how to set goals (for the whole org)
made w/ midjourney
To set goals for your organization, I tend to recommend answering these questions :
What are we all (at this organization) trying to make real in the long run (e.g. over the next 10-50 years)?
What does that mean we ideally accomplish by the end of this year?
If we're doing that, let's imagine it's the end of this year. We did it! What does that mean that everybody in this room worked on?
Set goals for those things. To do this, you may have to go team by team before you get to individuals on each team. (ex: Sales is going to do x; for Sales to achieve x, Chris on the Sales team needs to do y).
By the time you’ve done this team by team, it's fairly easy to create an individual teammate's goals from the team goal.
The thing you hope to be true a year from now isn't necessarily a capped outcome or a specific project. It could be, for example, how much the organization has grown.
For many businesses, this would sound like, “We've increased market share to [this amount],” or, “we've become the market leader in [this thing].” In more social impact-driven organizations, it could be something like, “we are the go-to resource for key organizations on [this topic].” It could also be a more quantitative capture of that idea, something like, “We have readership and subscription to our ideas at [this level].”
It does not have to be a thing that is set and once said is set forever. You place the overall trajectory of the organization on the timetable of a year or even a quarter if you like, then you reset goals at the end of each of those periods by returning to the original question: what are we all trying to make real in the long run?
-ben
