Is a “thematic goal” what you’re missing right now?

It’s become clear that this is a defining moment in our lives. The dramatic changes we’re all experiencing — and the pace at which they’ve come — have thrown off our daily routines and moved the goalposts on many of the things we measure ourselves against. Whether it’s going to the grocery store or closing a deal at work, the easy things have become more complicated and the big things have fallen out of our control. 

Most teams, individuals, and families are experiencing a new lifestyle which would have seemed impossible a month ago. The pandemic is forcing many of us to feel like we’re on defense, working to keep (or keep up with) whatever aspects of our pre-crisis life we can. And all the economic, medical, and historical evidence is indicating that our world won’t be going back to normal anytime soon. 

Whether it’s among the team you’re a part of at work, within your family, or just for yourself individually, creating a well-defined goal which is both temporary and can be prioritized as the most important thing, right now, will effectively organize the chaos and help you get back on offense. 

Coined by the bestselling business author, Patrick Lencioni, a thematic goal is a rallying cry for a set period of time. It is a central theme that can be prioritized above all else, with specific objectives that are achievable for the chosen timeframe. And while it doesn't mean you ignore the day to day responsibilities, it should carry enough weight that you set aside any other projects in order to make progress on this single goal.

Why it Helps Individuals 

Rallying around a single priority, especially in moments of dramatic change, does more than aid progress on a single objective — it sets a virtuous sequence in motion:

1. It makes us more effective at choosing where to focus by reducing uncertainty and the stress of choice overload.
2. It provides clarity, helping us to recognize progress instead of allowing our attention to be dominated by the unchecked items on our to-do list.
3. It sets the stage for greater success through a chain reaction of small wins, oriented in one direction, which catalyzes momentum towards big changes. 

(1) More effective at choosing where to focus: Influential psychologist Barry Schwarz’s TED Talk about the paradox of choice discusses a dilemma you’re probably familiar with; the challenge of choosing between too many options with no construct to help you decide which option is best. 

Schwarz demonstrates how an increasing amount of choices paralyzes us, leaves us more disappointed with the choices we make, and elevates our expectations until no choice is satisfying. Whether it’s trying to choose a new detergent brand because your normal option isn’t available, or trying to decide which of fifty mutual funds to invest your 401k in, having too many options has bigger consequences than we realize. We spend far less energy considering options for detergent than we do deciding how to spend our time, so the paradox of choice carries much more weight when it comes to our to-do list. Simply having the opportunity to do a certain task (like reading the email that just popped up on your phone), even when you’ve chosen to do another, presents a distracting opportunity that drains our limited reserve of mental energy. To overcome this, we need to be certain the thing we’ve chosen to work on is the best use of that limited energy. When you have an overarching thematic goal, it clearly frames the choices in front of you. You know which tasks will contribute to your current top priority and which won’t. You know what can be set aside, or left on the mental shelf, in the name of what's most important right now. Without a thematic goal, we waste our attention on the decision-making process and are left with less bandwidth to tackle whatever we eventually decide to focus on. 

(2) Provides clarity: Prioritizing a single goal gives us a mechanism to value progress and successes rather than indulge our inner critic. It’s too easy, especially when the outside world is so stressful, to become hyperfocused on what we’re missing. As Seth Godin wrote: “If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit.” Both at home and at work, we are doomed to a sense of failure without a way to determine that the things we’re executing on are more important than the tasks we’ve left unfinished.

“If everything’s important, nothing is important”

A thematic goal — a temporary answer to the question of what is the most important thing, right now? — makes it much easier to place a higher value on certain tasks and opportunities than others, providing us with permission to leave those things we don’t have the bandwidth for unfinished for the time being. It breaks the tie between two important opportunities, validating the selection of one over the other. Without a thematic goal, we will always be left either trying to do it all or second-guessing the choices we’ve made.

It's common for people to feel they have more tasks than they have time for in a day. Add all the changes that result from a pandemic and our days feel even shorter. If you’re finding yourself with more unchecked items on your to-do list than ever, it’s a safe bet you’re not the only one.

(3) Sets the stage for greater success: Once we’re able to navigate the paradox of choice more easily, we execute tasks more efficiently. This efficiency means we make more progress than we would have without a thematic goal. Then, because of the clarity around our current priorities, we become better at recognizing the value of those things we’ve executed. This allows us to judge other opportunities (the unchecked items on our to-do list) either as distractions or as priorities to be concerned with in the future, but not right now. Either way, we gain permission to ignore those opportunities, guilt-free.

That sequence comes together to create a well researched motivational phenomenon called a small win. As explained by Greg McKeown, the NYT bestselling author who focuses on productivity, “a small, concrete win creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success.” 

Small wins, in the context of a larger goal, have been shown to have a substantial effect on motivation, happiness, and productivity. But only when they create progress towards a broader goal. On its own, clearing your email inbox is not an effective small win. However, clearing your inbox after setting a goal to be as organized and responsive as possible during the first quarter… that’s exactly the kind of exciting small win that provides us with more energy to tackle the next task in front of us. 

“This concept of having a thematic goal and defining objectives is a simple one, and therein lies its power. It provides us with a manageable list of relevant issues that we can get our hands and minds around over an extended period of time. And just as importantly, it gives us permission to ignore other issues that would otherwise compete for our attention.” — Patrick Lencioni

Why it Helps Organizations

If you’ve ever gone on a whitewater rafting tour, the first thing that happens when you get out in the water is a brief practice session. The guide will spend a few minutes teaching everyone how to row in unison, i.e. how to steer the boat in the same direction. You quickly see how hopeless controlling the raft can be when people on each side are paddling at different speeds. People accidentally knock paddles together, and the raft veers the wrong way because of uneven, poorly distributed strength being applied by different individuals. On flat water this is somewhat entertaining, at worst annoying, but in a massive rapid it’s dangerous.

Further down the river, the group inevitably comes across one of the bigger, more exciting rapids of the day. Typically the rapid is short; you can see the calm water on the other side. You know where you’re going, but getting there without flipping the raft requires the group to paddle together, in the same direction. The guide calls out directions to turn and everyone paddles in unison, entering the rapid at just the right spot, shooting through the whitewater and gliding out successfully with its entire laughing, happy crew. 

There is one other thing that happens at the beginning of many rafting trips: of the five or six rafts that go out as part of the same tour, one group can’t seem to execute on the idea of working together. Let’s say it’s a purely hypothetical family of six on this doomed raft. Half of this family wants to listen to the guide, the other half wants to take selfies.

While the other rafts quickly learn to paddle together and then begin their trip down the river, this group lags behind and continues to struggle. Whitewater rafting tours are generally safe, family-friendly adventures where the stakes are low. So, even though his crew hasn’t figured out a crucial skill, this group’s guide will eventually steer them down the river rather than lag too far from the rest of the group. When this raft gets to the bigger, more exciting rapid of the day, it’s a different story. Let’s give this hypothetical group a name: The Kardashian Family. Like the other rafts before them, the guide calls out which direction to turn as they enter the rapid. But the Kardashians, who have apparently learned nothing throughout the day, continue to paddle haphazardly and in opposite directions. First, they don’t turn enough, then they get scared and overcorrect while screaming at each other. The boat turns sideways, perpendicular to the direction of the rapid. As the huge rapid dips, then rises, the raft is thrown off balance. The raft flips, right in the middle of the biggest and most violent part of the whitewater. 

Here in the real world, the metaphorical rapids have all gotten bigger and more dangerous. It’s likely that there are more difficult sections of the river ahead. Now, more than any time in recent memory, our organizations depend on the ability of their teams to paddle in unison. 

A thematic goal can be incredibly helpful for an individual, but on a team, in a company, or within any kind of organization, it's far more important. In a group, the effect of a thematic goal is leveraged, becoming exponentially more impactful with each additional person who is working towards it. Leverage works both ways though, and if the organization can’t clearly define “what is most important, right now” then there’s nothing to stop everyone from paddling haphazardly towards their individual priorities. 

A thematic goal is useful to an organization for similar reasons as those that make it work for individuals, but with a few slight differences: 

• It minimizes confusion and politics by providing absolute clarity about what matters right now and what doesn’t, making it much easier for diverse members of an organization not to be at odds over competing priorities. It becomes easy to agree on what opportunities to focus on and what to ignore. People with different personalities, opinions, and priorities orient their resources in the same direction, departments collaborate more effectively, and politics are minimized.
• Small wins matter even more when shared with others, we feed off of the excitement of peers or we are brought down by their negativity and disillusionment. As they do with individuals, small wins motivate further progress in groups, but they also create improvements in morale that are contagious. 
• The simplicity of a thematic goal is uniquely effective at getting an entire organization to apply its energy in a single direction. Complexity is the enemy of execution, which is why adopting a single priority to temporarily filter everything but the essentials is so powerful.

Blueprint for Creating a Thematic Goal

There are four elements necessary for an effective thematic goal:

1. You can only pick one: We tend to maintain lists of our top priorities, all carrying equal weight. The difference with a thematic goal is the choice to elevate just one priority, aka one theme, above the rest. Once you’ve decided on this theme, you need to decide on three to five things that will need to be done in order to accomplish your goal. These are your defining objectives (more on this below).
2. It’s qualitative: It’s important the thematic goal isn’t framed by one measurable target. You should be able to track progress towards the goal in many different ways, and the best thematic goals are bigger than a single metric. Ideally, your goal can be achieved with a variety of strategies. 
3. It’s temporary: Set a target for how long it will last. The time frame can be a few months or up to a year. People need to be able to see the finish line. 
4. It requires certainty: You have to be sure that this can remain the most important thing, right now for your given time period. For an individual, it must be compelling enough not to second guess it. For an organization, it must be agreed upon by the entire leadership team. It requires absolute commitment. If there’s any member of the leadership team who signals to staff that other priorities are equally important, it dilutes or eliminates all of the thematic goal’s positive effects 

To clarify the process around thematic goals, the team who created this methodology— Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group — use two tools, “defining objectives” and “standard operating objectives.” Defining objectives get their name simply because they “define what is required to accomplish the goal.” According to Lencioni, it’s important to keep it to three to five objectives. Standard operating objectives are the shortlist of things that can’t be ignored on a day to day basis and will still require attention. Here’s an organizational example: 

For a free, step by step guide on how to do this from the folks who invented the idea in the first place, follow this link. 

So, is a thematic goal what you need right now? 

If you’re feeling pulled in too many directions, knowing there is absolutely no way you can give your all to everything asking for your attention, then the answer is yes. Right now life is getting harder for all of us. No matter the level at which you’re feeling the pressure, the scale is tipping and we are all struggling to feel steady. In this moment, a thematic goal is your anchor. It is the tool that will help you set aside what you can’t get to (or can’t control) without the guilt that so often comes along with that choice. And, it will help you see the higher value in the things you are choosing to do. 

Individually, a properly executed thematic goal is a tool that minimizes some of our most common sources of stress while making us more effective overall. At an organization, it produces an aligned and far more efficient company — one that is more likely to ignore the nonessential and achieve its biggest priorities sooner than it would have otherwise.

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Background

The central concept of this article is an idea created and shared by the incredible people at The Table Group. It wouldn’t have happened without their remarkable commitment to sharing their work, for free, with anyone who is interested in it. “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown and “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg were instrumental sources as well. While the concepts came from others, any semblance of coherence in my writing probably wouldn’t have happened without my incredible part-time editor, full-time wife, Nina. A full list of sources and citations is below for those who are into that sort of thing (as we all should be). Thanks! 

Sources

1. “The Paradox of Choice” — Barry Schwarz — TEDGlobal 2005 — https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice/transcript?language=en#t-701525
2. “Essentialism” — Greg McKeown — 2014 — Crown Business
3. “The Power of Small Wins” — Amabile & Kramer — May 2011 Issue — Harvard Business Review — https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
4. “If everything is important, nothing is important” — Patrick Lencioni — https://www.tablegroup.com/hub/post/if-everything-is-important/
5. “Isolate Toxic Employees to Reduce Their Negative Effects” — Christine Porath — November 2016 Issue — Harvard Business Review — https://hbr.org/2016/11/isolate-toxic-employees-to-reduce-their-negative-effects
6. Thematic Goal Worksheet — The Table Group — https://www.tablegroup.com/imo/media/doc/AdvantageThematicGoal(8).pdf
7. “Silos, Politics & Turf Wars” — Patrick Lencioni — 2006 — Josey Bass
8. “The Power of Habit” — Charles Duhigg — 2012 — Random House
9. “Make Em Laugh” — Lori Santos — 2019 — The Happiness Lab Podcast — https://www.happinesslab.fm/season-1-episodes/make-em-laugh
10. “Emotional contagion in organizational life” —Barsade, Coutifaris, Pillemer — 2018 — Research in Organizational Behavior — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191308518300108
11. “The Most Important Thing- A Rallying Cry — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIBD9DtQiUk