The strongest teams are united by a clear and common purpose. It’s the binding of the book you’re writing together.
Nike’s early purpose was “Crush Adidas”. TED has “Spread Ideas”.
Actually achieving those ideas requires slightly more details – that’s where this guide comes in. If you’re on a team that needs more structure around setting goals, or if you’re rocking out solo, following this algorithm will help push you in the right direction.
Let’s get started with the hardest step first.
Define success
Success is tough to define, especially when your team has a lot of opinions. This is a leadership activity – declaring the win state. Always anchor this to your team’s ultimate purpose (which may need some polishing if it isn’t clear).
Approach success from two different angles:
- Emotional
- Logical
Emotional
From an emotional standpoint, record the aspects of your success that aren’t easy to measure. For example:
- Collaboration
- Autonomy
- Satisfaction (staff or customer)
- Excitement
- Innovation/status quo balance
Emotional markers are your team’s heartbeat. If your team does social work in your community, you might say, “Smiles on the faces of our neighbors”.
If you’re on a team nested deep in a corporate hierarchy, success might be, “Having the same priorities as other teams.”
You can’t craft a logical solution until you know the emotions driving your team’s work. We’re wired to make decisions with emotions, then justify with logic all the time.
Action: Write down the top 3-5 emotional markers for your team’s success
Logical
From a logical side, figure out what you can actually measure – these should be fairly high-level items, like
- Annual sales figures
- Company valuation
- Event attendance/sales
- Social media engagement
- Yelp, Amazon, or other platform ratings
- Fundraising targets
Don’t just rattle off a bunch of industry items. Use your emotional markers as inspiration. For example, if you’re targeting a happier community, measure something around local engagement.
Keep the items in this list fairly large, yet measurable in some way. Capture WHAT you’re measuring, not HOW you’ll measure it. You’ll draft the nitty gritty later.
Action: Write down 5-7 logical markers that support the emotional markers of your team’s success.
Create key performance indicators
At this point, you should have a rough idea of what big-picture success looks like for your team. In this step, you’ll make those ideas more specific and useful.
First, it’s helpful to talk briefly about what key performance indicators (KPIs) are.
Most people confuse KPIs with goals.
A KPI is an important, measurable item. In American football, incoming players take part in a series of exercises that measures their:
- 40-yard dash speed
- Jump height
- Bench press
- Quickness
These are all raw measurements of some aspect of their performance – KPIs. They don’t assume what the right number is, just like your car’s speedometer doesn’t tell you how fast you should go (your current speed could be considered a KPI, as measured by the speedometer).
For ticket sales, the KPI would be the number of tickets sold, NOT the progress you’re making toward a certain number of sales – that is a goal, which we’ll cover later.
Okay, breathe. Back to finding KPIs.
For the 5-7 logical markers you built, answer the following three questions:
- How can we easily measure this?
- What units (dollars, percentage, etc) matter?
- Can your team influence the results?
For example, if you used Event Attendance as an important logical marker:
| Emotional: Great event experience Logical: Event Attendance | |
| How can we easily measure this? | Sold tickets, from the box office platformActual turnout, from box office redemption |
| What units matter? | Sold tickets: $Actual turnout: % |
| Can your team influence the results? | Yes – we have full control over all marketing aspects of our business |
Your KPIs are the measurable aspects of the markers you have control over. If your team can’t influence the results of the measurables, it’s a horrible KPI candidate – you’ll be frustrated that nothing you do actually helps move the dial forward.
Action: Find 5-7 easily measurable key performance indicators your team has control over.
Describe high-impact efforts
KPIs wrap the results you’re seeking in a neat, measurable package, but they don’t address how your team will actually get there.
Outline the work that moves your KPIs in the right direction. Don’t use extreme detail – give your team the opportunity to solve these creatively. Focus on clarifying the main idea.
For example, if you’re trying to improve event attendance, and your KPIs are tickets sold and turnout, some high-impact efforts could be:
- Social media campaigns – top of funnel
- Local event networking – brand & event awareness
- Engaging past attendees – direct invitations
Be careful with your list: make it specific enough that your team knows where to go, but general enough they have the flexibility around how to get there. Your duty as a leader is to empower your team to use their skills, talents, and perspectives to solve the right problems.
Action: Map out the high-impact efforts that influence each KPI you created.
Choose a timeline
Your goal is almost completely crafted, and it’s time to lock down a foundational part of any worthy goal – the deadlines.
Most deadlines are made up.
Friday deadlines are the most suspicious because they’re clearly set at the end of a week for convenience, but there’s usually not a good reason it can’t be the following Monday (who is honestly looking at these things over the weekend?).
Due dates come in two flavors:
- Hard: Cannot be moved at all – events, contracts, etc.
- Soft: Moveable and squishy.
First, figure out what your hard deadlines are (if any). Everything you do has to fit around these.
Second, build a rough idea of how long you’d like to spend on the efforts listed in the previous step then add intermediate (soft) deadlines for milestones on those efforts.
The most important thing to keep in mind here is Parkinson’s Law which says that tasks take the amount of time we give them. If you have a one-hour meeting scheduled, the meeting will usually expand to the entire hour, if not more. Giving a task three weeks to complete will almost guarantee that it will take at least three weeks to finish.
Don’t be afraid to set aggressive timelines, but don’t be unreasonable.
If you’ve made it this far, keep going. Your goal is 95% ready.
Action: Build due dates for every high-impact effort.
Combine everything into a goal
If you’ve actually followed along your whiteboard, notebook paper, or sticky notes should be littered with KPIs, work initiatives (high-impact efforts), and some due dates. It’s time to combine them into a usable goal.
Remember, a goal describes ideal progress over time. You can measure progress by how your KPIs move or by how much work you’re getting done. Feel free to include both/either in the next step.
Goal name
Choose a name that captures the essence of your success.
From earlier:
- Emotional success: Smiles on the faces of our neighborhoods
- Logical success: Program memberships
- Goal name: Increase neighborhood joy with our incredible program
Goal-naming pundits may scoff at how wispy a goal like that sounds, but you aren’t done – that’s only the name. The name summons the soul of your team’s efforts and works as the outer shell of a more concrete idea.
Goal timeline
Break your goal into multiple phases or a single timeline – declare when you wish the goal to be completed. The amount of time you add here directly impacts how aggressive your goal markers become, which is the next and final step.
Goal markers
Goal markers come in two shapes: KPI targets and high-impact work completion. Both of these fit into your timeline.
KPI targets
For every goal-related KPI, figure out WHAT you want the KPI to be at the end of the timeline you established in the previous step.
A marketing-driven goal with a three-month timeline might set the following KPI targets:
| KPI | Current | Target |
| Instagram followers | 3,261 | 6,500 |
| Published Reels | 81 | 120 |
| Social media landing page hits | 21,188 | 24,000 |
Work completion
Although KPIs are important, they usually don’t move by themselves. Track high-impact efforts in your goal to close the gap between your team’s input and the results you’re seeking.
The progress on these is easily measured as a completion percentage, but can also be measured as the number of sprints completed, getting all the tasks checked off a list, etc.
For example, a semi-annual goal for a nonprofit program might set work completion markers of:
| High-Impact Effort | Target |
| On the streets interviewing | 80% |
| Partnering with local influencers in each county in the state | 25% |
Of course, percentages like these are almost always estimates without a formal process for tracking work.
The final goal has a name, a timeline, and measurable markers. For our example:
Name: Increase neighborhood joy with our incredible program
Timeline: Jul – Dec (6 mo)
Markers:
- Program members (KPI) = 120
- 3-month Retention (KPI) = 85%
- On the streets interviews (Effort) = 80% of identified areas
- Partnering with local influencers in each county in the state (Effort) = 25%
Action: Name your goal, choose a deadline, and pick targets based on KPIs and work
Stay accountable
You are responsible for keeping your team motivated and aligned with a clear goal. Healthy teams have leaders constantly developing the opportunities and skills of their members.
Your role is to constantly make sure everyone is clear about where you are headed, using goals, and that all members have what they need to be successful. Sometimes this means clearing obstacles. Other times you may have to roll up your sleeves and row alongside them.
Sound complicated? You should know about Tetheros.
Tetheros doesn’t define your dreams, but it makes tracking and drafting goals easy – including aligning your efforts, KPI, and impact. As long as you bring the vision, Tetheros will handle the duties of bringing clarity to your team about how to connect your progress with your purpose.
Click here to learn more about Tetheros and get started for free!