Goals

Learning outcomes:

• What is a goal?
• What is a good goal?
• Add an outcome to your goal
• Connecting goals

What is a goal?

We use OKR methodology to create and monitor goals on the platform. OKR, or Objective and Key Results, is a goal-setting methodology that aligns and engages people and teams with a shared focus on what matters most within their organisation.

OKRs are measurable, inspirational, transparent, and agile. They are set and reviewed with a frequent cadence generating regular feedback and connection between people which in turn builds trust and autonomy throughout an organisation. 

We refer to OKRs as Goals (objectives) and Outcomes (Key Results) as we have this plain language easier to digest. A Goal should have between 3 to 5 outcomes. If you have more than 5 outcomes you want to consider breaking the goal into 2 goals, or confirming the outcomes are not tasks that need to be completed, but measures such as a number, a percent or a monetary value. A goal should be significant, concrete, action-orientated, and inspirational. Oucomes must be specific, time-bound, aggressive but realistic, measurable, and verifiable.

John Doerr explains the concept of key results as "The key result has to be measurable. But at the end you can look, and without any arguments: Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes? No? Simple. No judgments in it".

What is a good Goal?

An example of a good Goal and Outcomes is:

Goal:

• Reach 1 million active users per day by 31 Dec 2023

Outcomes:

1. Increase daily active users on the free trial from X to Y
2. Achieve X% conversion rate from free to paid users
3. Achieve a Net Promoter Score of X

The goal is clear and inspirational and the oucomes are specific, measurable and verifiable. 

Add an outcome to your goal

We’ve covered creating a goal, now you need to set the outcomes. Remember, an outcome must be specific, time-bound, aggressive but realistic, measurable, and verifiable.

You can add outcomes to a goal in the Roadmap, Goal and Dashboard modules. Click the add key outcome in line with the goal you want to relate it to. Add the title, the due date and a description for clarity. Hit save.

Connecting goals

If everyone in the team is aligned and working towards the same purpose great things can happen with a multiplier effect.

There are a number of strategies for cascading and connecting goals throughout a business although we’re not going to get into them here.

To connect goals on the platform you can nest your objective in another to create a parent child relationship. When you create or edit an objective in the Roadmap and Goal module you will see a field called Nested Goal. When you click on the field a list of all goals that are in progress will appear. Select the goal that yours relates to. This creates a relationship between the 2 goals.

You can view the relationships between goals when you open a goal detail page by clicking on the goal title. If the goal you have selected has other goals related to it the Goal Stream section will be visible. 

The charts show the average progress and confidence of all downstream goals and the individual progress of each of the downstream goals.

Use this view of a goal (reached by clicking a goal title) for monitoring combined efforts towards a specific goal or Milestone. You can quickly recognise where the roadblocks are, if any, and remove them.