That Difficult Client Talk – Part III.  Too Many Goals?

Dear Reggie,

The “discussions” are working. Your people said that you are listening to them in a new way, and that should raise their performance. That was your original goal, wasn’t it?

So here’s the next place to put your attention: your Step 3. I am hearing some confusion among your staff people – it’s different depending on their roles and responsibilities, but I’m drawing a general idea of their concerns. They like the idea of having their assignments paired with clear goals, but I think there may now be now too many goals. My biggest clue was when one of them said, in a joking voice, “Which goal? Pick a goal – we have dozens.”

So now it’s time to take a bigger picture of your whole department, a context for all those goals. Here are two ways I have tried for going about that, and perhaps they could merit another discussion or two with your people:

• MVP – Mission, Vision, Purpose. Mission is about what your department delivers or provides to others: think missile or, more kindly, missive – what you send out into the world beyond your department borders. Vision is about seeing ahead and having a stated future for your department to move toward. Purpose is about your intention, as in “What’s the point?” Your department has a purpose for existing, an intention to fulfill. There is no magic in these 3 terms, other than their power to get people thinking about what each of their goals contributes to the department’s MVP. If you can draft a statement of the MVP that you and your staff agree is “right on” or even “pretty good”, it can begin give everyone a lift and a sense of operating with more cohesion.
• GPS – Goals, Performance measures, Schedules. Goals can then be connected to your MVP: each goal should contribute to the big picture. Performance measures can be created for the big-picture MVP as well as for the goals – and the goals can be restated or combined in ways that add up to something worth pursuing. Schedules too can be associated with goals and aligned with the MVP to support departmental and staff planning, changes, and assignments.

The idea here is to integrate the various types of work people are doing under their own individual or team “umbrellas” of Goals, Performance measures, and Schedules – and then to have those GPS-umbrellas connect upward to the Mission-Vision-Purpose for the department as a whole.

If a goal doesn’t fit, or is stretching the bounds of your mission or vision, perhaps it’s time to revise it. Conversely, if the MVP needs a little clarification or expansion, talk with people about that too. Your staff wants their work to make sense, maybe even see that it contributes to something greater than the tasks they do. Everyone’s work can be about more than just “getting things done”.

That said, your work on upgrading your management practices is making a difference, Reggie. It is visible in the participation of your staff, and it is audible in the conversations they are having with each other these days. I’m betting performance is improving here.