Resource allocation is also relevant when thinking about happiness and fulfillment. Your time and energy are the resources you allocate to different things over your whole lifetime. So it is important to take a look not only our careers but rather holistically, focusing on our entire lifetime, to really achieve meaning and happiness.
Clear and effective performance objectives are an important aspect of successful business operations. They help ensure that employees understand what is expected of them and have a clear roadmap for achieving success. They must align with the overall strategy of the firm and enable its realization.
You, as the leader, need to ensure they are uncomfortable and aggressive to drive real growth and progress. Companies must set their sights high and push themselves beyond their current limits and go for disruptive and exponential growth rather than linear to achieve more than they normally would. On the other hand, objectives must also be realistic and achievable with the right level of effort and resources.
You might have heard of one or more approaches to setting objectives. The most common or better known of these are probably BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
BHAGs
BHAGs
BHAGs are long-term, audacious goals. BHAGs were first introduced in the book "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. They, by definition, require a significant amount of effort and resources to achieve. In "Built to Last," Collins and Porras identified them as a key characteristic of visionary companies. BHAGs should be challenging, inspiring, and outside of the company's current comfort zone. The idea was that they could serve as a unifying force for the organization, driving everyone toward a common goal and inspiring them to achieve more than they thought possible. So a very powerful concept.
OKRs (a.k.a., "Aim for the stars, get to the moon")
OKRs (a.k.a., "Aim for the stars, get to the moon")
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are shorter-term (but also very aggressive) objectives focused on specific outcomes and are measurable in nature. Intel is often cited as one of the most well-known organizations to leverage the OKR framework to improve performance, but in fact, Google is where they originated. Its co-founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) are credited with creating the OKR framework and implementing it at Google from its very early days. The firm continues to use them as a key tool for setting and tracking goals across the organization.
Other notable companies successfully using OKRs include LinkedIn, and Twitter, in addition to many startups and small businesses have also leveraged the OKR framework to drive growth and success.
In essence, boss and subordinate meet to identify very specific short-term targets that seem to be a total moon shot- hard enough that neither of the two know how to achieve them. The key is that these are not actual performance evaluation metrics; they are a guide to "aim for the stars and get to the moon". Oftentimes, it is the employee who comes up with the most ambitious OKRs that the supervisor needs to help tamper down. They negotiate support and resources for a given set of OKRs that both agree to go for. The performance assessment metrics, also aggressive (hence the OKRs need to be much more of a stretch) are independent. The intention is to force the organization to think seriously of how to achieve things that are far above and beyond. OKRs should help the employee clearly overshoot.
Ok so what?
Ok so what?
Regardless of the variety, the aim is to ensure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound- the famous acronym SMART. If you, as a leader, set ambitious and challenging objectives that you might at first not know how to achieve or that seem extremely uncomfortable, you will help your organization achieve much more than they would have if they had set more modest goals. Even if they fall short of their original objectives, they will have made significant progress and achieved outcomes that they would not have otherwise.
Make sure you paint a clear picture of what good looks like. Clearly communicate performance expectations to everyone in your team to minimize friction and ensure appropriate stretch so there is a good sense of satisfaction when the job is done. This can help ensure that employees have a clear understanding of their goals and how they fit into the broader objectives of the organization. Research shows that the higher the challenge, the higher the sense of achievement, ownership and pride- so not only do you push the organization to do more than they thought but you also elevate engagement.
The benefit for you as a leader of setting objectives like this is to drive your team and the organization at large to break free of inertia and achieve disruptive, exponential growth. Don’t be distracted by team size or by your level or reach- any team, indeed any individual, can and should set objectives in the same manner. If you lead a small part of the organization, set hard objectives that align with your strategy (which in turn should be aligned to that of the organization) to take your team to performance and improvement far beyond what would be the norm by aiming for what they can comfortably achieve.
Involve employees in the process: Involving employees in the process of setting and negotiating performance objectives can help ensure that they feel ownership of their goals and are more likely to commit to achieving them. This may involve holding regular check-ins or goal-setting sessions with employees, or giving them the opportunity to provide input and feedback on their objectives.
But what if I’m on the receiving end?
But what if I’m on the receiving end?
Ok. Fair point. Let’s say you have defined very aggressive objectives for you and your team, and now you need t negotiate with your boss- who might want to point you in a different direction, or much further than you believe is reasonable (or both). How can you negotiate to ensure you arrive at a set of objectives that are a win-win for the corporation at large?
Negotiating performance objectives with your boss can be very challenging, but there are a few key strategies you can use to get to that win-win that meets both your needs and those of the organization.
It's important to approach the negotiation process with an open and collaborative mindset. Don’t view the negotiation as a competition. Approach it as what it is- a conversation where you and your boss work together to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Be prepared to provide evidence and data to support your proposed objectives. If your boss is pushing for more aggressive goals than what you have proposed, make sure you can demonstrate why your proposed objectives are stretch, realistic and achievable, and how they are consistent with the OKR framework. Be open to feedback and input from your supervisor.
Identify where you can compromise or find common ground. For example, you might agree to set more aggressive goals in one area if your boss is willing to be more flexible in another area, or to a different allocation of resources that will enable that more aggressive target.
Which of course implies you need to make sure you are clear and specific about the resources and support you will need to achieve your proposed objectives. Make sure you have the necessary resources and support to go for that moon shot. This could be additional budget, staff, or other resources, or it might involve shifting priorities or reallocating resources from other areas.
You get what you measure.
You get what you measure.
Wherever your negotiation leads you, make sure to use some sort of tracking mechanism to measure your progress against those objectives. If you don’t, you won’t know how far you are from your objective or even if you are going in the right direction. It could be project management software or goal tracking software, or simple spreadsheet-based mechanisms (like a bowler chart). The point is to create transparency and accountability within the organization as well as identify issues or challenges along the way.
The value of tracking to inform any adjustments you and your team might need to make is huge, but in my view that is not the biggest benefit. Sharing progress vs. objectives will allow you to foster a culture of transparency within the organization. Do not only publish or use the information to “turn on the pressure” on individuals, or to create “name and shame” or “red face” lists. Use the information to foster a sense of ownership, shared progress and pride in the achievement as it happens.
All aboard (?!?!)
All aboard (?!?!)
Everyone in the organization needs to understand the bigger picture- regardless of what they do (from packing and shipping to invoicing to IT, Finance, HR and every function contributes to reaching the ultimate objective of breathing life into the strategy. But is that strategy clear? What is your team’s strategy within that to maximize the potential of every colleague and to empower them to reach or exceed what is necessary to realize the corporate one?
As an example, if you run an Operations organization, for instance, how does what you do play into the longer-term strategy? What does that translate into for this year? What is your strategy to better support that, ensure everyone from packing through materials management through production lines or engineering desks know how what they do fit into the overall construct? How does your own organization’s strategy help each of its members grow as close to their fullest potential as you can help them get?
Provide ongoing support and feedback to help your team members stay motivated and on track to achieve their objectives. Make sure you request it for yourself. Set up regular check-ins wth them and your boss. Provide and seek out training and development opportunities. Offer and get feedback and guidance early and often.
“Negotiation”?
“Negotiation”?
If you understand it, it is easier to own it. This will be reflected in your setting your own objectives and those of your own organization at a sufficiently bold, stretch, uncomfortable level that will really push you. This also means that you should not think of the objective setting exercise as an adversarial process where you and your boss are on opposing teams, each trying to “win” the argument and make their vision of what should be done prevail.
You should have already identified objectives that are sufficiently demanding (and a little unnerving). No need for your supervisor to push them up just for fun or “because they’re the boss” (this is why facts and data are your friends as mentioned above). Your “negotiation” should be more of a collaborative exercise to tune them in to maximally support the strategy.
It’s about finding the middle ground, a win-win compromise that meets the needs of both sides of the table and of the organization at large. Keep your boss and company accountable for making it clear what the strategy is, to describe that bigger picture.
Approach objective setting with an open and collaborative mindset. Provide evidence to support your proposed objectives, be flexible and open to compromise, and be clear about the resources and support you will need to achieve your goals. You will find a solution that works for everyone.
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Push 'em hard, let 'em win...?
Objectives should not be a check-the-box exercise where you receive (or give) top down prescriptive input on what your objectives need to be. It's also not a "negotiation". It's about aligning everyone's contribution in a productive way that will maximize results.
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