strategic execution.

After reading this section, you should be thinking about:

1. Does every strategy and tactic have a goal that is measurable?

2. Are they all supportive of each other and the MIG?

3. Were goals set in conjunction with the owner of that goal?

4. Do you have a method for tracking performance against these goals?