11 Things to Know About Setting Goals at Work
In the past two months, three friends working in various sectors have reached out to ask for various bits of advice about setting great goals at work. It’s clarified to me some common dilemmas in setting great goals that guide our work, so today I’m sharing 11 ideas that I have learned about why goals matter, how to set them, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls.
Why should goals be set in the first place?
From my perspective, there are 2 key reasons to set goals:
Research shows that having goals increases motivation and achievement. Hundreds of correlational and experimental studies show evidence that setting goals increases success rates in various settings. As shared by Robert A. Heinlein, “In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.” Setting goals also increases motivation, as long as those goals are specific. Studies have shown, for example, that having specific goals to achieve as opposed to “try your best” increases motivation (see Locke & Brian 1966, Brian & Locke, 1967; Locke & Latham, 2002).
Clarity of purpose is CRUCIAL for a team, and goals help create clarity. One of the key roles for any leader is to create clarity of purpose for your team (goals) and communicate that clarity over and over again. Then, when things inevitably shift or change, you pause to get clear again on your direction (and you might need to shift your goals, since goals are not made of cement). Then, you communicate that clarity (the goals) again and again. As Lencioni says, “Truly nimble organizations dare to create clarity at all times, even when they are not completely certain about whether it is correct. And if they later see a need to change course, they do so without hesitation or apology, and thus create clarity around the new idea or answer.”
How should you go about setting goals?
Once you’re invested in the idea of setting goals, here are some suggestions on how to approach the creation of those goals.
Goals should be ambitious. Great goals are ambitious and feel somewhat uncomfortable. Accomplishing them is not “a given”. Ambition is critical for accomplishing big things. The reality is that not everything is within our control. Leaders transition, crises arise, and context within and surrounding our work changes. We can recognize all of that to be true while also striving to widen our locus of control and believing that we can achieve big change. As Steve Jobs said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Goals should be specific. Even in cases where quantitative goals are not appropriate, work to craft clear language that allows reasonable people to agree whether or not the goal was achieved. A popular frame that I’ve found helpful is the SMARTIE framework for setting goals, ensuring that goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, inclusive, and equitable. Sometimes, it’s easy to find a quantitative/numerical way to set a goal (i.e. “Raise $200K to support our organization this year.”). In other cases, a qualitative goal is needed (for example, “Keep our web site up-to-date with new and relevant information; answer emails from supporters within one day as often as possible and always within three days, and foster good relations with every local reporter working on our issue.”) For a great set of example goals for different types of work, check out The Management Center’s Goals Bank.
Goals have clear ownership. Clarify the one person who is ultimately responsible for each goal. Otherwise, you might experience the “tragedy of the commons” where everyone thinks someone else is in charge of that work (you’ve likely witnessed this phenomenon before: something like “Let’s all try to keep the office refrigerator cleaned out regularly!”, and you have seen how infrequently that goes well). And, given that we often work in teams, it’s also true that you should clarify the roles that others play to support a project, even if they are not the ultimate owner. My team uses the MOCHA framework for this, which helps clarify the roles of Manager, Owner, Consulted, Helper, and Approver.
Goals move us toward a more fair society. As mentioned in the SMARTIE framework above, setting great goals means ensuring that those goals create more equity and inclusion. Inclusive goals “bring traditionally marginalized people—particularly those most impacted—into processes, activities, and decision/policy-making in a way that shares power.” Equitable goals “include an element of fairness or justice that seeks to address systemic injustice, inequity, or oppression.” The Management Center shares this great example: “Build a volunteer team of 100 door-to-door canvassers by May with at least 10 people of color recruited as volunteer leaders first, so that they can help shape the way we run the canvasses.”
What are the common pitfalls to avoid when setting goals?
Plan ahead to avoid these common mistakes for teams setting goals.
Failing to set up structures to check in on progress. Have you ever set a goal that you promptly forgot about? Me too. While checking in on progress can look different for different teams, the act of doing it regularly is critical. Whichever mechanism you choose, get it on your calendar or into your agendas to ensure that it happens. This ensures you are celebrating progress, modifying approach where necessary, and adapting your strategy when your context changes. Some ways you might go about this:
Making a goal check-in part of your regular team meetings, perhaps biweekly or monthly.
Putting your goals at the top of a check-in agenda document that you are using to check in with teammates regularly.
Scheduling specific goal check-in meetings for your team one some regular cadence throughout the year.
Believing goals must represent 100% of our time: We all have a variety of work streams we spend time on in a given day or week. Not everything that we spend time on needs to be represented in our goals. For example, operations staff will likely need to answer the office phone. All staff might be responsible for submitting timesheets. This does not mean that staff need to have a goal about timesheet submission or phone answering unless those areas need very specific improvement or represent a major portion of their job. Goals are not a list of responsibilities. There are ongoing responsibilities, as well as smaller one-off projects, that might not show up in our list of most important organizational or individual goals.
Setting too many goals: If I ask you what your individual goals are and you have to open up a document to give me an answer, I’d argue that you do not have real goals. You can really only keep track of 1-5 goals at a given time. As mentioned in the 50CAN Guide to Building Advocacy Campaigns: “As management consultant Peter Drucker reminds us: ‘It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do ‘just a little bit’ of everything else as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatsoever gets done.’ Every year, our local advocates start out with dozens of policy goals that are consistent with their values, the views of the community and their long-term vision. And then they cut and cut and cut until they are left with the few that absolutely have to get done that year.”
Getting the time horizon wrong. You will have to play with the time horizon for your goals in your context to get this right. Setting weekly goals is likely to be too frequent, but setting annual goals might be too long of a time horizon in your world. At my organization, after years of trying different approaches, we set annual high-level goals and then really dig in at a quarterly (every 3 months) level to set our priorities. We work in policy and political advocacy, and the context can really shift every few months. Setting quarterly priorities has worked well for us to balance the need to get clear, but also to respond to dynamic environments. If you feel like you are setting new goals all the time, stretch it out. If it feels like so much time has passed that your goals are no longer relevant, then shorten the time horizon and see how that works.
Believing goals can never change. Goals are not made of cement. While you should avoid changing them without good reason, it is also unnecessary to think that once they are set they must be treated as gospel. Situations change. Priorities need to shift. Having a now-irrelevant, completely unreachable, or not-ambitious-enough goal is not helpful, and in fact can be pretty confusing and/or demoralizing. If a goal needs to be removed, remove it. Edit it to represent something more realistic, or something more ambitious, when the situation warrants that. Just communicate the change clearly and share the reasoning.
What else have you seen go well, or not well, with goal setting in your work? Share in the comments!
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