Goals ► Priorities ► Outcomes ► Initiatives

Do your organizational goals sound something like this: Foster talent by building a culture that maximizes opportunities for growth. Sounds nice, right? But how would you measure that? How would you know when you’ve achieved it? The truth is, it would be next to impossible. Whether you’re creating goals at an organizational level or at an operational level, here are some tips for improving them so that you can demonstrate their achievement.

Describe the outcome.
The trick is to describe the result you hope to achieve rather than the activity. Measuring an activity can result in meaningless metrics. (It is also wise to stay away from words and phrases that cannot be measured such as maximize or more efficient.) Here’s a possibility: Growth and innovation will increase through training, mentoring, and creating time buffers around scheduled projects.

Studies have shown that goal specificity and level of difficulty have a direct impact on employee performance: Goals that are specific and challenging (but not unreasonable) lead to better performance by motivating employees.

Create line of sight.

Just as important, a clear line of sight should exist between corporate objectives and the goals set at the operational level—employees should be able to grasp their roles’ importance in the larger picture. In order to achieve this, it is helpful to include different levels of the organization in developing the goals to ensure consensus, cooperation, and realistic goal-setting.

Define the measure.

Once your goals have been determined, you will be able to think about how you will measure the outcome.

• What are we trying to achieve?
• What behavior are we hoping to encourage? (Key Performance Indictors)
• What will success look like?

Performance measures should be as explicit as your goals, and answer the following:

• What change is being measured?
• How will the change be quantified (generally a number or percentage of something)
• What is the starting point or baseline measure?
• What is the target performance? By when?

It is an old saying but true: you cannot manage what you do not measure. Measuring tracks the specific activities and conditions necessary to support your goals and provides the means by which you communicate to the organization what is important. Measuring also presents the opportunity to identify problem areas and affords employees the ability to monitor their performance and see themselves comparatively. It is therefore vital that you measure the correct things—not the easy things because they exist or because you’ve measured them before—the right things. If your goals have been delineated with specificity and the outcomes you wish to achieve are clear, chances are you will know what they are.

The good news is that this can be done with small steps, consistency, and attention to detail:

1. Maintain documentation. How often have you looked for information only to find that the only available documentation is three years old and woefully outdated? Assign people—and hold them accountable—to keep documents such as policies, procedures, training materials, and system specifications current. This is particularly critical when members of the original project team leave the organization and new employees are hired. Don’t rely on tribal knowledge.

2. Provide continuous communication and training to everyone who is affected by the newly installed changes. Proactively distribute news and tips via email distribution lists. Get on the agendas of regular meetings. Post information on your organization’s intranet site or internal portal. Thoughtfully consider if new training modules need to be offered as the system develops. Offer refresher brief training or “lunch and learn” style sessions to address knowledge gaps.

3. Keep business leaders engaged with updates, issues, and progress, especially after the project governance structure has disbanded. An information vacuum can leave management wondering, “What did we get for that expensive change initiative we launched last year?” Keeping leaders updated has an additional benefit; it earns you the credibility to ask them to help remove obstacles as they arise during the system’s or process’s evolution.

4. Value and respond to individual needs and provide coaching or assistance when needed. Organizational change happens at the individual level, one person at a time. Each person you assist provides them with confidence, reinforces the change in the organization and likely wins you a person more willing to embrace whatever changes come in the future. You will have subtly developed a network of change champions.

Sustaining change requires discipline, but it’s not as time- or resource-consuming as it appears. It’s a relatively small investment of effort that pays substantial benefits. Safeguard your project achievements by not resting on your laurels.

The other day, I ran across a great piece by Gartner about improving project success. Its premise was that if you focus on three things—Partnership, Requirements and Resources—you can really increase the probability of a successful project outcome. Wow! . . .something different from The Big Three!! I was easily able to relate requirements and resources back to the big three, but what about partnership? The formal definition of “partnership” (courtesy of my dictionary) was of little use, but when I looked at its synonyms, I found words like alliance, collaboration, connection, relation, and union. And that’s when it hit me. Partnership doesn’t relate to the big three but rather comprises the foundation that enables us to deliver on them. Without true partnership, project realization or the ability to deliver the expected value from the project is unlikely.

This should have been obvious considering the successful projects I’ve participated in and led. It was partnership at all levels that helped drive realization. From various IT organizations to external partners to the client organizations themselves, the most successful (and fun) projects were always built around partnership. In fact, one might argue that partnership was more important than The Big Three because these successful projects weren’t always on-time, on budget or delivered as initially envisioned. Instead, the customers were heavily engaged along the way, were part of the decision making process, were active participants in validating and re-validating the scope, and were integral parts of testing and acceptance. And so, while I very much agree with the Gartner’s assertion, I would add that management of the big three is table stakes in today’s world—the true differentiator on projects is partnership.

Lennon and McCartney wrote the lyric “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends,” and I would propose that they got it right: with a little help from each other (in partnership throughout all aspects of a project) we can greatly improve the chance of success.

What do you think? Do you have any examples of how partnership drove success?