Goal setting for managers

There are three main tasks that each manager faces first and foremost:

Setting goals: Setting clear and achievable goals for the team and organization.
Hiring strong people: Filling the team with highly qualified specialists.
Strategy Development: Determining the path to achieving set goals.

In addition to these activities, there is also a huge layer of operational team management, but basically I think that if you are a leader, then you know how to do this, with goals it is much more difficult.

Goal Setting Checklist:
1. Goals must be realistic
2. Goals should be ambitious
3. There must be a balance between long-term and short-term goals.
4. Goals must be consistent with each other.
5. The objectives take into account the context of employee motivation
6. Goals have counter metrics

Let's look at the checklist in more detail.

Reachability
Goals must be tied to reality.
For example, there is no point in setting a goal to do 1000 push-ups if you usually do about 10 push-ups.
To determine what reality is, you need to make Retro measurements for previous periods. But it often happens that something has been done poorly for a long time and then it makes sense to make market benchmarks, here we look at competitors, how direct competitors or indirect competitors do.

Using push-ups as an example, I have never done more than 20 push-ups in my life, retrospective measurements won't help me, but I know that an athlete can do 100 push-ups easily and 500 on average, and the world record for an hour is 3877, now the limits are clear.
Using product metrics as an example, we look at our retro measurements of key indicators, and then we look at the indicators of the top 5 products in your segment on the market. Then we proceed to the second part.

Ambition
Goals should be ambitious.
Such goals are important for business because they create conditions where talent is born. Ambitious goals should stimulate new achievements. The level of ambition of the goal determines the level of thinking of the team.
When you set a goal to increase Cash-in by 5% or grow NPS by 2 percentage points, the team will think in micro optimizations. When you set a goal to double the metric, the team already thinks in terms of product restructuring and innovations.

Another feature of ambitious goals is that such goals attract and retain the appropriate people. When you talk about your ambitious goals at an interview, they will interest an adventurer, but will scare off a person who wants to work quietly. A person who wants to work is not bad, but is not suitable specifically for your business, which wants to grow twice as much.
In the same way, ambitious goals work to retain an employee; in their resume, people want to write in their achievements that they doubled the conversion rate, radically changed the business and brought it to new markets, and if you set such a person the goal of “keeping the metrics at the same level,” then the ambitious person will definitely leave.

Balance between long-term and short-term goals.
Often people in startups think in months or quarters and set goals for themselves in the same way. I have heard more than once when people in startups say “earn this much this month, and then we'll see.” This is a big mistake that leads to failure.
The CPO should set goals for 1-3 years. Naturally, they will be adjusted more than once with new inputs, but there should always be a vision.
Product Lead (head of department) – for six months to a year.

At least a third of the time should be devoted to long-term tasks. The essence of balance is that in the pursuit of fulfilling plans/short-term goals, they often forget to prepare a springboard for the next steps. Conducting tests and research is an important part of this strategy, otherwise you can fail the next quarters. For example, in this quarter you are bringing together the unit economy, and in the next you have a plan to take the first steps on the international market. So research should start already in this quarter.

Employee context when setting goals
Not everyone can set goals in the same way; goals must be adapted to employees depending on their level of motivation and qualifications.
Let's divide employees into 4 groups:
Poorly motivated and unskilled: There is no point in keeping such employees in management positions, or even as specialists; it is better to fire them immediately when their membership in this group is discovered.
Motivated and unskilled: It is necessary to set ambitious goals and explain how to achieve them. The goals must be within their competencies. The problem with this group is that if you set an ambitious goal for such a person, he will gladly accept it because he is motivated. And when he fails to achieve them due to low qualifications, he will also become demotivated. People in this group need to set goals with an explanation of how to achieve this goal, more specifically and even with some instructions.
Motivated and qualified: They need to be given ambitious goals and freedom to achieve them. In this group, you definitely don't need to explain what and how to do, just provide advisory support.
Skilled and unmotivated: It is important to understand the reason for low motivation and include elements that will increase motivation in the goals.

Anti-Hack Management
Economic Impact
Goals should directly answer the question of how they will affect financial indicators, such as Profit and Loss (P&L) and Unit Economics, etc. Often, everyone worked great and met all the KPIs, while nothing changed in PL. It is always necessary to determine in advance how the team's goal will lead to business growth, and how to check it.

Counter-metrics and counter-indicators
To prevent manipulation of metrics, the countermetrics method is used:
Try to put on the “executor's hat” and try to hack the goals and metrics you have chosen. What actions will lead to distortions? Limitations can be set by budget, by defect rate, by customer satisfaction level.

When it's really hard, finally include in the goals the phrase “And so that I like it”, naturally “liked” should also have criteria, but the performer will have to clarify them.

Conclusion
Effective goal setting requires a strategic approach to goal setting and deep elaboration. But I guarantee that if you follow the checklist at the beginning, the result will be great.
Such goals create conditions that promote the growth and development of not only the company, but also the employees themselves.

Everyday life of an IT manager — https://t.me/everyday_it_life