Goal-setting that works

Happy New Year!

It’s early January. These days you are likely to see new faces in the gym. It is the time of everyone’s New Year’s resolution. For many, health and fitness come top of the list. Let’s not dismiss that as a fad.

Successful people set themselves ambitious goals.

In case you lead a team or a program, everyone’s seasonal fondness for goal setting is a great opportunity. For 2023, people still have 1600+ working hours ahead of them. They want to make the best out of that time. They want to make a difference.

What everyone needs is goal-setting that works.

Thankfully, there’s a lot of wisdom available on the matter. You may be familiar with transformation frameworks such as OKR, Hoshin Kanri, OGSM, 4DX, the Balanced Scorecard or others. Here are some good goal-setting practices derived from these frameworks.

Set goals that matter.

True: it would be nice if you went to the gym three times a week. But does that truly matter? Maybe getting rid of your back-pain matters. If in five years you can still go skiing with your kids. Or climb a via ferrata in the Dolomites. Going to the gym is an activity, not a goal. No matter how often you go or how hard that is. Goals guide you through the ups and downs of life. In the midst of the daily whirlwind, thanks to your goals, you keep clarity on what matters. These goals are big, often uncomfortable. You may be tempted to keep them for yourself because they are too daring.

Set SMART goals.

Let's go to business. Don’t just “improve customer satisfaction”. Goals must be specific (S). The goal is to drive customer satisfaction from 65% to more than 80%, for example. It must also be measurable (M): what is today’s customer satisfaction? Goals must be ambitious (A) and realistic (R) or people disengage. And time-bound (T): shoot for “Christmas 2023”.

Break down long-term goals.

Imagine by year-end 2025 you wanted to make 30% of your total revenue from the X-products or in the Y-country. What does that mean for the end of 2023 and for this year’s Q1, Q2, Q3? What about the end of January? And the end of this week, the end of today? What is your objective for this upcoming meeting and that email? If you can link your actions here and now to a 3-years goal, you will see how “wildly important” these actions are. As a result, you are much more likely to stick to the goal and achieve it.

?Develop the habit of looking back. And adjust.

This evening, when you “call it a day”: ask yourself if you focused enough on the things that truly matter. Where do you need to adjust? In our daily routines we are easily caught “in the loop”. Daily operations can keep you busy day in, day out. Take time “on the loop” to adjust the system you operate in. Look back on the day, the week, the month, the quarter and the year. And adjust. Also take time “off the loop”. Not only to “sharpen the saw”. Also to venture out for something new. Keep learning. Meet new people.

Appreciate life besides transformation and goals.

Don’t fool yourself: the daily emails, meetings and reports are real. They are necessary. But only few are “transformational”. The secret resides in telling apart operations from transformation. This is Solomon’s wisdom of "the right time”: There’s a time to do the day-job. Then have a break. After the break there is another time to focus on your wildly important transformational goals. Implement that wisdom in your MOR / QBR meetings (Monthly Operating Review, Quarterly Business Review).

Have few and have balanced goals.

There’s a healthy contradiction here: Research tells the more goals you have the fewer you will achieve. But goals also form eco-systems. You can’t achieve one in isolation. Financial goals require customer-outcomes: who else would give you the money? Customer-goals require process-outcomes: how else would you make customers happy? Process-goals require infrastructure and learning outcomes: how else to improve process performance? One way out of this contradiction is applying the TRIZ-principle of separation in time: Have few, ideally one or two, goals for 2025. Link these goals to balanced goals for 2023 and find ways to focus on each of these on a monthly or weekly or daily basis. Be careful that all are “no matter what” goals: you HAVE TO learn this thing, set up that piece of infrastructure, improve the X-process and demonstrate financial success - otherwise your 2025-goal WILL BE jeopardized.

Know what moves the needle and when.

The bolder, the more transformational your goal, the less does your little action today visibly shift the needle. You can build big plans with all the things you want to do. It is easy to keep yourself and everyone else busy with executing that plan. But are you sure that will get you to your aspiration? If you truly care, crossing fingers isn’t enough. You aren’t off the hook with planning, learning and adjusting until you have figured out what moves the needle and when.

Congratulations if this sounds uncomfortable. It shows you see the true challenge. But remember:

Goals spell meaning. Success isn’t the result of luck. It can be built.

Make your difference in 2023 and help the people around you to make their's!