Selecting Goals and Indicators

• Author: William R. Blackburn
• Pages: 225-256

Chapter 7

Selecting Goals and Indicators

“If you don’t keep score, you’re only practicing.”1

—Vince Lombardi

Importance of a Clear and Elevating Goal

In the late 1980s, two experts on teamwork, Dr. Carl Larson and Dr.

Frank LaFasto, undertook a study of 75 diverse high-performing

teams—world-class cardiac surgery teams, championship college foot-

ball teams, Antarctic expeditionary teams, military units, accomplished

business teams, and others.2The purpose of the study was to see if there

are certain characteristics, practices, or features that consistently contrib-

uted to team success. Although Larson and LaFasto identified eight dif-

ferent elements that helped many teams to some extent, there was one el-

ement that each team possessed, one clearly more important than the oth-

ers: a clear and elevating goal. Each team had a specific performance ob-

jective framed so that all members knew unequivocally whether or not it

had been achieved. And each of these objectives was elevating—either

in terms of being personally challenging or in the sense of being impor-

tant and creating a sense of urgency. But it’s not enough to say: “We will

put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.” Leaders must show they

are taking reasonable steps to enable their teams to meet that goal. With-

out that support, the goal is hollow—a farce—even demoralizing.

Indeed, clear, inspiring goals visibly supported by management are es-

sential tools for any company desiring to move its entire team of employ-

ees to a new way of thinking and acting. Such goals provide a yardstick

for measuring progress and enable a company to make mid-course cor-

rections in resources or tactics if progress drags. When a significant por-

tion of bonuses, salary increases, or other rewards are attached to perfor-

mance against specific goals, a powerful accountability mechanism is

created, tugging at both the hearts and the minds of affected employees

and instilling the focus and motivation essential for moving an organiza-

tion toward its objective.

Setting inspiring, effective goals is definitely a challenge for business.

A2004 Harris Interactive poll of 23,000 U.S. industrial employees found

that only one in five was enthusiastic about their department’s and orga-

225

nization’s goals.3For four out of five of the respondents, the goals were

simply not working. Indeed, as noted in Figure 7.1, there are many rea-

sons why goals fail. However, by giving more attention to goal-setting,

companies can improve goal effectiveness, gain the advantages listed in

Figure 7.2 and, at the same time, strengthen a tool critical to their march

toward sustainability.

226 THE SUSTAINABILITY HANDBOOK

Goal-setting should be part of the strategic and tactical planning pro-

cess. Goals that are inspiring and simple, measurable, achievable, rele-

vant, and time-based (SMART) should be included with each strategic

objective so everyone can know whether or not the objective was

achieved. The Balanced Scorecard (Figure 6.7) shows how that can be

done. Aplan with such goals framed around sustainability issues brings a

company’s sustainability policy to life; without such goals, the company

statement becomes a mere “trophy policy,” which—like the moose head

hung on the wall to impress visitors—is simply dead.

Ideally, an individual worker should be asked to achieve no more

than five goals, but given the number of hats most employees wear

these days, it is not unusual to see them manage eight or more. If an em-

ployee is made responsible for more than five goals, the supervisor

should help rank or weigh them to assure the most important ones re-

ceive proper emphasis.

Objectives, Goals, Targets, Indicators, and Metrics: What Do

They All Mean?

Figure 7.3 is a rough depiction of the relationship among goals, metrics,

and indicators as used in common parlance. The term indicator means

different things to different people. Tosome, it is synonymous with met-

ric, parameter, or statistic. Most often, however, it carries a broader con-

SELECTING GOALS AND INDICATORS 227