There are three broad categories of goals, each appropriate for a specific range of complexity. OKRs fit in only one of the three categories, so using them gives you at best a one in three chance of them working well, and that’s if you’re using the rest of these tips!
In this episode of the Humanizing Work Show, hosts Peter Green and Richard Lawrence dive into the art of setting effective team goals that drive motivation and performance. Discover the research-backed reasons why some goals inspire while others fall flat. Learn five actionable tips on how to set goals that your team will embrace, covering the Source, Size, Category, Criteria, and Persistence of the goals.
Referenced Resources
- Self-regulation Through Goal Setting
- Interdependence and Group Effectiveness
- Why Teams Don’t Work
- What You Need to Know About Cynefin
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Episode transcription
Welcome to the Humanizing Work Show. I’m Peter Green, and I’m Richard Lawrence,
Peter
And in this episode, we’re going to try to bring a little clarity along with some practical advice. We’ll discuss something that can have a big impact on a team’s motivation and performance—setting team goals.
Richard
We’ll summarize some of the research explaining why some goals inspire and others fall flat, and we’ll give you five actionable tips you can use to set goals for your own team.
Peter
The five tips are about the Source, Size, Category, Criteria, and Persistence of the goal. Using these five tips will fire up your team and enhance their performance, avoiding the eye-rolling response to Dilbert-style management tactics.
Richard
This show is a free resource sponsored by the Humanizing Work company, where we help organizations get better at leadership, product management, and collaboration. Visit the contact page on our website, humanizingwork.com, and schedule a conversation with us if your organization wants to see stronger results in those areas.
Peter
And if you like the show, please like this episode, subscribe to it, leave us a review on your podcast app, and drop us a comment to know your thoughts. All of those things help the show reach a wider audience.
Richard
Okay, before we dive into our five tips, let’s talk about why setting good team goals is important. Research consistently shows that clear, well-defined team goals can significantly enhance team performance and motivation. One study by Locke and Latham found that specific, challenging goals lead to higher performance than easy or vague ones. And another study by Hackman and Wageman found that goals teams set for themselves increase commitment and engagement, leading to better outcomes. We’ll link to this research on the episode page and in the description for more details.
Peter
Our experience aligns with this research; we’ve found that team goals can be effective sometimes and demotivating at other times. So, let’s explore what makes the difference. Here are our five tips to set team goals that really work.
Richard
The first tip is to get the source right. When we ask people about times when team goals were demotivating, the most common answer by far is ‘when the goals were assigned by management.’ Goals set by the team themselves, even if they’re set to fit into a larger context that may be pointed to by management, are much more motivating. So, our first tip for setting motivating team goals is simple: the team has to be involved in setting them. Don’t label an assignment from management as a goal; call it what it is—an assignment.
Peter
And, regardless of the team’s assignments, have a separate conversation about goals that would be motivating to the team. These goals may relate to how you’ll execute that assigned work, how the team works, or specific aspects of the work assigned to the team. Then label those internally selected outcomes as team goals, and distinguish them from assignments handed down by management
Richard
The second tip is to get the size of your goals right.
Peter
What level of granularity are we talking about when we say a “team goal?” For instance, a team might say ‘our goal today is to…’ (fill in the blank) or ‘our goal this quarter is to…’ (fill in the blank). Can team goals be both at the daily level and the multi-month level, in your experience?
Richard
I think the more collaboratively a team works, the more appropriate it is to apply the tips from today’s episode at a very granular level. So, teams doing complex, emergent work will often meet daily to talk about a goal for the day, and that makes sense when everyone is contributing to a shared outcome.
If, on the other hand, a team works in more of a coordinating or cooperating fashion, where they plan together but execute separately, then the only day to day goal that might make sense is like “everybody do your assigned work for the day.” It’s not really accurate or helpful to call that a team goal, or to spend a bunch of time formulating it as one.
Peter
I think for most teams, the most important level of granularity to focus on for team goals is somewhere between a big compelling purpose or vision, and the day-to-day level deliverables, like tasks, or user stories, or even Sprint Goals. The most motivating team goals are typically, in my experience, somewhere in that space between 3-6 months. We sometimes call these goals ‘Goldilocks Goals’ because they are not too big, they’re not too small—they’re just right. They provide enough time to achieve something concrete and meaningful without feeling vague or unattainable.
Richard
All right, on to Tip 3 which is get the Category right. One of the biggest mistakes we see teams make when they’re setting goals is using the same format, like OKRs, or the trendy version today, on every goal. This ignores how the nature of a particular team’s work lends itself to different approaches. In fact, we think there are three broad categories of goals, and each one is appropriate for a specific range of complexity in the work. OKRs only fit into one of those three categories, so using them gives you a one in three chance of them working well, for your situation, and that’s if you use the rest of these tips!
We like to visualize these three categories of goals over Dave Snowden’s Cynefin model. If you’re unfamiliar with Cynefin, check out the link to our quick overview on the episode page.
Peter
Sometimes, goals are related to Maintaining and Sustaining systems that are already in place. And this type of work includes things in the Clear domain, where everything is predictable. Maybe a bit surprisingly, to those familiar with Cynefin, is that this category of goal also applies to teams working in the Chaotic domain, where the goals are related to quickly recovering from unpredictable results. Maintain and Sustain goals are usually focused on efficiency and scale over time. And we like to format these goals as what we call health metrics–specific targets based on previous baselines.
Richard
The next category of goals are related to Developing and Delivering solutions– products, services, features, or whatever. Here we’re largely in Cynefin’s Complicated domain or on the Complex-Complicated boundary—so, we know enough to analyze, plan, and forecast to some degree of accuracy. And this is the place where things like OKRs and KPIs are good tools to consider.
Peter
Finally, some goals are related to Exploration and Discovery. These sit primarily in the Complex domain, including maybe intentional dips into the chaotic, for the purpose of generating innovation. OKRs to us have always felt a bit awkward here, and most teams that set OKRs in this domain find them becoming irrelevant long before the quarter is through. Instead, use what we like to call Hypotheses and Next Actions, or HNAs if you need an acronym for it. HNAs are relatively self-explanatory: what’s your hypothesis, and what is the next thing you can do to learn about that hypothesis? Sometimes that’s more research oriented, others it’s more experiment driven. And research here is not about analyzing to predict an outcome. That’s a Complicated domain strategy. Here, when we’re doing research, it’s serving to form a clearer hypothesis that can then be tested.
Richard
Tip 4 is get the Criteria right. Good team goals meet four criteria: they’re Consequential, Challenging, Clear, and Collaborative.
Consequential goals are ones that have a positive impact on the business, on customers, and on team members. When a goal is consequential, reaching the goal matters inside and outside of the team.
Peter
Challenging goals require us to stretch a little, but not so much that the team feels stressed. In “The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance,” author Steven Kotler describes what he calls a 4% stretch. The idea is that optimal growth and performance occur when we push our limits by about 4% beyond our current capabilities. This is based on research into flow states, where we need to be just beyond the boundary between comfort and anxiety to get into flow.
Richard
Clear goals are ones that are specific and concrete, but that doesn’t mean that they are overly prescriptive about how to achieve the goal.
Peter
And Collaborative goals are ones that require interdependent effort from all team members to successfully achieve them.
Richard
Let’s take a look at what happens when we’re missing any of these four criteria.
Starting with consequential, if you have a goal that isn’t consequential, it’s like a team that does trust falls to try to build team unity. In other words, it’s corporate nonsense. A team exists for a reason. And its goals should help it achieve its reason for existing. So, don’t set what we call “trust fall goals” on your team.
Peter
Second, a goal that isn’t challenging is leaving opportunity on the table. If our work matters, we want to get better at doing it, and the appropriate level of challenge in a goal helps us to do that. We’re not advocating for so-called stretch goals, here, which are almost always pushing too far in this direction. Instead, find that 4% improvement over a quarter or two, and you’re in the sweet spot.
Richard
A goal that isn’t clear leads to people pulling in different directions or arguing about priorities. Stating the goal in a clear way takes a bit of work, but that work is extremely high leverage. It’s worth the discussion to get it stated just right.
Peter
And finally, a goal that isn’t collaborative isn’t a team goal. It may be an interesting individual goal, or one shared by a few team members. But if you want it to be a motivating team goal, it needs to be broad enough that all team members see how they contribute in a meaningful way.
When your team goals meet all four criteria, your team’s off to the races, they’re engaged and energized.
Richard
And finally, Tip number 5. That’s to know when to persist on a goal. Sometimes a team embarks on a goal, and a couple of weeks into working on it, something they couldn’t have predicted changes. Maybe the goal turns out to be way more than a 4% stretch. Or maybe the priorities around the team shift in a major way that makes the goal no longer important. Don’t hang on to the goal just because you feel obligated. Redo it or replace it to match your current understanding.
We do want to persist when a goal is hard but still relevant. We want to pivot when we discover it’s no longer the right goal or it was too much to take on all at once.
And while it’s useful to talk about goals every quarter, I mean, we do it on our team, not every goal starts or ends right on the quarter boundary. So, let your goals be as dynamic as your understanding of what’s important to the team. If that shifts, shift your goals to match.
Peter
Our promise to you is that if you use these 5 tips to get the Source, the Size, the Category, the Criteria, and Persistence right, your team goals will become a powerful tool for team motivation and performance.
Thanks for tuning in to the Humanizing Work Show. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to like, subscribe, and share it with your network. See you next time!”
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