A New Approach to Goal Setting
It’s the beginning of a new year, which often means new goals, new priorities, new visions for what we – and our organizations – will accomplish.
Goal setting is one of those practices that many of us have spent lots of time on over the years, both for personal and professional reasons. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books and resources about how to set goals effectively, what makes a “good” goal, and how to measure our progress toward the goals we articulate.
It can be easy to get caught up in choosing impressive goals – ones that follow best practices, align with what funders want to see, or push our impact to a whole new level. And if we’re doing it well, we will already have invested in the approaches, systems, and communications it takes to drive accountability, collaboration, and integration so that we can make meaningful progress toward those goals.
But what happens when you’ve done everything right, achieved every goal, and yet something is still missing?
Not long ago, I was catching up with a friend to congratulate them on their recent promotion. During our call, we talked about how the nonprofit organization they work for had experienced extraordinary growth in the last few years – in many cases far exceeding the organization’s goals. But then my friend said something that really stuck with me.
Despite all this great success the organization achieved by traditional measures, it didn’t actually feel like a successful organization.
The organization had beaten its overall revenue and impact targets, but rather than celebrating that achievement, the focus was on the business units that hadn’t met their goals. Team members throughout the organization were walking around feeling like they’d failed rather than flourished. Leadership was sacrificing long-term culture for short-term wins.
One of the big problems with traditional goal setting is that it creates a culture of relentless striving. There’s often very little celebration or acknowledgment about reaching a goal – especially in the nonprofit sector where year-end bonuses and other similar rewards are less common. Relentless striving – especially when it is coupled with a focus on faults – often ends in burnout, turnover, and disintegration of organization culture.
What would it look like to set goals differently?
If you’ve been following this blog you know I’ve written before about the power of practicing values-based strategy, the importance of celebrating small wins, and the pitfalls of unmanageable goals. When I’m working with organizations on their strategy, I’m also a huge advocate for incorporating a goal related to organizational culture and operations, because how we get to our goals matters.
This year I’ve been thinking about two alternative approaches to goal setting that can help support organization culture and the people who power your organization.
Set Goals for How You Want to Feel – In a recent meditation course, self-empowerment and transformation coach Jamila Reddy spoke about shifting our perspective from setting goals based on achievements to setting goals based on how we want to feel. By naming how we want to feel throughout the year, we can then choose goals and activities that are in line with those feelings. For example, if you and your team want to feel productive, energized, and calm, then you need to examine whether the achievement-based goals you’ve set align with those feelings or instead create a culture where people feel depleted, exhausted, and anxious. Getting clear on how you – and your team, organization, and leadership – want to feel makes it much easier to choose goals that enable those feelings while also advancing your mission.
Set a Theme for the Year – consultant and turnaround CEO Denise Conroy recently started a conversation about the practice of identifying a one-word theme for the year rather than a list of goals. Whether it’s a word or a short phrase, the purpose of a theme is to re-center yourself and help you make choices in line with that theme. Selecting a theme is a way to go beyond what you want to accomplish to determine how you want to show up in the world. As a leader, choosing a theme can help keep you focused on what matters. For an organization, a theme can help reinforce the spirit and energy with which staff, leadership, volunteers, and other supporters bring to advancing the organization’s goals that year.
Goals still matter. But if we don’t also think about how we want to achieve those goals – how we want to feel, show up, and operate – then we’re missing a chance to build strong organizational culture and strategy, and we’re robbing from our future success. Exploring alternative approaches to goal setting – both individually and organizationally – can get us out of our habits and into new, more holistic ways of thinking, planning, and working.