If you haven’t done so already, hurry up and huddle up with your team to clarify this year’s priorities and set goals. Goals give direction. Goals give purpose. Goals improve productivity. Managers are absolutely critical in goal setting. Their role is to create a crystal clear line of sight between the company strategy and the individual team member’s daily work. This not only ensures that company resources are aligned to drive the highest priorities, but it also improves employee engagement.
After the company has announced its top priorities for the year, it is the business units’ and functions’ turn to align their key strategies to make sure that the company goals will be achieved. Once the business unit goals are clear, the department or the team gets together to decide how they can best rally behind the unit goals. The team meeting should include robust debate and discussion on how to best use the existing resources. With the leadership of the team manager, the team will come up with their own goals. The team goals must drive the achievement of the higher level goals.
Now, the team members should see the alignment all the way to the top. They should understand why these particular team goals were selected as the highest priorities. Individual goals are needed to execute the team goals. If the roles in the team are similar, it is possible that all team members set the same goals. If the talents are different, the goals will vary.
Let’s review SMART goal setting: It is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Specific goals drive performance better than “do your best” goals. If the employee can describe the success, it is more likely to happen. Measurable and Time-Bound refer to your agreement on how and when or how often you will review the goal completion. If you are not prepared to review, don’t make it a goal. To have goals that drive performance and motivate, they must be challenging. Employees find intrinsic motivation in work that has clear and challenging goals, sometimes so much that they can get in the Flow. Goals that are perceived as unrealistic disillusion employees from trying to meet them. Goals will be Relevant, when you use the cascade process to align them.
As a rule of thumb, basic job expectations should not be goals. A goal is a part of a company priority to take it to the next level. Everybody just doing the bare minimum is not going to cut it. To set a goal is raising the bar. When you meet your goal, it’s an accomplishment. Set the goals accordingly. Don’t set them to fail. Set them to be proud.
###
SVPGMGDX8TEC
