How to Achieve Those Lofty Ambitions

No doubt you spent the end of last year and part of early January finalizing your 2024 ambitions. Identifying goals. Negotiating for budgets. Making resource requests. Launching new projects. This singular focus on the “what” is a standard part of the business cycle and an important foundation for the year ahead.

Once those budgets, goals, and plans are approved – then what? Too many leaders unintentionally define success as completion of those documents rather than the execution of them. If you actually want to achieve whatever lofty ambitions you put on paper, you need to turn your focus to the “how.” Consider:

• How will we collaborate cross-functionally to make our goals a reality?
• How will we hold one another accountable for delivering on commitments?
• How will we know when it’s time to change the plan because the environment has changed or we’re not delivering on results?

The answers to these questions are not self-evident. Despite the prevailing mythology that it will just happen, experience shows that is not the case.

Cross-functional collaboration needs to be thoughtfully designed and managed to make it successful. Here’s what not to do: Schedule a standing cross-functional meeting with 30-40 invitees and use it as an update forum. Updates do not drive collaboration.

Instead, try these best practices to put these plans into action effectively:

• Collectively map out the major milestones associated with each goal so that you have a shared definition of success
• Make sure from the outset that each function knows how it will contribute to the ultimate outcomes
• Establish shared norms for how you will communicate and collaborate including where and how documents will be stored, what channels you will use for each kind of message (e.g., email vs. IM platform), and how to use a dashboard for routine progress updates
• Keep meetings small and focus on things that can only be done together such as debate, decision-making, and idea generation

Once you have adopted clear ways of working, aka the “how,” you’ll spend less time frustrated and more time achieving your actual goals.