Ask Christa! Strategy Series (3/3): How Do I Create Goals If There's No Strategy?? (S1E10)

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and this is part three of my three-part Strategy Series. 

The first part, Episode 8, answered the question, , “What is Strategy?” The second part, Episode 9, answered the question, “What do I do if there doesn’t seem to be a strategy?”

This episode answers the question, “How do I create goals aligned to my company’s strategy if I don’t see how my work aligns to my company’s strategy?”

This is a really, really common issue. Even if you are very aware of your strategy and know ALL of the company goals by heart, and know all your departmental goals by heart, and know all your team goals by heart, it’s really hard to craft and draft goals. But when you also aren’t sure what the strategy is—it means you probably aren’t sure about what the corporate goals are, or you know them, but you aren’t sure how your work impacts them.

And as you can imagine, this is a bit topic, so I’m going to focus on the basics: how to align your work goals to bigger goals—and stay with me, I promise this won’t be as painful as it sounds. This segment isn’t about how to craft and draft goals, it’s about managing that process when you aren’t sure what the strategy is—which infers that you probably aren’t clear on how your work impacts or aligns to the bigger goals, and again, this is (sadly) more common than it might feel.

But like every other work skill—it takes learning and practice to get good at it, and only then will you feel confident in doing it. And, by the way, with practice you will be able to craft and draft goals in no time, using your job description as your starting point. 

Importantly, when the strategy isn’t known or clear or communicated enough to understand and align to, and create individual goals, it’s hard to feel like the work you are doing is meaningful  because you don’t see how your work fits into the bigger picture.

In my experience, there are generally three reasons why employees struggle to craft and draft goals:

1)     There aren’t clear company goals. In fact, studies frequently offer evidence that senior leaders believe the goals are clear and everyone’s fully aligned, but that’s not the reality across the organization. Many employees AREN’T clear on the goals—or there are so many of them, that only the first 2-3 goals are clear, and after that they read more like values or taglines, like “We will be safe,” or “We will speak up more!,” or “We will reduce unnecessary waste!”  And those are TERRIBLY drafted goals… but we’ve all seen them, and they’re usually assumed goals as part of a bigger strategy, but, 

And this is related to the second reason:

2)     If you cannot align easily to company goals, chances are your company does not have a holistic strategy or big plan for how the organization overall will meet or exceed the company goals. I say holistic because often times a company will have clear goals for one or two aspects of their business that feel or seem to be the most critical for immediate company success: revenue generation, funding sources, key partnerships, a regulatory approval… but those might not be holistic goals. They’re important goals you need to achieve, so I’m not knocking them, but a holistic strategy will be looking at the company beyond revenue and funding or product-related items. What are foundational aspects of the business that, unless they are achieved, inhibit your STRATEGY from getting done? Sometimes this is a large-scale hiring plan, or an expansion of your manufacturing capabilities. When you have a holistic strategy, you are better able to create corporate goals that enable the strategy to be achieved, and that means any employee anywhere should be able to align their goals to the larger strategy and goals.

The third reason is usually the same issue that dooms a lot of critical aspects of a business: very few know how to craft and draft goals, even fewer know how to critically review them, and fewer yet know how to test if they actually align to the bigger goals every employee should be supporting.

With the number of economic downturns in the last 25 years, I’ve seen a deeper downturn in how companies consider learning and development overall—especially when it comes to key professional skills that actually ENABLE a company’s performance to increase exponentially, and one of those skills is understanding how to craft and draft goals.

When I say “craft and draft” goals, it’s because there are two parts to doing this: first you need to think about your work as your craft—as the skills you have, how you do them, and how you offer them for the payment you receive, your paycheck and any benefits that may come with your paycheck. You also have to use your job description and your previous goals, if you have been there long enough, as key inputs to how you craft your goals. And I want you to consider the crafting of your goals as part of your unique value—what YOU have to offer by way of skills and experience and APPROACH. 

The crafting of your goals should be your opportunity to consider what you have to do, the priorities for doing it, and how YOU will do it. I’ll included how to write goals as part of the additional resources for this segment so you can learn more. 

OK, I’m going to get just a little bit into the mechanics of developing goals-- many use SMART goals, which I think is a useful framework: SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable or sometimes called Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound. 

The SMART framework helps increase clarity so you know what you’re doing—that’s the “specific” part, metrics so you know when it’s done to the expected quality, a dose of reality so you’re focused on goals you can actually accomplish, relevancy—that they matter to the organization and are aligned to the organizational strategy and priorities, and an understanding of when the goal will be accomplished (that’s the timebound piece).

After you craft your goals, you will be ready to draft them in preparation for a discussion with your manager, and notice that I’m not suggesting—at all—that you wait for your manager to give you your goals unless you work in a setting where you are expected to work in a regimented and rigid environment, such as an environment that requires a certain throughput of inventory within a certain amount of time, such as making 400 pieces of hardware a week. 

Otherwise, most companies in high-revenue innovation-related industries offloaded the hand-me-m-goals task from managers over 30 years ago so the employees draft their goals then discuss them with their managers. When ownership of goals begins with the employee, the ownership not only carries through to better results, but also enables a broader and more open discussion about capabilities and development. It also offloads A LOT of work from the manager. I’ll include some items about performance management in the Additional Resources section if you’re interested in learning more.

So… goals… here’s the rub: unless your organization is really good at crafting and drafting them talking about goals, you may find yourself in a situation where the whole process doesn’t go very smoothly. And this is when feeling that there is no strategy can be a primary factor for failure when it comes to setting up your goals. 

So if you’ve done the work to craft and draft your goals, and you’re still feeling a bit lost or feeling the struggle, here are some things you can do:

First, be sure you know how to craft and draft goals no matter what. You can look to the resources I’m providing for that. Goals are important, especially approved goals, so everyone agrees on priorities, results, and how either will be managed. This keeps things honest with you and your manager, and at the very least aligned to your job description even if you aren’t clear about how you align to the strategy and bigger goals. Approved goals clarifies what you are working on, when, how, and who with. In the case of lacking a strategy, you probably won’t have the “why” or the purpose beyond the goals, because you do not see how they fit into the roadmap, but if you at least look to your team goals or your department goals and align to those.

Second, after learning and getting good at crafting and drafting goals, and at least aligning them to your job description (you can usually derive them from the Core Responsibilities section, or an Expected Results section if there is one) seek resources to learn whether there actually is a bigger company strategy, but for some reason, you aren’t learning about it. This is covered in Episode 9, too.

Some might say you should do this first, but no—attend to crafting your goals first because that sets your foundation based on your skills, your worth, your job, and role-based expectations. It also narrows the focus to your role, which is the core reason you are crafting your goals to begin with.

Third, focus on what is in front of you: the team goals, your manager’s goals, the department’s goals. If you do not know or cannot find company goals attached to a strategy, then align your goals to the next-step-up of goals as a key step.

For this segment’s resources, I included three resources about SMART goals. The first is a robust template that offers a description, a fast process, and several examples that I think are relevant to anyone in any type of role. It comes out of the University of California, although it’s in the public domain.

The second is a short two-and-a-half minute video in the Mindtools site about how to set SMART goals. It offers a slightly different medium for learning where you’ll be listening, but will see examples and also have the benefit of some written words, too. I wanted to be sure to offer a video, though, for those of you who prefer to learn that way.

I included a very thorough blog by Ryan Stolz at Workhuman that describes a Performance Management System where goals are effectively cascaded throughout the organization. Early on, the blog focuses on project goals, but later in the blog there is focus on individual goals, too. It’s an educational blog that’s an easy read while offering research-backed evidence, and you know those are my favorite reads, especially when it comes to winning in human domains such as business. Workhuman is a fascinating organization—I am not affiliated with it, but if you’re interested in employee engagement and what it takes to enhance employee performance, particularly through reward and recognition and things that tend to bring out the best in good humans, then Workhuman is worth a follow on LinkedIn.

I also included a blog by Mac Mischke from PerformYard, which is performance management software—I’m not affiliated with PerformYard either, nor do I know that much about them, but I liked reading this blog because it also includes rates and numbers based on research while weighting the pros and cons of cascading goals as a driver of performance management. When I say “cascading goals,” that the part where you are looking to have your goals supporting the next level up goals, and so forth.

And of course, I’m including links to Episodes 8 and 9 of the Ask Christa! podcast so you can go back to the first two Strategy Series segments and look at those resources as well.

Woooooooo! Alright, there it is—that was a big segment, wow—talking about goals is a big topic. I hope I provided enough foundational information about goals, then offered insights and practical actions for how to craft and draft goals when you aren’t sure what the strategy is. 

As always, keep sending in your questions—you are shaping the brand of the podcast and keeping me on my toes, and I LOVE it!!!. Head over to my website, AskChrista.com, that's Christa with a CH, to submit your question, and while you're there—sign up for the weekly newsletter too, and you'll receive a free issue of the Survivor's Guide to Business Challenges and Workplace Issues. My weekly newsletter comes out every Sunday night offering tips, boosters, and comic relief to prep you for the work week.

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