The Maverick's guide to Strategic Portfolio Management
March 20, 2025 | Live Webinar
Got a new project? Typically, at the beginning of the year (if it’s your financial year starting as well) we end up with newly-approved projects and stakeholders who are raring to go. But what are we ‘going’ towards? That’s where goal statements and objectives come in.
It’s really important to set objectives so you’ve got something to hold the team accountable for. They act as your North star when making decisions as well: does the decision help you get closer to the objective? If yes, then it’s a good direction to be going in.
Let’s talk about goals (and I’m using goals and objectives kind of interchangeably here, although you might have specific in-house terms for them – generally goals are broader, objectives are more specific, but use whatever vocab suits your team).
A strong goal statement should:
- Include a clear outcome.
- Define metrics for success.
- Mention the deadline.
- Specify the responsible owner.
That all sounds straightforward, but it’s important to avoid these mistakes:
Being too vague or too broad: Having broad goals is OK, but when they are too non-specific your team won’t know exactly what they mean or how they are supposed to translate into jobs or deliverables they are responsible for.
Conflicting or unrealistic goals: People aren’t stupid and they’ll quickly realise that they’ve been given objectives that clash or that feel impossible.
Ignoring input from the team: Your colleagues are the people who will be delivering on these goals and they won’t feel the same level of ownership if they are simply given the goals.
You can address these challenges by:
- Making sure goals, objectives and targets are at a suitable level of detail so that people know what is expected of them.
- Aligning goals for your project with other goals across the organisation, so you avoid conflicting priorities and clashing objectives.
- Working with the team to gather their insights, concerns and considerations so that goals are co-created for the project and there is a strong sense of ownership for what is going to be achieved.
Writing goal statements
One way to get the team to help with the creation of goal statements is to work together to agree what it is that you want to achieve (or what the project will deliver) and then drafting some statements together.
A technique that might work for your team is where you present them with a few badly written goal statements and ask them to improve them. Do some sample statements as practice before they begin on the ones that are project-specific.
For example:
- Badly-written: “Improve cycle time.”
- Better: “Improve cycle time by 5 days for Product X by digitalising the invoicing process and training existing staff.”
Once you’ve got a few on a whiteboard, they will see what is expected of them and be able to craft their own goal statements. To be honest, most of the professionals I’ve worked with wouldn’t need much of a steer to start drafting goal statements from scratch – once you’ve worked in projects for a couple of years, you get used to writing objectives!
So give your team an appropriate level of support without it feeling patronising, and draft some great objectives and goals to get 2025 off to a strong start!
Posted on: February 07, 2025 04:52 AM |
Permalink