Goals and Strategy: Effective Planning To Move Towards Flourishing

Building an effective strategy that is shared throughout an organization leads to a thriving workplace. While vision at the top is important, wise leaders invite everyone into owning the vision. From this foundation, goals that guide the execution of the vision provide a practical path to progress.

When strategy and goals are not linked, goals can become irrelevant to the daily work of front-line employees.

Even with the best strategy and planning, unexpected challenges and opportunities arise. An organization that is well-managed through effective planning and goal setting has the margin to adapt to the unexpected and continue toward its overarching vision.

Key Takeaways

• Effectively incorporate goals into real-world planning, so they aren't discarded as irrelevant.
• Employee engagement is important to make goals part of everyday work.
• Communication about goals and plans is two-way.
• Implement a practical framework for clarity in goals.
• Keep goals in focus through regular conversations.
• Discern when and how to adjust goals when unexpected situations arise.
• Keep space open for opportunities that are outside of regular planning parameters.

Planning Mindset: Making Your Goals Matter

When was the last time you looked at the goals that you and your team developed at the start of the year?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal cast doubt on the usefulness of goals in a corporate setting: “Goals set at the beginning of the year are irrelevant by the third week of the year. Data from ADP’s human-resources systems reveal that, after inputting their goals, fewer than 4% of people go back and check their goals even once during the year. In the real world, your actual work has precious little to do with your goals.”

Contrast this discouraging view with that of Doug Hall of Resources for CEOs, who highlighted the importance of long and short-term goals in a recent BCW podcast episode. Doug makes the case that we need to connect our strategy and vision for an organization with our execution.

“It’s strategy execution,” says Doug. “You can’t separate one from the other. If we just execute, we’re cutting trees and bumping into stuff as fast as we can. If we’re just strategizing, we’re sitting on the hilltop, never going down in the valley to cut any trees. So how about we plan the path up on the hill, go down, cut some trees, and then go up on another hill? And look, are we going in the right direction? To me, that’s how you tie the long term to the medium term to the short term.”

Start with a long-term vision of where you want the organization to be in 10 years. Then to start moving in that direction, envision the organization in three years. From this long-term vision, teams develop one-year plans and quarterly goals that move the organization toward the longer-term vision.

Employee Engagement is Key to Effective Goal Achievement

This kind of linkage between long-term vision and short-term goals is only possible in a workplace with highly engaged employees. There needs to be a shared vision and commitment to the strategy at all levels of the organization.

One of the keys to a flourishing workplace that I have identified in the Road to Flourishing is fantastic teams: “Fantastic teams are united in pursuit of a common goal that elicits eager commitment from each team member, deriving that goal from the whole organization’s mission and strategy. When a team has clear, achievable goals, team members rally around it and contribute to the whole organization’s success.”

Connection and engagement make the difference between goals that are entered into a tracking system and soon forgotten and goals that are relevant to the daily work of an employee and the long-term vision shared by everyone in the organization.

Top-down and Bottom-up

Organizational leaders should be able to clearly articulate the vision for the organization and the strategy for accomplishing this vision. From there, the leadership team may assign goals to operational departments. Having a clearly articulated vision from the top of the organization is important to know the direction everyone is headed—the “view from the hill” that Doug Hall described.

However, a bottom-up aspect of goal setting is also important. Front-line employees need to be able to clearly understand how their daily and weekly work links to the overall vision of the organization. If these granular goals are just assigned to employees, they are less likely to be embraced, and the outcome may be a sense that goals have no relevance to daily work.

A collaborative approach to goal setting is one where leaders cast vision for the long-term direction, and that vision-casting includes shared conversations at all levels of the organization to build consensus. Then, as short-term goals are developed, each person and team contribute to the dialogue of achievable goals and articulating how weekly tasks contribute to the overall vision. The link between strategy and short-term goals is described in a BCW White Paper “Setting Your Strategy.”

When front-line employees are invested in conversations about how their work impacts organizational goals, they can use their direct knowledge of daily workflows to innovate and suggest process improvements. In a high-trust environment, engaged front-line employees are also able to identify processes or activities that are not contributing to success and be empowered to suggest different ways of accomplishing their work that will contribute to goal achievement.

Absent this kind of collaborative environment, the outcome is the one observed in the Wall Street Journal article mentioned earlier, where goals have no connection to actual day-to-day work.

Putting It Into Practice: Goal-Setting Basics

What are some guiding principles for developing goals, particularly for one-year and 90-day timeframes?

The principle of “SMART” goals is frequently mentioned along with any goal-setting activity. This acronym has been an enduring part of management for decades. SMART goals are:

• Specific: target a specific area for improvement
• Measurable: quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress
• Assignable: specify who will do it
• Realistic: state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources
• Time-related: specify when the result(s) can be achieved

While some of the language of each part of the acronym has been refined over time, these principles have been carried forward because they are helpful for clarity in goal setting. It is possible to have goals that don’t meet all five criteria, but the advantage of these goal-setting principles is that they are helpful in answering the question of whether or not a goal has been achieved. If employees can’t determine when they have met a goal, then the goals are not particularly useful for guiding and prioritizing activities.

Keeping Goals In Focus

Goals are useful when they are top-of-mind for employees at all levels of an organization. Rather than sitting forgotten in an online tracking system, as described in the sad reality of neglected goals—useful goals guide decisions, processes, and daily efforts. Relevant goals are part of regular conversations between managers and employees. While not every one-on-one meeting is about goals, they should be part of the regular rhythm of communication on a monthly or quarterly basis.

As noted in a recent blog on manager effectiveness, frequent meetings with team members allow managers to make sure their team members have the resources they need to achieve their goals. In turn, team members know their managers care about their needs, time, and resources.

Employees should always feel free to bring up issues related to goals with their manager. Some goals are quickly attained, and an employee may want to push for additional progress. Or there may be obstacles to achieving a goal. Engaged employees who have trust in management can bring up these conversations and be part of brainstorming solutions.

Responding to the Unexpected

When we were all working on one-year plans and quarterly goals for 2020, no one envisioned that a worldwide pandemic would have a far-reaching impact on nearly every aspect of life. Whether an unexpected event impacts the whole world or just your organization, seasoned leaders know that they will need to respond to unforeseen challenges.

Cary Humphries, BCW consulting director, describes the character of a leader who can lead effectively in times of uncertainty: “A leader needs humility to admit that they do not know everything, they need the confidence to face challenges, and they need the wisdom to gather their people and lead through a difficult situation.”

Throughout his years of leadership, Cary has leaned on two core truths from Scripture:

• Psalm 55:22: Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.
• Romans 8:14: For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

In the face of unexpected situations, the burden is God’s to carry. We are not designed for carrying, but instead, we are designed for casting. And if the Spirit is leading us, and we are promised He is, then we can listen and act, one decision at a time, as He leads.

Knowing that the coming year will bring unexpected challenges is not an excuse to give up on goal setting. Rather, the wisdom of leadership is in how to respond to new situations, even as carefully considered goals may become irrelevant or unattainable.

How does a wise, humble, confident leader address organizational goals in unexpected situations? In a high-trust environment, a leader may keep the goals intact and encourage teams to celebrate any progress toward goals, however small. However, in an environment with disengaged employees, a refusal by senior leaders to reset goals can make workers feel that success is unlikely—or even worse—not possible. They can feel that results are out of anyone’s control which leads to a sense of defeatism. Resetting goals may help keep team members motivated to bring their full selves to their roles.

What is the environment in your workplace? The Employee Engagement Survey administered by Best Christian Workplaces Institute offers clear, actionable feedback to understand the culture and health of your organization. Leaders who have invested energy into a healthy workplace culture with strong employee engagement and high levels of trust have been able to weather unexpected challenges with positive outcomes.

Maximizing Opportunities

While there are certainly negative circumstances that impact goal achievement, what about positive opportunities that don't necessarily fit into our long-term plan or short-term goals? How does a wise leader take advantage of opportunities that are outside the plan?

In Opportunity Leadership, Roger Parrott, President of Bellhaven University, describes shifting from a traditional planning model to a mindset that focuses on opportunities. Being able to see and capitalize on opportunities God provides has revolutionized his leadership and given his institution energy and growth.

"Opportunity Leadership is grounded in waiting in anticipation for God-given opportunities to develop that mesh seamlessly with our mission, gifting, and capacity—propelling us to destinations that are heavenly ordained. As a result, we become leaders who hone traits that enable us to become highly sensitive to the wind of God and create an organizational culture that allows us to respond to new opportunities with urgency, adeptness, and energy." From Opportunity Leadership: Stop Planning and Start Getting Results by Roger Parrott.

A hallmark of this type of leadership is clarity on the mission of the organization, and a deep understanding of the skills available on the team. From that foundation, an organization can jump on opportunities where quick decision-making is essential.

Roger Parrott might suggest that an “opportunity leadership” mindset renders traditional planning and goal-setting obsolete. Another perspective on this paradigm is that a leadership team with an effective strategy and well-managed processes will have the margin to consider opportunities as they arise. A poorly managed organization has too many internal “crises” to be able to flex and respond to new opportunities.

Next Steps

• If you already have an effective process for defining vision and strategy and integrating goals into your planning process, celebrate that great foundation. Now look for ways to increase communication and encourage employees to innovate and excel in their accomplishment of goals.
• If you have not integrated vision and strategy with practical goals, commit to a process that moves your organization toward a strategic vision:
  • Identify long-term goals to move your organization towards accomplishing its vision.
  • Include all levels of your organization in discussions about long-term goals to build consensus on strategy.
  • Set short-term goals that support movement toward long-term goals.
  • Schedule regular conversations about goals with teams and individuals.

It takes time to build an effective strategy with clear goals that move your organization toward its vision. But if you don’t take these steps, time moves on, and your organization may remain stuck in mediocre processes that do not steward your God-given purpose.