Goals and Objectives
Every organization I’ve worked in — small and large — has had one thing in common. The ones that ran well could tell you exactly what needed to be done and how. That clarity doesn’t happen by accident. Instead, it comes from setting goals and objectives, and from values that tell people how to work and how to get things done. Every organization owns its values, and they’re universal — they apply the same way to every department, team, and individual.
I’ve seen organizations use goals and objectives interchangeably. In my own thinking, though, I treat goals as broader and more abstract, and objectives as more specific and measurable. Regardless of the term you use, both should be S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.
As Forbes has put it, S.M.A.R.T. goals “can help remove uncertainties and guesswork and help ensure projects and tasks are completed within specified time frames — which, in turn, can help eliminate the risk of scope creep.”
Objectives Flow Down
Objectives provide measurable targets that translate the organization’s mission into action at every level. To show what that looks like in practice, here’s an example I like to use. It shows how one objective cascades from the corporate level down to the individual:
- Corporate Objective: Give our valued employees the knowledge, skills, and training to do their jobs productively and safely.
- Department Objective: Complete annual safety training for 100% of department employees by the end of Q1.
- Team Objective: Complete annual safety training for 100% of team employees by the end of Q1.
- Individual Objective: Complete the Q1 safety training module and pass the certification exam by March 15.
As the objective moves from corporate to department, it becomes more specific. At the team level, the main change is scope — from department to team. At the individual level, the objective becomes a specific, assignable action with its own deadline.
From Objectives to Individual Performance and KPIs
Objectives only translate into results when they connect to what each person actually does and how you measure their performance. In my experience, two tools connect them: individual performance objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Individual performance objectives translate a team’s objective into a specific commitment for one person — for example, completing a certification, closing a defined number of support tickets, or hitting a sales quota.
- KPIs are the ongoing metrics you use to track progress toward those objectives — such as training completion rate, ticket resolution time, or monthly sales revenue — and they give managers and employees a shared basis for discussing performance year-round.
- You should review individual objectives and KPIs regularly, on a monthly basis or quarterly, rather than waiting for the annual review, so you can address gaps while there’s still time to act.
- A good KPI ties back to one specific objective and favors leading indicators, which predict a result, over lagging ones that only confirm it after the fact. Without that discipline, KPIs turn into vanity metrics that look good on a dashboard but don’t tell you anything you can act on.
Individual objectives come directly from team and department objectives. Because of that, I’ve found that your team should always be able to trace their own goals back to a department or corporate objective. If they can’t, either the individual objective needs adjustment, or the cascade itself has a gap.
Hitting the Target
Cascading objectives and KPIs set the target; the following practices are what I’ve seen make hitting that target possible.
Leadership
First, I believe that people cannot reach their full potential without effective leadership. Specifically, successful leadership rests on trust, motivation, planning, delegation of authority, and policies and procedures that document best practices. Simply publishing objectives is not enough. In fact, I’ve seen teams with clear objectives lose momentum within weeks, simply because no one in leadership followed up on them.
Communication
Communication is essential to increasing productivity. In practice, listening, delivering clear messages, and encouraging two-way communication are fundamental. That includes KPI results, not just objectives — sharing the numbers regularly keeps people from being blindsided at review time.
Training and Coaching
Beyond that, training involves a systematic approach, patience, and an honest evaluation of whether it’s actually producing the results you want. It also means teaching people to read and use their own KPI data, not just log it — a metric nobody knows how to interpret won’t change anyone’s behavior.
Motivation
Employee motivation helps the company accomplish its goals while also helping people attain their own career goals. You’re responsibile for creating and maintaining an environment where employees feel motivated to perform at their highest level. In my experience, understanding and satisfying workers’ needs, compensating fairly, and treating people equitably are what make positive motivation stick.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict in the workplace is inevitable, and management must be adept at handling it. Postponing conflict resolution only allows problems to grow more severe. As a result, managers need to develop and consistently follow strategies and systems that build trust between management and employees.
Performance Feedback
Employees want to hear from management about their performance. The individual objectives and KPIs I outlined above give that conversation something concrete to reference. To make that work, managers must ensure their evaluations are clear, fair, consistent, and timely. Periodic one-on-one meetings with employees are the best time to listen to their needs and reset individual objectives and KPIs. During those meetings, look at the KPI trend over the period, not just where it landed, and treat a target that consistently misses as a signal to recalibrate the KPI itself, not just the person’s effort. By contrast, waiting until the annual review sets both the organization and the employee up to fail.
Ultimately, get the cascade right — from corporate objective down to one person’s KPI — and you’ve already done most of the hard work of managing performance. What’s left is coaching people to hit what they’ve committed to, which is where I want to go next.
What’s Next
In the next post, I’ll look at performance coaching and how to get the most out of employees. Specifically, I’ll cover how to keep objectives and KPIs on track day-to-day, once they’re set, not just at review time. We’re all busy, so setting aside time for coaching and performance feedback has a cost. I’ll share what’s worked for me and the real benefits I realized.
