I happened to have an interesting conversation with a friend recently. We were discussing the classical case of Star Performers who go on to become Mid-Managers. Not only is that an interesting transition and a clear sign of growth for both the individual and the company, it also poses a tough problem to solve.
How aligned will the team be with the manager and the organization’s vision?
Remember a concept that we frequently used in Physics back in the school? Vectors. Quick summary, the qualifier is a function of both the magnitude and the direction. Definition and Assignment of Goals in a performance appraisal process remind me of Vectors. Come to think of it - it doesn't matter how well your goals are achieved if it is not aligned with what the team does or what the organization’s strides towards. In simple words, all efforts have to be in sync with the bigger picture - what the org wants to be known for.
The problem with goals and expectations not being aligned doesn't stop at just not achieving the outcomes. It shows how responsibilities are overlapping in a team, how accountability is in shoddy fragments and how unclear the sense of ownership is. In all its fairness, these are the very tenants that make or break an organization’s performance and the culture it stands by.
We are living in a world where multiple people with multiple competencies, work in multiple capacities to achieve multiple things. If there is a beginning to understand where all of these can begin to emerge, it is nothing but a simple step. Linkage of Goals with the overall Organisation Vision.
I came across CLEAR goals in this article which stood out for the fact that this scopes out collaboration and alignment more explicitly.
Scoping out the difference between the well-acclaimed SMART goals and CLEAR goals will help us understand what does it really take to ensure goals are entities which can be aligned, but not exist as stand-alone expectations.
Goals when defined as a unit that gets added into a bigger achievement at a team, departmental, Org level, ensures a smooth, deliberated and quite a democratic delegation of tasks and expectations.
Goal Cascading as a lot of us understand is not quite a linear process. In fact, it is circular. What is fed in, yields what we get.
Starting out from translating what the overall Org strategy is to actually defining goals is the transition point from theory to practice. Cascading of Goals to the employees is a crucial step as one can identify, that that’s exactly where identifiable delegation of measurable tasks (condensed from an overarching vision) to individuals is done. Now, this can be done without deliberation as an unreasonable expectation without taking into the actual possibility of achieving them, keeping the employee’s abilities/skills into consideration. Or, cascading can be done mindfully with a concern to identify who can take what share of a task and be accountable for that responsibly.
Objectively defining every Goal Attribute with respect to Target (what’s expected), Metric (how’s it measured), Timelines (in what time), Weightage (how important it is), achieved (how far we have to go) is what makes Goal cascading even more effective. It curbs the biggest problem of all times - Communication Gaps and Expectation Mismatch.
Sometimes, all it takes for an org is to overcome tiny battles like this to win the war in the long run. Are you one of those? Understand how Darwinbox as an end-end HRMS has evolved to create Org cultures through a product which is carefully curated with the industry’s best practices.
Speak Your Mind