Goal Management Best Practices

Managing goals efficiently is a critical strategic endeavor for all organizations. In many settings goals are established by top management with managers and team members left in large part to their own devices for implementing them. This practice frequently results in sub optimal performance and sometimes actually produces negative consequences. This paper focuses on the following 4 critical perspectives that make goal management work:

1. Strategic Alignment

   • Focuses on the “critical few” strategic levers for performance

   • The cascade applies a consistent process for focusing manager priorities (i.e., not cascade, cascade unchanged, cascade an essential aspect, create a separate supporting goal)

   • Refine inter-dependencies (i.e., cross-team synergies and conflicts)

2. Goal Quality Orientation

   • Key goal criteria encompass the “types” of measures that most accurately define desired outcomes

   • Key goal criteria include the focus on the right level of a value chain or process – beginning, middle, and end (focus and “coverage”)

   • Key goal criteria are practical and easy to measure and track

3. Implementation Process Excellence

   • Goals should be personalized to fit the person

   • Each person should be engaged collaborative in goal creation and commitment

   • Managers and direct reports should create a “contract” for goal management

   • Goals should be tracked, refined and updated over time (goal setting is a dynamic, not a static process).

4. Collaborative Coaching

   • Goals and the reasons for focusing on them should be fully communicated

   • The manager and team member should each have a significant stake in fulfilling an individual’s goals

   • Open, ongoing feedback should be provided to support goal refinement and revisions in response to changing demands or strategies.

Organizations that apply these principles consistently enjoy better overall performance by more engaged, motivated, empowered managers and employees. Goal Management Best Practices

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Categorised in: Blog, Publications

This post was written by Dr. Stephen C. Schoonover