Crabs and KPIs
‘Tis goal setting season again, fam!
Happiness should be approached sideways… like a crab
Over the next few weeks, everyone will engage in email tennis with their bosses. People will agonise over whether personal development is an acceptable conversation now… or later. People will painstakingly draft personal goals that spell ‘I want a promotion’ without quite saying it and bosses will revise KPIs up to silently respond ‘yeah, sure, but not this year’ without quite saying it also.
You will be asked to draft your self-assessment off the system for your boss to approve it before it goes in, because they are being forced to bell curve and they don’t need another fight with their boss…
In big corporates, some folks will set themselves goals that can’t fail…
I had a colleague a few years back whose team achieved 110% of their KPIs every year. It was the magic of ‘produce 10 reports’ over ‘deliver 10 projects’. You produce 11 reports and Bob’s your uncle.
Nice, easy gig, if you can get it.
In start-ups, some folks will be given goals that add up to ‘All the Things’… which is the exact opposite state of corporate somnambulance… a state of guaranteed failure.
Across the board, there will be rather patronising but well-meaning lectures on setting SMART goals and a realisation that the only thing that matters to your organisation is the M for measurable, not the R for realistic. Or the T for time-bound, as any sales team whose goals are reset every quarter know only too well.
And there will be that one guy who will bore everyone to tears with impassioned yet droning monologues about the beleaguered integrity of the OKR model. There is always one. Let’s call him Warren.
And everyone will act like they believe the process is honest and objective. And everyone will act like they trust that the intentions are good and the aim is true.
And when we are done setting goals and talking about setting goals, people will go back to doing exactly what it is they were doing before, largely in the same way.
Let’s face it: they were doing whatever they were doing because that’s what their boss asked for or that’s what they believe the task is. Plus, the reality is, goals are often a charade and occasionally a transference of responsibility.
Which would be OK if goal setting didn’t matter.
But it matters fiercely. You always focus on what you measure. And focus is important. Goal setting is important. And it needs to be done right.
And because I actually believe in goal setting – because I believe in the value of measuring progress and assessing impact – I also believe the following three simple things:
#1: You need one organisational goal and a clear way for the teams and individuals to contribute to that one goal.
That’s what OKRs are meant to be (I know, yes, thank you Warren).
But they rarely all meet in one goal.
OKRs in every organisation I have ever worked in roll up at the top of the house to three or four families of ‘equally important objectives’. So spare me, Warren.
Your organisation can have one main goal for the year if you want aligned efforts. That’s it.
It could be revenue increase, it could be a new product launch, it could be entering a new geography. The rest will probably need to happen around the goal you choose as your most important one, but there can only be one priority.
Other things will happen either in aid of this one goal or alongside it, but when the chips are down this is the thing you will divert resources to and anything you are doing that isn’t this could be deemed a distraction.
That’s how you know whether, when the world is on fire, you will divert resources away from team X to team Y to meet the single most important objective without hearing in a management meeting, “Yes, I know we had a security breach and we need to focus on repairing both the issue and our reputation, but refurbishing the office is my OKR for the year so don’t count on my help.”
So yes, a lot of things will be done at work, but the whole point of a priority is that there is a thing that is the single most important thing. The clue is in the name. PR for primacy.
Do you know what the single overriding goal of your organisation is for the year? And how your day-to-day work supports it?
No, I didn’t think so.
#2: Your goals can be SMART, and in fact they should be. Of course they should be. They need to be specific and measurable and actionable and realistic and time-bound. But you know what else they should be?
They should be energising.
They should feel like a pep talk from the coach. They should make you want to climb onto the roof to eat the clouds.
And they should be challenging. Of course they should be. But they should also be forgiving. Your goals should be ambitious but also non-binary. You should have a way to strive for perfection but be able to live with yourself on a bad day.
The goals should be a reminder that we are all one team here.
Cleaning up our messes and pursuing our mutual goal.
One team.
And a team doesn’t sand-bag, protecting itself from exposure to performance or market vagaries.
And a team, equally, doesn’t hang some of itself out to dry if things don’t work out as planned.
Your goals should bring finance, sales, product and facilities together. Give them a way to remember they depend on each other.
The vast majority of organisations fail because they allow folks to see what other teams do as ‘not my problem’.
“I finished building the product module,” says the product team. “The fact that I did it without listening to client feedback, without communicating testing schedules and without consulting the platform team on what this thing will cost to run is neither here nor there.”
“Missing the cost target for the platform and not being able to sell this functionality wasn’t my OKR, it was theirs,” thinks the product team.
“Success for me, sucks to be you Warren,” thinks the product team.
Petulant. Childish. Ridiculous. And more common than anything in organisations of all sizes.
So don’t do that.
Don’t allow that.
Don’t do goal setting in a way that allows that.
#3: There’s a saying that goes, “Happiness should be approached sideways… like a crab.”
The idea is that you don’t say, “All right then… let’s be happy.” But you do and don’t do things that collectively make you happy.
Similarly, being successful in business is always the goal, but it’s not a goal you can set and go after in a direct way. You need to get there sideways. You need to do and not do the things that will get you there.
Goal setting was meant to be how you help your teams focus on the right things to get to the desired outcome, sideways.
And yet it becomes at best a charade and at worst a divisive culture killer.
And every year we go through the motions and make the same mistakes.
So, all I ask is that you pause and reflect on what we could do differently.
Has it occurred to you that maybe you are asking your teams to do things that are impossible to fail or simply impossible because you are all out of ideas?
Has it occurred to you that goal setting shouldn’t start with what needs to be done, what hole needs to be plugged and how can you cover your behind for bonus time… but with the crazy notion that we are one team, we should have one goal and we should all understand what each other needs to do in order to achieve it?
Has it occurred to you to think about KPIs, OKRs and targets as bridges that bind your organisation together?
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem.
Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.
All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!
Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.
