We have to admit that we’re always amazed when a supervisor of ours comes to us once a year and asks us to write up our personal goals for the next year and have them on his desk the next Tuesday. (We’re not talking for the moment about personal development goals, but those that target discrete activities to improve the business, its processes or its products.) How is it that anyone in management thinks an employee can set meaningful goals for improving the business without reference to some framework, some overarching strategic context, to guide him or her?
Our first and immediate reaction is always to ask the same questions, if not out loud, at least in our heads: (1) What are the corporation’s goals for the next year? (2) What are the primary strategies the company is employing to realize those goals? (3) What are the departments’ goals for the year and how do your own personal goals tie with and support them? (4) What specific activities do you think we’d be best suited for that would support all of the above, and (5) How do you see us being best able to align our goals with those at each layer of organization to make sure that what we’re doing is fully supportive of and synchronized with them?
Why does it not seem to dawn on management that one of the most powerful forces they can harness inside an organization is to make sure that everyone is aligned around the strategic objectives the company has set for itself for the ensuing year? Everyone under the sun has heard about “rowing the boat together in the same direction” to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. If these goals truly meant something to the corporation, wouldn’t they want everyone's to contribute maximally to accomplishing the company’s annual goals? Wouldn’t they want to make sure this happened by paying particular attention to synchronizing them at every level (from the company's marketing and product development strategies down to departmental work instructions), and across all the functional silos, as people developed and planned them. And wouldn’t they want to make sure that both up and down and across the organization everyone knew who was doing what, so they could harmonize their efforts throughout the year to produce the greatest effect?
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