Part 3: Goals and Teamwork

To fulfill organizational vision, you need strategies and goals, the guideposts and individual steps to cross the finish line. All three elements must be present to achieve the purpose of an organization. Each is important. Each is needed. Each requires forethought, teamwork, and commitment.

Let’s touch on goals. Once you know your destination (vision) and have set guiding principles (strategies), you need to specify action steps for stakeholders to take. Your team should be clear on what their responsibilities are, how they are to do it, when they should be done, and how they know that they have been achieved.

Here is a familiar and simple formula to help us remember how to define effective goals. They should be SMART.

·      SPECIFIC: Goals must be clear and unambiguous. What is expected, when, and how much?

·      MEASURABLE: What good is a goal you can’t measure? If goals are not measurable, you never know whether your team members are making progress. It’s tough to stay motivated if you have no milestones to mark your progress.

·      ATTAINABLE: Goals must be realistic and attainable by average team members. The best goals require people to stretch a bit to achieve them, but they can’t be extreme.

·      RELEVANT: Goals must be important to the grand scheme of reaching your company’s vision.

·      TIMEBOUND: Goals must have starting points, ending points, and a fixed duration. Goals without deadlines tend to be overtaken by the day-to-day situations that arise in any organization.

We should ask the question how our team members should or should not play a part in developing strategies and goals. Should you involve them at all, or simply let suits-and-ties in glass offices determine the particular goals? Would seeking their input prove valuable to the organization?

Consider the following:

·      Team members are the ones who know how to do the work.

·      If brainstorming comes from the ideas of team members, they will tend to take ownership of those goals. Then they are not just order-takers.

·      When team members are involved in the process, they are more committed to delivering the outcome.

Successful organizational leaders invite team members from differing capacities to help guide decision-making for the team. The confluence of all knowledge and insight does not merely rest with a few. In a multitude of counselors there is wisdom. With that said, should all team members make every company decision? Obviously, no. This particular topic pertains to inviting a variety of ranks of leadership to provide insightful input into the day-to-day actions that their divisions take, all of which align with the strategies to help achieve the vision. This is how we connect vision all the way down to the individual, while helping these team members realize that what they do makes their role worthwhile and fits like a puzzle piece within the big picture.

Who sets the specific goals or actions used to fulfill your organization’s vision?