Corporate goals are used by many organizations to formalize company objectives, communicate those objectives to staff throughout the organization, and incentivize staff to work toward the goals. Often, bonuses are tied to goals, for example. In order for goals to be effective, there are a number of basic factors and characteristics that must be taken into account.
Goals Are Achievable but Challenging
The first step in setting out effective company goals is to pick goals that are achievable yet still challenging. Goals should make the company push itself and work hard but shouldn’t be so difficult or impossible that employees become frustrated or simply choose not to genuinely work toward goals they believe they will never achieve. For quantifiable goals, this is relatively straightforward. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, the target percentage or absolute value of increased sales should be influenced by recent history and adjusted based on specific factors currently impacting or expected to impact sales—e.g., a recession might cause you to reduce the number relative to historical numbers in boom years. For non-numeric goals—achieve a certification or implement a new process, for example—the time and resources it takes to achieve that goal should be closely considered. Key management and stakeholders in the goal should be consulted to avoid miscalculations as much as possible.
Goals Are Clear and Well Communicated
Once you have a realistic set of goals, make sure they are communicated clearly to the organization. Employees should know precisely what is expected of them, and there should be no ambiguity on the desired result. Managers should be empowered to answer questions from their staff members, and key stakeholders should be very clear on what is expected.
Goals Have Clear Metrics
Many organizations fall into the trap of having goals that sound good during a brainstorming session but are difficult to quantify. This is a dangerous trap, because ambiguity on whether a goal is achieved can leave employees confused and feeling cheated if it’s determined that the goal wasn’t achieved. This is especially true when incentives are dependent on reaching the goal.
Goals Are Related to Key Company Objectives
A goal shouldn’t exist just to have a goal to achieve. The company’s goals should be driven by the broader company mission or by specific opportunities or challenges the organization wants to address. For example, if a company gets feedback from customers that issue resolution through the company call center is taking too long, a good goal might be to reduce customer issue resolution by 30% over the next calendar year.
Company goals can be effective tools to drive valuable change, if crafted properly. However, to the extent that goals are too vague—either vaguely defined or measured, too challenging, or too irrelevant to the organization, it can be hard to motivate employees to work toward them.