Goal-setting that works

7 tips for making goals meaningful

Goal setting is at the heart of performance. Athletes carefully structure plans to achieve the outcomes they desire. Successful non-profits structure ambitions for their capital campaigns that hold them accountable to performance and help others to understand their aims. Businesses measure and manage targets for new product development, sales, and cost efficiencies in a way that keeps them constantly improving in a competitive world.

And the best professionals articulate goals—both long and short-term—for their professional work. Doing so helps them to envision their ultimate professional destination and to establish meaningful but achievable steps to reach it.

But goal-setting is hard. When we establish goals we often fall short. We make things too complicated or we aren’t aspirational enough to make the impact we desire. We think too much about our own ambitions and not the needs of those around us, or we sacrifice any thought of self for the good of the group. Each organization worth its salt has its own format for setting goals effectively, but it’s useful as an individual to have our own framework for the outcomes we hope to achieve. And I think there are seven simple steps to establishing meaningful goals.

1. Embed your work goals in your life goals. Your life is more than your work. While this article is focused on professional goals, those goals must ultimately be embedded within and subservient to your broader personal goals. Each year, for example, I review my 5, 10, and 20 year aspirations and then design a set of personal goals in different categories—mental and physical health, spiritual growth, family and friendship, “extracurriculars,” and work—that must all hold together. Faith and family are the two categories to which all the other goals must be responsive, and so I have to balance life across each of these pursuits. Knowing my life goals helps me to understand how realistic my work goals are in light of the other things I hope to achieve.

2. Anchor in organizational need. With a good understanding of your broader priorities, you can then set more thoughtful professional targets—and those targets should start with a proper understanding of what your organization needs. Your personal professional ambitions are vitally important to experiencing a fulfilling professional career. But they will be fruitless if they are not valuable to the organization you serve. Initiate goal-setting by understand the strategy and goals of your organization, group, and team. What is most important? And where can you play a role in those needs? Understanding that will help you craft targets aligned with professional success.

3. Think both short-term and long-term. Necessarily, goals are actionable and more short-term oriented—often identifiable on a yearly, quarterly, weekly, or even daily basis. But all shorter-term activities must be anchored in a vision for a longer-term destination. If your team hopes to build the most successful sales organization in its industry, that may take five years. But this year you can consider how that translates into short term training, client development, and new hires in pursuit of that longer term aspiration. Thinking long-term allows greater clarity about short-term priorities.

4. Balance aspiration and realism. I see two frequent errors in goal-setting. One is to “sandbag”—that is to set goals so easy to achieve as to not be meaningful. I once had a team member approach me with her goals for the new year, and two of them were already accomplished! I’ve also seen people set sales goals that I knew they could accomplish in a quarter rather than a year. Those who do this often do so for the pleasure of a feeling of accomplishment or the fear of what might happen if they fall short. The other group that errs is too aspirational. They are so optimistic and hard-charging they will offer to double or triple production that year, and promise to break records on each of their priorities. While admirable, this impulse is almost equally flawed because it leads to poor planning, disappointment, and the goals themselves becoming unusable. Real goal-setting balances aspiration and realism. Goals should be achievable but hard to achieve. Accomplishing them should be cause for celebration, and in general, I think they are not balanced properly if you miss more than half of them or achieve more than 80%.

5. Be simple but comprehensive. Every job and organization is complex. Those authors who instruct professionals to “focus on only one thing at a time” are, by and large, writers not practitioners. In a competitive world, everyone must be capable of juggling multiple priorities. But if those priorities become too numerous or complex they threaten the achievement of any meaningful progress. In general, I think each person should have 5-7 categories of major professional goals—each measurable and manageable. Underneath those may be daily or weekly activities—mini goals in service of tracking to the big ones. But keeping the big goals simple means helping everyone else to understand them bucketing them simply. A product developer, for example, may have a goal each related to new product development, current product refinement and testing, personal professional development, and teammate development. Think through the big categories of outcome you need to achieve and then simplify where you can.

6. Write them down and communicate. Goals aren’t really goals until you write them down and tell someone about them. That can be a spouse, manager, teammate, accountability group, or friend. For professional goals, written goals should, at least, be shared with your manager, or if you are a CEO, with your board and leadership team. Such communication assures those goals are tracking with the broader goals of the organization and there is alignment with those on your team who matter most.

7. Embrace accountability. The most frightening part of establishing goals is knowing that we are committing to achieve them and accepting responsibility if and when we fail to do so. If you are a CEO, you may share your goals with your team or board and empower them to hold you responsible for achieving them—perhaps even tying your compensation to them. If you work for someone else, there is a dual accountability. You are responsible for achieving the outcomes you’ve aligned on with your team. And then the firm you work for is responsible for rewarding you commensurate with those outcomes. Accountability equals clarity. And that clarity motivates you and all those around you to work in the same direction towards the same outcomes.

None of us should allow ourselves to work aimlessly—drawn hopelessly into reacting into the priorities of the moment, and unclear on the meaningful outcomes we seek. As you attempt to craft a meaningful career your progress is often predicated on how well you articulate goals for yourself and others. And having a thoughtful plan to do so is at the heart of a flourishing vocation.