White notebook top view with small goals words on wood table close to pen and glasses
Setting goals and measuring performance are probably some of the most challenging activities of a leader. Current work setups, especially in hybrid workplaces, make it unreal to continue measuring employee performance the same way you would have some years ago. So why do executives and leaders keep trying to define arbitrary goals?
Goals are not bad, as long as they are not used to punish and the why behind them is explained. Instead, they should be used to guide and clarify the purpose. The real problem should be measuring employee performance and setting goals transparently so all team members feel comfortable, safe, and treated fairly. Here we can learn from the Tech industry where in teams implementing agile methods, each individual sets and measures their own performance metrics and timelines, making it available to everyone.
Many leaders complain this is not possible because employees “don’t know how to estimate” or they “will estimate more just in case.”
Instead, help people be accountable for their own performance measurement. Employees need to learn to plan their tasks and be held accountable for what they estimate. Research shows that performance is higher when people are committed to their goals.
Here I share three tips to define better goals and performance metrics with your employees:
- Use transparent tracking systems or apps like Jira, Trello or Sunsama to help employees, not their leaders, work better by better understanding how to organize their time. These tools help them see they spend their time, share where they are with their coworkers and agree on what should be prioritized, and they ares especially useful in hybrid teams distributed across the globe.
- Set goals like OKRs (objectives and key results) to ensure that employee work aligns with company goals. Objectives are clear, inspiring company goals. Key results are measurable outcomes for the employee, which should be ambitious but achievable. And finally, key initiatives are the individual tasks to get to these results. When teams understand the “why” behind their metrics, they are better prepared to define better goals and eliminate obstacles to achieving them.
- Establish NO-KRs, or what employees should not do. Microsoft leaders, for instance, identify and share the tasks and projects they won’t do to get the more critical work done.
Use goals and metrics not to blame, but to understand what is going on, identify trends and causes of variations (train your team to do so too), discover who needs help, and empower team members to propose solutions. Over time, employees will better understand and define their goals and performance metrics.
