Making Objectives Stick
Recently I wrote about measuring marketing, where I shared the top metrics I traditionally use, spanning revenue, awareness, community, and team. As I alluded to in that piece though, having the metrics is only half of the equation; for these objectives to really stick, you need a consistent process for establishing and monitoring them.
Far too often I've seen companies set up quarterly "management by objectives" (MBO) or "objectives and key results" (OKR) systems and then watch those systems develop cobwebs as they slip into obscurity. I am strong proponent of measurement systems, but have found there are some core processes that need to be in place to make these systems work.
Routine
Several years ago Foursquare projected that the second Saturday in February is "Fall Off The Wagon Day" - the day most people give up on their New Year's fitness resolutions and go back to their old habits. Hopefully you made it past that milestone this year, but did your MBOs or OKRs? How many times have you opened MBO and OKR spreadsheets and found that metrics were faithfully documented and reported for the first month or maybe two, but then left blank and never revisited?
Foursquare cites a Forbes article that notes one of the best ways to fix this issue to establish a clear routine. The quarterly objectives routine I strive for includes:
Having a regular process ingrains objectives into the organization, making it second nature for most employees.
As the adage goes, practice makes perfect: establishing a consistent objectives routine is a key step towards making objectives stick.
Individual Ownership
A second key factor is making individuals feel personally responsible not only for achieving their objectives, but also for defining the objectives themselves. Managers should absolutely provide a framework, but then ask individuals to define their own objectives. Managers - and even peers - should provide input and perhaps challenge individuals to aim higher, but in the end the employees should own the final targets.
Employees need to have a sense of ownership of their objectives by not only fully understanding and buying into their importance, but also believing there is a pathway for them to achieve the targets.
The counter to individual ownership, which I've seen numerous times, is when managers set the objectives, or override the objectives employees set for themselves. Often employees don't fully understand the objectives, and more commonly don't believe they can achieve them. In the end they agree, or more likely relent, and the objectives are theoretically set. Then when the time period ends and the objectives have not been achieved (shocker!) it leads to a disconnect between a manager, who may think their employee is underperforming, and an employee, who thinks the manager is unrealistic.
As a side note, I'm a fan of the OKR system, including the idea that the target success rate should be 70%. As such, employees should be setting goals that feel just a bit beyond their reach - but that with extra effort and maybe a bit of luck, they have the potential to achieve. If an employee is consistently exceeding all their quarterly goals, I don't think that is really helping the employee grow or inspiring them to push beyond their comfort zone.
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Visibility
Objectives serve as a great foundation for managers and employees to align on expectations and performance. But they are also really helpful for peers and other teams to understand everyone's priorities and focus. How often do you hear people complaining that another team or person isn't focused on the right activities, or claiming they have no idea what another team is doing.
Publicly documenting and sharing individual and team objectives can improve cross-team alignment and reduce friction between teams.
That public visibility can also be another driver for everyone keep up with your objectives!
At Formlabs, we used a quarterly OKR Google sheet that everyone in marketing - along with sales and company leadership - had access to. If you had any questions about priorities or goals for a given team or person, you could look at the OKR sheet. We would review the team-level OKRs monthly at a global team meeting - which often spurred a flurry of updates right before that meeting ??. We would also routinely review end of quarter results and, as the team leader, I would regularly share overall team OKRs with sales leadership and the rest of the leadership team. This visibility both helped teams share what they were working on, and also reinforced the process and importance of the system.
Review
The final step is making sure that at the end of the specified time period (typically quarterly), you review each individual's objectives. The individual should complete the objective sheet, which then hopefully calculates a final "score" or result for the time period. The manager should then have a 1-1 conversation with the employee to celebrate the successes, discuss which objectives were not met - and why, and perhaps which objectives were not set high enough. Most importantly, the manager and the employee should discuss what was learned from those results and how that can be applied to the next quarter's goals.
Personally I'm not a fan of marketing bonus structures tied to objectives as I have found that a) they can drive unanticipated behavior; b) they can be gamed; and c) people often expect 100% of their MBO and get annoyed when they don’t earn it. For example, if you tell a digital marketing manager she will get a bonus if she generates 100 qualified leads, what is to stop her from just buying a list of names? Is the definition of "qualified" really clear? Is getting 100 names the most important thing - or is fueling a sales funnel with effective and efficient lead generation programs the real goal (with 100 leads being just one measurement)? This can happen with any objectives process - but when you tie money to it, I have found it exacerbates the problem and, as I mentioned above, drives employee dissatisfaction when they don't earn 100% (which, per my comment about the OKR 70% threshold , I don't think employees should be routinely achieving).
I similarly don't think one quarter of poor objectives results should immediately cause disciplinary action. Instead, it should be the basis of an honest conversation about what happened and how to address this going forward - either by setting more realistic objectives, or improving performance. There may have been real mitigating circumstances, the employee may have been too optimistic - or there could legitimately be job-skill mismatches that need to be addressed. Whatever the case, don't just let the quarter pass without reviewing what happened.
A consistent, objective, and compassionate quarterly metrics review can go a long way towards improving employee-manager alignment and engagement.
Summary
In the end, having quarterly objectives is great - but if you don't have a consistent process for establishing and reviewing them, it is a waste of time.
The objectives process itself is as, if not more, important than the actual objectives.
The overall goal here is to get you and your team into a regular discipline of setting goals and honestly assessing them. When you do this, you make it far easier to objectively review over- and under-performers, and, as a leader, make it much easier for you to communicate to the CEO and other company leaders how marketing is doing.
One final note: not everything in marketing can be easily measured, and quarterly objectives should not be the only way managers evaluate employees. Much as Edwards Demings quote "you can't manage what you can't measure" has plenty of detractors, employees should not be evaluated on purely numeric factors. Whether it is cultural fit and team dynamics, or more subjective quality and artistic attributes, there are many factors that managers need to use in assessing their employees. I believe having a solid core objectives process is important - but that it only tells part of the story.