GOALS MANAGEMENT USING GOALS TO IMPROVE TEAMWORK AND PERMFORMANCE
Organizations with a High Level of Goal Clarity are Four Times More Likely to Have Strong Business Outcomes Research from Bersin by Deloitte states that organizations with a high level of goal clarity are four times more likely to have strong business outcomes. Why? Organizational performance is governed by how well people communicate. And, paradoxically, as organizations succeed and grow, their ability to communicate becomes more difficult. The chart at the right shows why. A team that grows from three to 25 people increases by eight fold but the number of possible communication paths increases 117 fold! Simply put, most organizations outgrow their own ability to collaborate and execute. Define clear goals, and your team can cut through this complexity. Goal setting matters! Responding to Change The ability to set goals and manage them is an essential tool for managing change. Organizations are subject to change at an unprecedented pace. Externally, change is driven by many factors organizations can t control, such as technology, competitors, and other market forces. Internally, change is driven by innovation, growth, employee demographics, and other dynamics. 2
Agility vs. Firefighting The ability to define what needs to be done and then manage getting it done is a skill every team member can and should have not just top leadership. The scope and time horizons of each individual s responsibility will vary by job level, but the necessity to adjust priorities to circumstances and to separate the important from the urgent is everybody s everyday job. Change requires effective and timely adjustments in priorities and priorities that people can adjust to. Good goals will clarify what is to be done, when, and by whom. Organizations that do not have a system for defining, agreeing on, communicating, and managing goals are at a severe disadvantage to those that have this capability. Good goal setting is a unique human trait for envisioning a desired future and agreeing to work toward that future. Without good communication and clarity, the culture breaks down into an unproductive firefighting environment. 3
Alignment Up, Down, and Across Sometimes leaders wish goal setting were as easy as starting at the top of the organization and then breaking goals down in succeeding levels. That is part of the story. But in all organizations, much of the work is cross functional. In fact, most things that customers value are a result of cross-functional collaboration. The ability to define goals using a common language and approach greatly reduces the friction involved in building collaboration, not only within a department but especially among large cross-functional projects, committees, or process teams. In addition, it helps bridge the communication gaps that occur vertically in an organization. Bottom line? Without good goal setting, organizational complexity overwhelms communication effectiveness. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything (sustaining goal clarity). 4
Making Goals Matter Every human being seems to have an innate desire to engage in something meaningful, whether at home or at work. As organizations grow, however, it becomes easier and easier to become disconnected with what individuals are doing and how their activity ties into the organization. And since what the organization is doing changes, that disconnect results in resistance to change, which eventually results in individual and collective disenfranchisement. The formation and management of goals is a significant tool for helping people go through what we call the engagement cycle (or change management cycle). Capturing the hearts and minds of people requires that they understand what is being proposed, why it is important, and that they have to the skills and training to fully engage. This is just an alternate way of looking at what is involved in defining and executing a goal. 5
Creating Organizational Agility through Frequent Goal Reviews and Revisions A proven approach for making your organization more responsive and receptive to change is to introduce an organization-wide framework for reviewing, revising, and tracking goals. This framework builds an organizational rhythm that fosters regular communication and creates accountability for knowing the status of goals and what needs to be done next. A plan is out-of-date by the time it s produced. But the Six Disciplines program is built on the principle embodied by President Dwight Eisenhower who said, Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. In other words, the value of producing a plan is the understanding produced while collaborating on the plan. The Six Disciplines program cultivates your team s sense of shared purpose and creates a culture of communication, collaboration, and teamwork by regularly reviewing and revising plans. Not for the purpose of producing more plans, but to increase your team s agility in quickly changing conditions. 6
Strengthen Teamwork through Social Goal Setting and Collaboration Almost all work in an organization gets done by groups of people. When you work alone, you can slide by with fuzzy definitions of what you are trying to do. But groups bog down, waste resources, and become frustrated when they do not have a clear understanding of the project at hand. But the more a team interacts when forming and executing goals, the more effective the team is. This constant communication not makes the team more efficient, it leverages each team member s unique ability and provides accountability and motivation that can only occur when doing things together. Good goals are essential to this process. Five Keys to Successful Goal Setting and Execution Clarify the Goal-Setting Process Get agreement and train everyone on how goals are defined and managed, including the overall process for strategic plans, department, and individual and cross-functional plans. Simplicity Vs. Goals Gone Wild Don t set too many goals. One error we frequently notice is that teams and individuals swamp themselves with too many goals. We recommend boiling down your project list (for example) to the vital few goals, which we define as your top-three goals. Frequent Review and Revision Review and revise plans frequently. Research confirms that organizations with the discipline to review and revise plans more frequently (e.g., quarterly or monthly) outperform organizations that only review their plans annually. 7
Grow plan building skills Invest in equipping everyone with the ability to know how to define goals and plans. This is a basic organization-wide skill for getting everyone on the same page. Grow plan execution skills Once created, your team needs to know how to manage their goals and plans. Again, plans are never right ; their greatest value is how they grow your team s understanding and sense of shared purpose. Invest in equipping them with the ability to manage their goals and plans. OKRs Objectives and Key Results OKR is a term that originally described a specific approach to defining a goal. It was coined at Intel years ago, and it encourages the discipline of separating a qualitative statement of objective, such as Great Launch of our Product Line X, from a clear statement of key results for that objective, for example, 1,000 new customer within 90 days of launch or X social media hits by xx/xx/xx. We generically refer to this process as goal setting to avoid introducing terminology that varies from organization to organization. The bottom-line is that, whether you use the term OKRs, or some other term, such as goals, objectives, outcomes, or KPIs, in the end, clarity and alignment require a clear indication of the results of any goal. Build Stronger Managers to Performance Coach and Develop Your Teams Much more important than goal tracking software is the expertise required to define clear goals and to understand how to manage those goals in a team-driven environment. Frontline managers need to develop appropriate performance coaching skills to help their team members set clear objectives and work together to complete them. 8
Rapidly-changing organizations require collaborative teams that understand what needs to be accomplished and what kind of innovating thinking it will take to get the work done. This requires a different type of leadership, from top to bottom an agile, coaching culture, not the traditional commandand-control supervisory culture of old. Six Disciplines software supports mobile goal tracking with leadership development and execution management processes that help your team managers be more effective. Why Six Disciplines Our approach is different (in 3 ways): 1) We provide process completeness by uniting strategy, operations and front-line engagement practices into one system. 2) We provide solution completeness by weaving together a proven excellence framework, leadership development, coaching and software into a single service. The result is a new type of management system that equips leaders to engage everyone in shared purpose in a lasting way. 3) We stick around. Our ongoing coaching model means that we stick around to help make your organization better and better over time. Four assurances it works: 1) It has been field proven in over 150 clients since 2001. 2) Clients tenure is 7 years and increasing, 3) We guarantee it works by having no long-term contracts (30 days) and 9
4) Independent research of more than 2400 organizations world-wide confirms that systematic management approaches in general work, IF they are fully implemented. Next Steps To quote Stephen Covey, the next step is to seek to understand. The best way for you to do that is to have a discovery phone conversation with one our Six Disciplines Certified Coaches so we can understand your needs and answer your questions. Our promise to you is that after we understand your situation, we will tell you with all honesty whether our management system is a good fit for your organization. Let s connect today. Give us a call at (866) 344-8517. About Six Disciplines The Six Disciplines Company, founded in 2001, is head-quartered in Findlay Ohio and uses regional coaches to deliver our services. Six Disciplines (our offering) is a management system for purpose-driven leaders. This system equips leaders to engage people in shared purpose unlocking potential, increasing fulfillment and improving performance. This system provides leaders with: 1) Six proven processes --for aligning strategy, operations and individuals around shared purpose 2) On-the-job training -- that introduces and reinforces 30 leadership competencies 3) Ongoing, onsite coaching -- to guide and provide lasting results and 4) Mobile software --to manage plans, dashboards, continuous communication and collaboration. For more information contact: Nathan Strong (nastrong@sixdisciplines.com) Copyright 2016 Six Disciplines. All rights reserved. 10