The Goal Matrix: Setting Targets That Transform

[00:00:03] Welcome to the Quick Take Podcast, the show where you get targeted advice and coaching for executives by executives. I'm Susie Tomenchok.

[00:00:12] And I'm James Capps. Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you three secrets to address the complex topic of issues that are challenging executives like you today.

[00:00:25] Hey, welcome to Quick Take. I'm your host, Susie, along with James. How are you, James?

[00:00:29] I'm great. Just starting to enjoy the winter as we've got, we're recording and it's snowing a lot today.

[00:00:35] So it's always a good time of year.

[00:00:37] That's right. It is snowing today and hence why we both have long sleeves on if you're watching us on YouTube.

[00:00:43] If not, we're both wearing long sleeves.

[00:00:45] And we look amazing.

[00:00:47] We look amazing. That's right.

[00:00:48] If you're not watching on YouTube, then yes, when you're listening, you can tell that we both have lost weight.

[00:00:53] We've really been working on a lot.

[00:00:55] Your skin is glowing? Yeah. No wrinkles?

[00:00:58] No. Oh my gosh. It's like I'm going backwards, really.

[00:01:01] Okay, so let's get to it.

[00:01:02] I've been working with a senior team, an executive team about their strategy for next year.

[00:01:08] And it was really interesting because we had an offsite and everybody has to zoom out and really look at what are the key objectives and what are the goals?

[00:01:17] And everybody really got rallied around it.

[00:01:19] And I coach all these individuals too.

[00:01:22] And I started watching as we got back from the offsite.

[00:01:27] This guy, Mark was talking about some of the challenges that he faces and he was not focused at all on any of the strategic objectives that we talked about.

[00:01:37] He, when he got back to the office, he really got pulled into the day to day, meeting to meeting, and just really on kind of the treadmill.

[00:01:47] But he felt like he was making progress.

[00:01:49] But when I brought up the zoomed out view, he was like, but this is what I need to focus on now.

[00:01:55] I can't get beyond this.

[00:01:58] Like he doesn't have the ability to kind of manage both.

[00:02:03] Do you see that a lot?

[00:02:04] Sure.

[00:02:04] I do see it a lot.

[00:02:05] And in fact, I have a similar story.

[00:02:07] I'm working with a company who has actually been building some software along those, that same area.

[00:02:14] And it is trying that the challenge is, you know, you focus on your day to day, but how do you also put the energy and time into solving or achieving the goals that you set out?

[00:02:26] And there's a gap between the tactical and the strategic, and it's super hard to really execute like that.

[00:02:32] Yeah.

[00:02:33] And it's making that space.

[00:02:34] It's almost like the intentionality around it, so that you shift that mindset.

[00:02:39] But I'm not trying to get into the tips.

[00:02:41] I'm just throwing out an idea.

[00:02:43] No, I think it's about, you're 100% right.

[00:02:45] It's mindset.

[00:02:46] And you know, one group, this company I'm working with, the company is the platform they're building is called the goal garden.

[00:02:52] And I love this idea of, it's really about how you manage your, your OKRs and your KPIs.

[00:03:00] And it's really shift in the way that you look at goals.

[00:03:04] And by having what I call OKR cascades, which is no longer just a list of things to do.

[00:03:10] I have to do one, two and three.

[00:03:11] It's more of a goal garden.

[00:03:13] It's more of this, this cascading list fabric of things that you need to accomplish.

[00:03:18] It changes the way that you map out the things you need to accomplish.

[00:03:21] And then all the girls are more tied together and you tend to work more collectively as a team to accomplish them.

[00:03:27] And so it makes it just much more meaningful to look at them that way.

[00:03:31] You see the relationships and you understand the impact that each one of those makes.

[00:03:37] So are they doing this as a team?

[00:03:39] Are they doing this as individuals?

[00:03:40] Can you shed a little bit more light on?

[00:03:43] The company who is, they're actually working on software to help you manage this.

[00:03:47] But what they've done is the CEO of the company is a really powerful woman.

[00:03:52] We'll call her Stacy.

[00:03:53] And she has often been leading companies and is a real task oriented person.

[00:03:59] She's a big believer of the checklist manifesto.

[00:04:03] I'm sure a book many of our listeners have listened to.

[00:04:05] And so she's always been a believer in keeping track of what you need to accomplish.

[00:04:09] But she also found that her passion wasn't the similar level of passion that everyone else had.

[00:04:14] And so her ability to get the rest of her team motivated around that list really failed.

[00:04:19] And so she met her business partner, Amy, at an event.

[00:04:23] And they both found that what they wanted to do was to try to create the next generation of the checklist manifesto, which was more of a merging of those things.

[00:04:31] And it's really becoming that goal garden is what they're calling it.

[00:04:35] And so working with them, I've really seen how if you create this OKR cascade or use their tool, of course, is what they'd love for you to do, is to create a system that increases this.

[00:04:47] It's a dynamic OKR system that allows you to have a more productive execution of your goals.

[00:04:53] Their research has shown an 84 percent increase in goal completion rates just by the fact that those goals are more intertwined.

[00:05:01] Oh, how interesting.

[00:05:02] And then everybody has their own look into it so that they can kind of see.

[00:05:06] And then what but that mindset is what's important.

[00:05:09] If you have a tool, that's great.

[00:05:11] But then how do you get people to actually use it?

[00:05:14] We're all really different in terms of how we engage with that kind of technology.

[00:05:18] I think that's a great segue into the second area.

[00:05:21] Right. Obviously, as you said, you can take your team off and have a study session.

[00:05:26] You can create a checklist if it works for you or you can create a goal garden or whatever.

[00:05:31] But it's really about then how do you get that work done?

[00:05:33] And what I recommend is you have these things called achievement sprints where we take a little bit out of the agile manifesto and we focus on creating these these times in which you can do this.

[00:05:44] Spotify is known to do this. It's kind of like a hackathon, but Spotify calls it basically their hack week where they will focus one week every quarter focusing on the sprints towards the end.

[00:05:56] That goal of really just executing on their OKRs and it allows you to perhaps put the day to day work aside and focus on the strategic elements.

[00:06:04] They've seen a 73 percent manage that 73 percent increase in both their innovation, but also in their execution of their goals.

[00:06:13] Their motivation scores have gone up because people do not feel underwater.

[00:06:17] And I think that's a huge difference when you can actually put time aside to do the work that you know you need to do.

[00:06:24] So I just want to make sure I'm understanding a little bit about how this works is the team has a goal.

[00:06:31] They together construct the goals that are associated to beyond their day to day work.

[00:06:37] And then they take these times to decide which one of those goals as a team to prioritize and focus on.

[00:06:44] Maybe some momentum on.

[00:06:46] Yeah, I think generally speaking, you're right. I think when you have this, the goals are just intertwined and they do cascade.

[00:06:51] But at the end of the day, it's what you can accomplish as an individual and you and your team, your department, your directs.

[00:06:58] And you can have that hack week where you go in and say, hey, look, one of our goals was to reimagine the way that we do X, Y and Z.

[00:07:05] So we are going to take a week and that's our goal.

[00:07:07] And then that will inform this other goal that perhaps another department has or it's tied to another initiative.

[00:07:12] But you've got a complete vision of what you're trying to accomplish through that goal garden.

[00:07:16] And then secondarily, you're now putting a dedicated amount of time by your resources to get that done, which shows the importance to your firm.

[00:07:23] It makes your team realize the criticality of a strategic goal setting.

[00:07:28] And it shows that you're putting your money where your mouth is.

[00:07:32] There's a lot of research around context switching for our brains and our day to day.

[00:07:37] You know, when we go from our email to doing this to a call and all of this, it actually the lag time in the switch is not good for your brain.

[00:07:45] So if you can even as individuals, think about having your own sprint to really focus on a goal that you need to get through.

[00:07:53] It's kind of the same idea of how do you focus your own self because you will make more progress if you allow yourself to really focus.

[00:08:02] Yep. I think that's the benefit of having some sort of like that achievement sprint where you can focus.

[00:08:09] It gives you permission. It gives you agency perhaps to distance yourself from maybe the minutiae of what's going on in the production floor or maybe what's happening with a particular customer issue.

[00:08:21] That you're doing the good work, but you're also avoiding the context shifting. I think it's really huge.

[00:08:27] So what's your third tip?

[00:08:28] The third one again stems from, I think the agile manifesto and the way that we look at agile development, which is really understanding things in consumable spaces.

[00:08:38] I read a great article about how Adobe replaced the performance appraisals with check ins.

[00:08:44] I know that there's a couple of companies I'm working with, one called Future Force, who they do these project pulses.

[00:08:50] And what that really does is it comes down to avoiding the waterfall thinking about how we're executing on these goals.

[00:08:58] Taking and having a ritual in which you are individually looking at these things on a regular basis so you are knowing that you're making progress.

[00:09:07] I think it goes back to the phrase, you know, what's measured is managed and having a progress ritual ensures that you are on track or off track and transparently off track.

[00:09:19] But working on those goals with the rest of the team.

[00:09:22] And for people that don't live and breathe software development and they don't really have read about it and understand agile, it's really about breaking down the components to get you to the goal and really identifying the most important aspects of that project and who owns it.

[00:09:38] And so that there's alignment for the team. So this is about how do you focus in those areas so that everybody can make that acceleration in those areas.

[00:09:49] Thank you for pulling me out of my software cesspool.

[00:09:53] But you're right. I mean, these practices that have been finally honed in the software space, they're really about how humans work together and how your brains, our brains work.

[00:10:04] And so I think you articulated it incredibly well about taking a software practice and implementing it in a way that every company can be more successful in hitting their strategic goals.

[00:10:16] So give us the three tips.

[00:10:17] Three tips. Change the way that you look at KPIs and OKRs. Think of them as OKR cascades. Tie them together so everybody understands how they fit.

[00:10:27] Second, create these achievement sprints. Block out time, maybe one week a month, maybe one week a quarter where you can actually focus on and execute on those strategic initiatives so you can complete them.

[00:10:39] And then third, implement these progress rituals that allow you the opportunity to measure along the way, ensure that you are transparently aware of the status of your goals and the other OKRs that are being measured in your goal garden.

[00:10:55] So everybody is able to leverage each other's successes and meet the goals of the company.

[00:11:02] You know what I really like about this especially is as an executive, if you look at it a little differently like this, you will also broaden your view of what the potential of the team is and really thinking about who has the strengths in the different areas.

[00:11:18] And then that shifts your mindset to help them shift the mindset of your team.

[00:11:23] Totally does.

[00:11:23] So really great advice.

[00:11:24] That's great.

[00:11:25] Thanks, James.

[00:11:25] Thank you.

[00:11:29] Oh, James, what was your favorite class in high school and why?

[00:11:34] Physics, for sure.

[00:11:36] Why?

[00:11:37] There was just a teacher who knew how to bring that class to life and his name was Chris Bolton and he was the poster child out of a 1950s high school yearbook.

[00:11:48] You know, pocket protector, crew cut.

[00:11:50] He weighed 220, but he was 6'3", a big guy.

[00:11:53] We had a slide rule, a actual slide rule on the wall.

[00:11:56] I mean, and I'm not that old.

[00:11:58] I mean, there was this slide rule was a joke, but he swore that he could do any math with his slide rule faster than you could with your calculator.

[00:12:05] He was something else.

[00:12:07] He was just full of energy and he was an incredibly difficult teacher.

[00:12:10] I remember most tests.

[00:12:12] I think, you know, some of our listeners who I know went to the same high school I did in that class.

[00:12:17] If you got a 30% on a test, that was a big deal.

[00:12:21] He was hard, but he was fun.

[00:12:23] Shout out to him.

[00:12:26] Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Quick Take, where we talk about the questions that are on the minds of executives everywhere.

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