Goals define the movement of the company and the work of its employees. To make these goals clear and help the employees complete the tasks, there are many useful ways. In this article, we will talk about SMART, OKR, and North Star Metric: how to set goals for employees and avoid critical mistakes.
Methodologies such as OKR and North Star Metric clearly distinguish between objectives and goals. With SMART it is more difficult to do this: the technique is suitable for both goals and tasks. With the help of SMART, you can concretize both the goal “Increase sales by 20%” and the task “Change the location of the button on the site.”
SWOT analysis
Before you start setting company goals, conduct a SWOT analysis to determine its strengths and weaknesses.
SWOT shows four basic features:
1. Strengths
2. Weak sides
3. Opportunities
4. Threats
SMART method
For example, an online store needs to attract a new supplier of goods. Let’s set this goal according to the SMART method.
- S – specific. Rule: the goal does not need extra variables, otherwise the result will be unpredictable.
- M – measurable. Rule: everything that can be counted must be counted.
- A – attainable. Rule: most goals need a fixed horizon.
- R – relevant. Rule: an employee must understand how his work relates to the strategy and success of the company.
- T – time-bounded. Rule: a goal without a deadline is impossible to control and analyze the success of the achievement.
Objectives and Key Results
This is a system of goal setting, which consists of two parts: the main goal and criteria for the success of achieving the result. OKR goals only make sense for long-term goals. Monitor execution no more than once every two weeks. And evaluate success no more often than once a quarter. Otherwise, OKR turns into chasing numbers instead of a tool for achieving goals.
OKR goals are now used by Amazon, Adobe, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and other huge enterprises. Even Bill Gates advised this technique and noted that it greatly influenced the management style in the company.
North Star Metric
Its primary goal is to define a vector that will unite global leadership goals and the daily work of the team.
A few examples of North Star Metric:
- Quora – the number of questions answered by one user;
- WhatsApp is the number of messages that one user sends; Spotify is the amount of listening time.
North Star Metric is often used in parallel with OKRs and sets the general direction of the company. The misidentification of NSM can lead to disastrous results, as was the case with LinkedIn when they mistakenly described their goal in terms of the amount of endorsement required within the application. But on the contrary, Facebook helped in the early stages, when they set a goal that “Each user added 7 new friends in the first 10 days.”
Good luck in setting the right goals for your employees!
