Set Goals as Outcomes, Not Activities

You will increase your personal and organizational effectiveness by setting your goals as “outcomes” instead of “activities.”

In my first blog about Goals, I encouraged you to set more goals.  Now we will focus on how to set them most effectively.

Setting goals as outcomes makes you focus on what you really want.  Consider the simple example of this goal:

“To receive $500,000 for the annual fund by June 30, 2012.”

This is an outcome-based goal.  It does not say that 100,000 fund-raising letters will be mailed out that year or that 10,000 phonathon calls will be made.  It is an outcome – money will be received.

When you are considering goals for a certain domain of activity – whether it is personal or organizational – ask yourself “What is the RESULT I/we really want?”  In the case above, you want money!

Once you set an outcome-based goal then it is totally fine to connect activity-based goals to them.  The problem is that, far too often, all people set are activity goals.  And just because the activity gets completed it does not mean that the desired result has been produced.

Unfortunately, outcome-based goals are all too rare in organizations.  It seems much easier to list the activities that an individual or team is going to work on rather than the specific outcomes that the activities are intended to produce.  One of the reasons that we lack outcomes is that our language around performance lacks rigor.  When a supervisor meets with their direct reports, for example, the question is typically something like “What are you working on during the upcoming quarter?” instead of “What outcomes will you produce during the upcoming quarter?” 

This lack of rigor makes it more difficult for people to be held accountable.  Completing a task is easier than completing a task that produces an agreed upon outcome.  This lack of rigor exists at the individual level, at the team level, and at the organizational level.  People resist setting outcome-based goals because activity-based goals don’t engender much accountability.  When we set personal goals, we need to overcome this.  And as supervisors, we need to require people to set outcome based goals.

Setting outcomes can be challenging for some types of work, but it can be done.  Two excellent resources that can help you in establishing goals as outcomes are Make Success Measurable (1999) by my friend Doug Smith and First Break All the Rules (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999)

Setting goals as outcomes is just the beginning.  Stay tuned for much more ahead in this series to help you set goals more effectively and therefore make even more of a Mission Impact.

The Importance of Goals

Do you want to use your time in ways that are more relevant – relevant to what you care about most in your life?  Of course you do!

The best way to do this is to fully harness the power of goal setting.  It will make your life more fulfilling, more successful, and – for your organization – more effective.

This seems obvious.  And yet, when given the freedom to choose, most people do not set goals or they do not set them effectively.

This blog is first in a series on goal setting which, if you follow the guidance provided, I promise you will improve your performance personally and/or for your organization.

Today’s lesson is that you are probably not setting goals nearly enough.  You are probably barely scratching the surface.  To maximize performance you should consider setting long term goals (e.g., five – ten years) which you then break down into annual goals, quarterly goals, weekly goals, and even daily goals.  To truly maximize performance, you should do this for every important domain of your personal and work life.

“That sounds like a lot, Rob.  Sometimes I just like to go with the flow.”

Understood.  And every now and then I like to go with the flow, too.  Just remember that every time we do that, we let the “flow” take us where it wants, versus where we have intentionally chosen to go.  And sometimes we can drift far away from where we would have intentionally chosen to be.  This leads us to the first important finding from the goal setting research:*

Goals direct attention and action toward relevant activities and away from non-relevant activities.

If you want your actions to be relevant – to address some aspect of your personal or work life that you care about – then set goals!  Isn’t life too short to spend your time on actions that are irrelevant?

If you buy this and think that maybe you can be more effective if you use goal setting more, then stay tuned for the rest of the series which will be devoted to showing you the most effective ways to set goals and focus them on producing results that are most important to you.

*Locke, E. A. & Latham, G. P.  A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1990.

“Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”

One of the guest speakers we had in for the Nonprofit Strategy graduate course I taught this past fall at the University of Maryland shared this quote with the class, and it was one of the students’ favorites of the term.

I’m not sure who originated the quote, but there are lots of articles with this title and even a new book about to come out by that name.  (I have not read it yet, so I can’t make a rec – maybe later.)

Why is this such a popular quote?  Well, first of all – it is great imagery.  But most important, it is true!

Step One in strategy implementation is making sure to align your culture with your new strategy.  This has been recommended by consultants for years.  And yet, many organizations stumble here.

If your strategy is stalled, it is time to do a culture check.  Ask yourself, “Is our strategy being supported by our . . . . .”

*Systems?

*Attitudes?

*Behaviors?

*Incentives?

*Standard Operating Procedures?

Example:  I know of leaders in an organization who, as part of their strategy, needed the organization to be more innovative.  But the organization had a legacy of bureaucratic systems and standard operating procedures.  The strategy was going nowhere until the CEO made major changes in systems and procedures.

Take some time to start your new year off with a culture check.  Making changes can help your organization implement your strategy more effectively and make more of a Mission Impact.

Panic Sooner!

It is an easy trap to fall into.  We are all very busy and tend to focus on the issues that seem to require the most immediate attention today.  And sometimes we don’t look out far enough – even six, nine, twelve months – to notice trends of importance.  And then all of a sudden – panic strikes!!!  And last minute panic is usually not very effective.

One of the great tips from one of my mentors is:  “If You are Going to Panic, Panic Early.”  This is just one of many excellent quick tips in the book Deadline Busting:  How to be a Star Performer in YourOrganization, by Drs. Jeffrey & Laurie Ford.  The idea in “panicking early,” of course, is to get people into a higher level of action when it can actually do some good.  Jeff was one of the great management professors I had at Ohio State and is wife, Laurie, is a management consultant.

Some of my other favorites from the book:

*“Don’t Give Excuses When Things Go Wrong”

*“Account for Interruptions in Your Schedule”

*“Create a Climate of No Complaints”

*“Get Over it, Clean it up, Move on”

Each tip is explained in a quick one-page read.  It’s the perfect New Year’s Resolution gift (available on Amazon) for your favorite Deadline Buster.  Or, buy one for the office.  You can read one – two tips per staff meeting to help your team improve its performance.

Deadline Busting is an important skill for all of us.  Learn some of these great tips and help your organization make even more of a Mission Impact.

Inspiring a Sense of Urgency

I was inspired to write this prior to the Pittsburgh Steelers football game last Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.  I was worried.  The Steelers had shown no “sense of urgency” during the prior week against the lowly Kansas City Chiefs and almost lost.  “They cannot afford to do that with Cincinnati,” I worried, “Coach Tomlin better find a way to inspire a sense of urgency.”

Bringing a “sense of urgency” to every one of the sixteen regular season football games has got to be tough.  It must be easy to get a bit complacent, day in and day out, when it is not one of the biggest games of the year.

The same goes for the rest of us.  How can we remain inspired, with a sense of urgency and focus – day in and day out – and how can we inspire that in others?  Here are some ideas I have found to be helpful.

FOR YOU: 

*First, if you don’t have one already, write a personal mission statement.  Make it simple.  Just answer the questions:  At this point in your life, what is the difference you want to make in the world and why is that important to you?  Don’t overcomplicate it.  It is not written in stone, and you can change it in the future if you want.

*Next, create a new routine to take five minutes early every morning to review your mission statement, to think about your day ahead, and focus on how what you are doing connects to your personal mission.  Remind yourself of the important opportunity you have to make a difference each day.

*Ideally, you would build on this routine and add some specific goals for the year, quarter, and week that you see connecting to the mission and you would review those as well.  I do this nearly every morning as a part of my meditation time and it helps me focus.  I think of it as Rebooting Rob.

FOR YOUR TEAM:

*Suggest the above routine with your team (just forward this blog to them).

*Next, make sure every person on your team understands how their specific set of work responsibilities connects to the mission of your organization and helps make your collective organizational Mission Impact.

*Finally, add an agenda item to your regular staff meetings.  When I was CEO at LeaderShape, someone on the staff suggested that we make “Mission-Vision Updates” the first agenda item for our weekly staff meetings.  The idea was to encourage people to think of something cool that had happened in the past week that was a tangible example about how we were making a difference.  We are all so busy working, working, working that we often don’t take the time to appreciate the difference we make.  This was a nice way to call a “time out” and reflect on that.  Also, it made each of us more aware of those moments when they happened – “Hey, this will be a cool thing to share on Monday morning.”

Even the most dedicated, committed person can lose focus and their sense of urgency from time to time.  Use these ideas to help you and your team focus and make even more of a Mission Impact.

P. S.  Yes – the Steelers did play with a “sense of urgency” last Sunday and Coach Tomlin even used those words in his press conference after the game.  Now if we can just bring it again with the Cleveland Browns tonight that would be great!