Goal Properties

To use goals as a management tool in business, we need to understand their properties well.

The declared goal in any scenario begins to live its own life:

• The declared goal becomes the criterion for determining what is right and what is wrong. As an object with a large mass, it begins to change the reality of the business and the team.
  
  
• It attracts attention by taking it away from other things.
  
  
• The goal requires an investment of various resources.
  
  
• Most of the time, people and teams are under pressure from “unfulfilled goals”. 

Our target is to define all the basic properties of the Goal. The ability to see a goal through the prism of its properties allows one to assess its realism more accurately. Recall, according to research, the main reason for the failure of goals is their unrealism.

The goal is the state.

When we talk about the Goal, we are talking about the desired state of the object.

The state is a concept that represents a set of stable values of variable parameters of an object. When we describe the Goal, we describe the future state of an object through its properties.

Let's look at examples:

1. Have a great vacation.
   
   Point of Effort: Vacation.
   The qualitative variable determines the process of achieving this goal. The vacation must be “excellent”. Before moving towards this goal, it would be good to understand what other variables this qualitative variable depends on the number of historic sites visited, meeting new people, shopping, food, etc. - target values must be defined for all these variables.
   
   
2. Effectively bring a new product to market.

In this example, all of our efforts are focused on the new product. However, the goal will be achieved if the product is introduced to the market efficiently.

For this purpose, a list of variables determining the success can be pretty significant, but even in advance, to describe the state of the achievement of this goal, we will need:

• determine the value of variables that allow us to describe the market state.
• product, which we will consider successful.
• actual unit economics, which will give an answer about efficiency. 

There is never one goal, it is always a hierarchy.

The goal, being a state, is the result of many controlled and uncontrolled actions.

Defining a goal means describing a successful ending and identifying all those intermediate stages and factors that precede it, through which you have to go and on which the goal depends.

Building a hierarchy of purpose involves certain constraints and challenges.

To pave the way towards the goal, the team must assume all the significant factors that determine the business’s success. But such assumptions are always based on previous experience, which may not be relevant in the face of frequent changes, “black swans”. Moreover, making it impossible to identify and evaluate new factors.

It is essential to understand that the team always acts in a state of lack of the necessary information from the outset. For example, when developing the goal tree, the team assumes incomplete information about the market, competitors and their capabilities, etc.

The hierarchy of Objectives adds several properties:

Sub-chained - the goals of a higher level determine the goals of the subsystems of a lower level. Thus, for example, the teams’ goals should be determined by the company’s goals.

Deployability - a large goal is fleshed out by several other goals at lower levels. Deployment of goals can be carried out in terms of content, time, level.

Priority - Not all goals are of equal value to the primary goal. Some of them, especially if they are the goals of different business functions, can conflict. Priority is the order in which decisions are made.

Formulating goals.

The goal must be named and announced. This can be done in different ways.

When it comes to shaping the Objectives, use "point" and "trajectory" formulations.

Strategic goals, as a rule, are set in a qualitative form that determines the general direction of development, they outline only a trajectory, more precisely, a whole range of possible trajectories, progress along which is accepted as the implementation of this goal, for example, achieving advanced positions in one's industry, improving the management system, etc.

In the "point" formulation, goals are defined in the form of specific characteristics - target standards (the level of profitability, efficiency, etc.). Typically, the SMART model defines the properties of a “point” target.

Let's take an example:

The company plans to double free cash flow by launching a new product.

Even preliminary analysis tells us that the result is the difference between the incoming and outgoing cash flows, which has to be determined.

The overall goal map will include the following variables, the value of which is to be determined and designated as subgoals:

 

The goal is motivation.

Separate property of the goal is the reason for its appearance. Who defined it and why?

The goal is an energetically saturated concept. Why? Because moving towards a goal requires costs and, depending on the scale of the goal, often very significant. The process of goal setting itself can characterize a person or a team. Ambitious goals tell us about the team's willingness to take significant risks, which means it represents its ability to cope with complex tasks, withstand frustration, etc.

Many great things in the world happened only because people united their efforts around some goal. In this case, they say that the motives of all the participants coincided.

It is important to remember that each person realises their own goal while working on the team’s goals. Otherwise, he would not be interested in doing this.

One of the important properties of the goal is motivation:

• Why was this particular goal chosen?

• What is its value for the company and the team?

The Goal is communication.

The goal is a vector that adjusts the movement of all resources in the company. Timing determines the pace of life for individuals and teams. Thus, goals are structuring the entire life of each business project.

At the same time, goals create universal and objective criteria for assessing what is happening. The goals create a universal language in which the team can describe their current situation, experiences, needs and successes.

Let us remind you that when a person tries to understand another person, it means that he is trying to understand his goals - motives.

Thus, the use of goals in business allows you to solve many problems with communication in business.

It’s impossible to win in a game you don’t understand the rules of.

In conclusion, we can present all properties of the target in the form of a table:

We hope that this detailed description of goals will help you to set them more easily.
Stay productive and motivated with KeepSolid Goals!