The Power of Goals
A colleague of mine once said, “If you don’t set measurable goals and you fail? You’ve lost any chance to learn. And if you succeed but don’t know why? It might as well have been luck.”
We often mistake activity for accomplishment. We’re doing stuff! We’re working hard! Things are happening! But are they the right things? If you haven’t set good, measurable goals, you just won’t know. Remember: you can get your heart pumping by running in place, but you won’t get anywhere. Listen in and get some good tips on how to set goals in different situations, and how to ensure buy in from your team.
In this episode of “Aim Higher,” my panel of business experts and I discuss the importance of setting and communicating good, clear goals. Early on in our chat, we talk about how there are, obviously, different kinds of goals:
- Routine goals about daily tasks, outputs, to-dos,
- Roadmap goals that provide touchpoints for longer-term work
- Essential goals that must be met for business survival
- Stretch goals that help redefine what your team is capable of
- Exploratory goals that help you venture into entirely new areas
It is vitally important that you have well-defined, measurable goals in all those areas. But I would also argue that all those goals are a subset of one, overriding goal: moving your business forward.
Now, what that means will differ for every organization, of course. But I have known talented leaders of great teams who did excellent work with well-defined goals… but what they accomplished didn’t really “bubble up” to the overall improvement of the larger organization. You could check all the boxes for the project, look at how well the team executed, observe the metrics and still not answer the question, “How does this move our business forward?”
One of our regular guests, Tammi Spayde, made this great point: “In the absence of leadership, people will fill the vacuum and come up with their own goals.” That is true at every level of an organization. If you aren’t making sure that the goals your teams set don’t accrue to overall results? You’re missing a major leadership opportunity.
There’s a lot to think about in this episode, and a lot of good tips. And we answered a couple questions from our mail bag on the subject. I hope you listen in, and I look forward to answering any questions you have on this and other topics.
Image Credit: Markus Winkler
