As James Clear said – “New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.”
Jennie and Craig discuss goal setting, looking at why and when it works and makes sense to do so, why SMART goals aren’t necessarily the best approach, why goal setting goes wrong and can – at times – feel like a check box exercise, and more. All aimed at helping you think about the systems and processes to focus on to generate great outcomes.
Link to the webinar video, and other resources:
https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQEsutub7rxWYw
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
As James Clear said – “New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.”
Jennie and Craig discuss goal setting, looking at why and when it works and makes sense to do so, why SMART goals aren’t necessarily the best approach, why goal setting goes wrong and can – at times – feel like a check box exercise, and more. All aimed at helping you think about the systems and processes to focus on to generate great outcomes.
Link to the webinar video, and other resources:
https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQEsutub7rxWYw
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
This is the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, your guide to transformative leadership. We're your hosts. Hi, I'm Craig Hess, and I'm
Jennie:Jennie Gilbert. Each episode of Breakfast will bring you weekly quick lessons and conversations about topical leadership challenges. You're guaranteed to leave with one big idea, two applied strategies, and three questions to consider that can help enhance your leadership every day.
Craig:We'll bring you insights on how to lead beyond any title and unlock your own leadership potential. And
Jennie:we'll both hope you enjoy this episode. The Bow River from the, that would be the east side of Calgary right there. SAIT's main campus is situated in Calgary, as is Craig and myself, and we have many of you here from Alberta this morning. Our signup is quite global this week with people from the Philippines and Mexico and Nigeria. So wherever in the world you are joining us from, thank you, welcome. And if it is your first time, what a great way to start 2024. We're excited to have you with us. For those of you here in Canada and Alberta, you'll understand this is part of our pattern and our rhythm. And it's an important one. It isn't a checkbox item. We like to take a moment just to recognize. where we are, and the land that we're situated on. SAIT acknowledges that it's situated on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy. All of you are within Canada, are within different territories, and for Craig and myself, as I said, we are two here in Calgary. Treaty 7 for us. Encompasses the indigenous people of the Treaty, oops, there you go, double two, Treaty 7. The Siksika, the Pikane, the Ghani, the Tsuut'ina, the Stoney Nakoda, and the Northwest Métis homeland. Whatever you're doing today, pop both feet firmly on the floor, take a moment. Remember the heritage of your land, whether you're living, learning, laughing, or just moving on with life. Thanks, Peke.
Craig:Perfect, thank you. So, today, what better time of the year than to talk about goal setting in the very start of January? This is not a Discussion about New Year's resolutions, because most of those have failed by now. Jennie, what was it you were telling me beforehand? The perfect business model for an entrepreneur is to open a gym named Resolutions on January 1st. Get your members signed up, shut it down by the end of January, and then turn it into a bar called Regrets on February
Jennie:1st. That was the idea, don't mind. That was it. Yes, we last until about the 17th of January. There you go.
Craig:There you go. Okay. I was a little pessimistic on it there, but no, this is, it's an important conversation. Lots of organizations around this time of the year are engaged in goal setting, budget setting, et cetera, and we thought it would be an interesting time to take this topic on and to talk about what works, what doesn't work. Uh, what could be better with respect to goal setting and Jennie, I saw a really interesting quote from James Clear over the weekend. I'm just looking down to read it here. New goals don't deliver new results. There's other parts to this quote, but I thought that was a really interesting spot to start because organizations and teams often get into this. Time of the year, great new goals. And then everybody gets all excited about here's the goals for the year. We're going to hit them. And then we ended up in December and some of us make it. Some of us are trying to figure out what went wrong.
Jennie:Some of us are trying to remember what the goal was that got set to you. What was that as well? Yes. But there's lots, James Clear is brilliant. And the rest of that quote too, we'll pop it up somewhere. I'll put it in a slide perhaps for when we release the resources for you being here, you get a full copy. Well, slides and thoughts from us, new goals don't deliver new results. There's, there's a couple of things right in that sentence, new goals, the plural, how many goals are we setting? And that's a classic one that organizations fall into because we set lots and then we expect everybody to execute and remember them always in the day job. Um, we're already running on a overextended society. Basically, we're expected to always be on, it's all urgent, it's all busy. So, you know, I wonder how many goals we need to be setting. And the other thing too, I think, is that we've been doing it the same way. Like, you mentioned goals, and within an instant, somebody would say, Oh yeah, I know, SMART goals. It's been the story since, I don't know what, end of the 1900s. Like 1980s or so. I don't know when smart goals actually emerged as a thing. And so I think our problem is we set a goal and then we think we've done the work. And really, that's the tiniest part of the actual work. So within our goal setting process. What else are we doing? Might be a good question.
Craig:Yeah, that's a good, there's a few questions in here, I think, that I have that might help shape the conversation. I guess maybe the simplest place to start is why do we set goals? What's the point? What's the purpose?
Jennie:Yes, so goals are a tool. Like, and let's say this out loud really early on. They're a very useful tool. They've come under a hard amount of bashing recently and rightfully so, but they can be a very useful tool. And as a tool, what is their job? Their job is to harness motivation. Basically, we're trying to get something done. We want to, excuse me, harness the motivation. And so. The first question, is the tool doing the job? Because if the tool isn't doing the job, we need to change how we use the tool. Or we need to change the tool that we're using. And that's another part that we horribly misunderstand is, and the trend I don't know how many years ago it was to cascade your goals through the organization. To what extent? What are you cascading them for? Does anybody understand them? Does anybody understand how they're connected to them? And this has been around for a long time too. You have a really hard time getting me to buy into a goal that I didn't set. And so the best goals are the ones that come voluntarily from the person who's doing the work.
Craig:That's, yeah, I'm thinking of systems that I I've been involved with before where the organizational goals are there and you'd go in and type your goals in and then you'd have to click and align to which goal it aligned to and within the organization. I had no idea if anybody ever went back and did a check to see how Craig's goals were aligned to his boss's goals, to his boss's goals, to the overall organization's goals. And what was the point? Dude, to your point, what is the point of that? I get that it is trying to make sure that the organization has a direction it wants to go. Your team has a direction it wants to go. Your goals in theory should be in support of that, right? You made an interesting point there. It's tough for me to buy into a goal that I didn't set. But in one hand, I can't set a goal that would be heading the opposite direction of where the organization wants to be going. There does have to be some alignment.
Jennie:But that's the alignment piece. The alignment piece, to me, isn't clicking on a computer screen. As you ran through that, you just For yourself, you suck the life out of everything. And then, so we do that and then we say, because this will engage people. No, I don't think so. Not if you just suck the life out of it by something that doesn't make any sense. So alignment could be you as a leader. Here's where we're going. This is where we're going to. This is our possibility that we want to step into. And I use possibility on purpose because there's no end to that. We can get anywhere. And then the next question is, Craig, what have you got or what are you excited about, or what can you do? Where can you see yourself adding to this? And this is aside from the day job is execution. And one, you have to assume that an adult with his skill set that wants autonomy can do the day job. And so that goal looks at something where you will grow that will support creators to be better, like whatever that part might be. In alignment with where we're going to, that's what alignment is. Are we all heading in the same direction?
Craig:And so the alignment piece, I think obviously comes, I probably jumped ahead in the conversation here too, right? Cause we've talked about why goals are important, but I think maybe what we could do is take a step back and let's talk about where does it go right? What is, what's the good approach? And. You mentioned SMART goals as well, and I know you've got some fairly strong opinions on them, but I think there's, there is probably something good in the process of setting a SMART goal, but in your language, there might also be something that's rubbish about it. Where do you want to take this? What is good about goal setting? What's, what's the good that can come out of it? What is the good way?
Jennie:Okay, first of all, in my opinion, if goals are goals work for some people, and the first part is know your people who is driven by the goal. And there are some where goals. Don't necessarily work. There are some where goals are suffocating. The, one of the problems with a SMART goal, when they're set, so SMART, just in case, because there are lots of people actually who haven't come across it. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. And we don't put achievable or realistic in there because realistic is the same as achievable. So achievable, relevant, and timely. And the reason that it was set up is that becomes a check so that we have a focus to follow a way to measure it. We're checking in that we can actually achieve it. It's not pie in the sky or heading in the wrong direction. It's relevant to what we love or our values or the work that we're doing. And time gives us an accountability. And so for some, and, and it's largely those who have a competitive mindset to drive, yes, get it done. And that's great in some cases for some people. There are some places where if that goal's not set really well, What we're doing is saying, okay, here's 100%, here's what we deem as excellent, and if you don't hit that, we're going to mark it backwards from there. So it's actually a really disappointing thing right from the start, whereas a potential place is, here's where we're at, how much better can we get? And there's a whole new sort of line of work out there called Open Goals. The, um, professor behind that, Christian Swan, is, and he's down in Australia, I think. And these Open Goals, and they've only really been used so far in exercise and sports sciences, starts with, I wonder how far I can get today. And then can I do better than that? And can I do better than that? And if you think of Solovar areas, what a great place to go from. Here's our benchmark. Jennie, you have to do eight of these today. But if we change the language to, is it possible to get further than eight in the morning? There's a lot of people who will say, I'll get to ten. And then once you get to ten, you're like, ah. I wonder if I could do 12. And then, you know, with that open goal already, what we're doing is we're building up. And when we gain mastery, and we can see the link to the purpose, then we get that momentum. And that's where motivation can get harnessed from. And I've gone down a rabbit hole for you now there too, because I threw up that open goal piece. Can we go back? Oh, go ahead, go
Craig:ahead. Yeah, no, so see, the thing that triggered for me, and so I like where you're going there, and I get the thought around goals work for some people, not necessarily for others. I think the challenge some folks with us today may face there is that the organization expects goals to be set for every individual and every team. Right? And so how do you bring those two thoughts together where it's an organizational expectation that we are, that every individual in the organization has goals set for them, that we will sit down at the end of the year and do a performance appraisal around your goals. Yeah, goals don't work for everybody. How do we square that circle?
Jennie:Make it a two way conversation, first of all, and it will come right back to you. The best goals are the ones that are set by the person who's doing the work. So that's where the conversation lies. So what is a goal that you want to achieve? And as you lean into that conversation, be careful. of sticking to the story that you've always known. So, does it need to be specific? Yes. And, all the specific goals that were set in January 2020, what happened to those? Okay, so it can be specific, but it might have to change because think of the rate that we work at. We are constantly transforming, realigning, re adapting, so our goals need to constantly do that too, so that we're matching the conditions that we're working in, and the instant, really, part of that conversation is that means we have to be having a continuous conversation conversation. That's one of the other big sort of fall flat on your faces. We'll talk about these goals in January and over to you. And then just before November, December, where we catch up on them, we're like, what did I say I was going to do? How can I do take a shortcut to that? There's a waste of everybody's time and energy. So where's that cadence of conversation? In the measurable part, so if we're going back to how do we do this, how do we take this on, a very famous person said what you can measure you can manage and we love metrics and we love an outcome. Yes, and, and how are you looking at that and what are you measuring? And what if we measured the actual performance and what if we thought about the preparation beforehand and then achievable, this drives me bonkers and you've heard me say this time and time again, and this happens still in organizations today, they'd be really careful because when we say achievable, we don't mean make it easy. If you say to me, Jennie, what was, what's one of the greatest things that you ever achieved in your life? I'm not going to tell you about something that was so dead easy to just do. I've forgotten all of those. What we remember is where we had challenge and where we had to rise to the occasion and it required support and whatever else that might be. So stretch goals are really good, but stretch goals often take longer. And so now, all of you leaders, we have to work a little bit more, because we have to support those people and pay attention for a little bit. longer. And so to say, achieve your goal, I'll give you a bonus. You're taking the company backward because nobody's going to say, yeah, I'll set a really hard one because I might not make it first time. I might fail. And then I won't get that bonus. And I need that bonus because I've got kids in university or whatever that might be. And then the relevant, relevant kind of sounds for itself like that. If it doesn't light your fire, how can you be motivated? If it doesn't jump off the page and say, this is a great idea, then we're on to a loser again already. And then the time piece, just be really careful as a leader. Are you, are you parenting? There's a compliance piece in that. And some love it, like the accountability that way. Some would rather just take responsibility and, and build with that as they move.
Craig:Yeah. And I think the time piece for me, it ties to something we were talking about in preparation for this is the balance between short term and long term, right? And I've always thought of the T and smart of the, somebody setting a goal that says in five years, I want to do X. But we need to drive the result for this year. And so the two can come together. And I think that ties well into a different conversation and question that has come up in the chat here that I will take, and we'll get back into the other pieces is what is the company's goals are running a little bit counter to your own goals as an individual contributor in that organization. How do you balance those?
Jennie:If first off, double check for yourself, are you in the right company? Because if you're going this way, are you in the right place? You're in the right company. And. Is it the right place for your career goal? There's a number of things within there. As a leader, there's a coaching part to that. I want to just come to something you said about the immediate and the long term. There's, there's three levels of goals as well. So your outcome goal. Is that five year vision, sometimes an outcome goal might be really possibly unrealistic, be careful with that. And then underneath there are your performance goals and your process goals. And so the process goals, those are the, in a week, in a day, in a, whatever that might be. And the performance goals really look at the how, you could go what, how, why actually. And how am I going to get there? And there's a great conversation within there that we rarely stop to think about in the workplace and we are fastidious about in sports is how are we preparing to perform? Because remember, these are performance goals and. Yeah, we were saying this just before we went live today and I've heard this, I think it was Chris Schambrook who said it and he says, you know, if you think about it, the order is aim, ready, fire, aim is set the goal, ready is all about preparation and then do it. But in the workplace, we are fire, get that number, get that metric outcome. And so possibly we're back to, we need to pause. We need to have a better conversation. One to drive. Leadership. Okay. And I'm part of that goal to work cascading goals. You have to drive leadership sales for SAIT. And this is, I'm making this up as I go along as somebody who facilitates that I'm part of that goal. So if it's all about the number is Jennie, can you work five days a week to the next eight months and 10 of your colleagues as well? Cause it's not just me or actually. The way that we're going to increase that is if we perform when we're out facilitating in order to perform, we have to prepare properly, or we have to be set up properly. And now you're talking about a goal that is cascading and about what performance actually looks like.
Craig:Yeah, let's double click on that one a little bit too, because I think something I've been struggling with thinking about lately is more around. The focus on the process versus the focus on the out, and often our goals are worded in terms of the outcome. Yep. Achieve X by then, reduce this by that, right? But you, we've talked about before, you can't control. You can't control outcomes. They're the lagging indicators. You can control everything that goes into the production of that outcome. And hopefully, you're doing the right things to produce that outcome. There's all sorts of other factors that could impact that outcome. Don't even, you know, have no impact or have, you have no control over when we think about goals, is there, what I'm getting at, is there some way in here to try and figure out how do we look at this from the, from the process standpoint? I think the other part of that James Clear habit, um, it was. Something about the habits or goals are more about a lifestyle change, lifestyle, being your habits, et cetera, take that to the organizational level, the processes, systems that we have are probably the organizational habits, if you will. So how do we, how do you set process goals? Am I making any sense? Is anybody still listening in with us, Jen?
Jennie:They're still here. There's lots of people still here. Okay, good. So it does, it's such a good question and such a good thought process. And that's, I think that ties into what you're just saying. That's part of the preparation. Is your environment, have you created your environment to suit the goals that you have? And so, if you're driving towards this performance, and you want your team with this priority, this is it, this is what we're working for, in order to get there we have to do this and this. But then the calendar is filled with that and that, those two are going to collide and the environment isn't set up for them to be productive in this. And so James habit, yes, is all about creating the habits that serve your goal. And there's that quote, we had it before Christmas, how does it go? Action that you take is a vote for the type of person that you want to become. You can switch that towards a team conversation, too. Are we doing, or are we set up to do even better? Are we prepared to do what we need to do to achieve this? And there's your process piece. And you and I were having a conversation the other day, it's separate to this, about what is performance, and the ingredients that go into performance. We always just think maybe tactical or strategic, but no, it's technical. Does everybody on the team have the skills that they need to achieve what we're asking them to do? And okay, they might have it today, but will they have it in a year's time? And then there's the whole physical and psychological and social and that context piece. That context keeps changing. And so this is something that if it's important and back to the, does it jump off a page? It was not important. Get rid of that one. We don't need to be focusing on it. So if it's important, it has to stay up front. It has to be part of the conversation regularly. The danger that we make is that we just talk about the outcome regularly. We don't talk about. The process or the performance, and we look at the numbers rather than the, are you set up to prepare? Are you, do you have the information that you need? Or there's 101 things that stay in there. And the other one that really jumps to mind, I'm pretty sure this was Shane Parrish who said this, outcome over ego. And that's huge, especially when it comes to goals, because you give me the goal. Then your ego wants you to do it, wants me to do it your way, and I might not do that. So there's a whole nother conversation
Craig:in there. Yeah, I think we could go there a little bit because I think for me it triggers that it ties back to your comments earlier about goals are the possibility that we want to step into. Uh huh. And who's responsible for defining that possibility? For an individual on your team who's responsible for defining that possibility for your team, right? If your team is part of a larger organization, conceivably, that's where some of this cascading comes into, not in terms of setting a goal, but In terms of what are the possibilities. And so one of the questions that had come in the chat here is what level of leadership do you see communicating those possibilities and vision? You see every leader for every team communicating that, or do you see it coming from a higher level than subsequent leadership layers? I guess the other way of looking at this too, is do you see it coming from below?
Jennie:I think to come back to what you said originally, and then this would be the cool part. Is, that's a brilliant team conversation. Like, where can we go? Here's what's expected of us, where can we go? And that phrase, I think they quoted it beautifully actually, is Benjamin Zander. And he said, you set a goal, you set a ceiling and people just run into the ceiling. And we're taught to do that from a really early age. Like you think about school, all right, here's where your A plus is. And we figure out everything that we can do to get higher and higher up the list, including shortcuts and whatever else it might be. We're taught to do that. And so you set a goal. Jennie, I need, what did I say? Eight of these. I'll figure out how to do that. And I'll be like, Oh, I'm done for the day. And if we talk about, if we get rid of that, which is a limitation and as a team, what are the possibilities that we can step into? And now we're talking about where do we believe we can get to and how will we get there, which if you're having a good conversation around that, gets rid of the unrealistic pieces and that you're going to face a few constraints within that. And this is a really good tool as well is run away from the no becauses and step into we can if, or yes, if. And when we go, so somebody says, okay, I think we can achieve this, and oh no, we can't do that. Because SA would say this and say, would say that game over. But what if we say, oh, we can do that. If we are prepared to turn down the, that meetings that I was talking about and we focus on this, we can do it if. We engage a partnership with whoever we can do it if, and all of a sudden there's your possibilities. And then as you're looking at those possibilities, which ones will work for you and the team that you have in front of you? Perfect.
Craig:You said something else in there that kind of goes with this concept of stretch goals. So let's get back to the realistic comment of R, but he just said something in there in terms of we're, we need you to do X, right? What if the team doesn't believe X is achievable or X is possible, but you're still now being asked? To do that, and you don't, I'm going to, I'll put a fairly firm constraint on this. You don't have the ability to go back and argue that X is not possible.
Jennie:So your team, they, there's that iceberg of ignorance. Your team knows more than you do. This is really hard to take on sometimes, but they do. Everybody knows more
Craig:than I do, June.
Jennie:We were going to beg to differ on that one, but your team knows more than you do from a different perspective. And so if the whole team backs up against that. Then there is a conversation that needs to be had right there. And the problem is, what often happens, is that we get this level passed down to us. Now we're under pressure because we have been told that we have to achieve that. First off, where did that come from? It's been created by somebody arbitrarily who's had no contact with the people on the ground. Hopefully not. Hopefully it's been part of the conversation as to what is. Realistic. And we can still put that stretch within there. We've got to come back to that because it's important pieces around that. But hear from your team. And what are the obstacles that they're seeing that nobody else has seen until this point? And then within that conversation, are these legitimate constraints? Are they Perceived constraints, right? There's a lot within there. So I would say, have the conversation. If you absolutely can't change X, then you absolutely can't change X. Now we're problem solving and we're right back into that. We can, if, and I saw somewhere in the chat, it just, someone had mentioned a beautiful constraint. Which is a fabulous resource on that. And there's, I think, nine different we can ifs, it just, it opens up the conversation.
Craig:Perfect. Yeah. And I think the other piece for me that ties into that a little bit is what I will call goal escalation. And so. You want to, we expect you to achieve X and you do achieve it. Next year's obviously got to be X plus. And if you achieve that, then the year after that has to be X plus. And so it begs the question of why haven't you just set the right goal in the first place versus continually pushing? Yes, we always have to, very few organizations are going to succeed if they don't continue to produce more, et cetera, find ways to become more efficient, but I think you do run into a risk. of creating some cynicism in your team around, if we hit the goal, we know it's just going to go up next year.
Jennie:One of the things that we need to cascade better, perhaps, is meaning. Why? Why does X exist? And that comes, that's the part that comes all the way down. So rather than cascading X, what is the meaning of X? And the other pecks us. Maybe it's why one year again, 2020, so everything on his head, what are the conditions that we're in? What is the environment that we're in? Where are we going as an organization? There are some organizations as they function today that will not and cannot function that way in five years time. From what we're seeing, there'll still be, they could still be an organization, but that X will change to Y.
Craig:That's a good point. Nice. I think it, what I liked there, I like everything that you say, but what I especially liked in there was the why, and it relates a bit to a question that comes in. This is where I really liked what you touched on there about the why needing to be perhaps something that is truly cascaded, right? The why of the organization that's heading here comes from up here, right? And it does have to flow down and everybody along the way needs to understand the why. It's a dangerous game of telephone by the time you get from here to here as to what that why may sound like. But the question that we have here is what if our leader has been so busy sharing their vision, their why, What's the rest of management outside of our team and hasn't shared that with the team any advice on how I should communicate this upwards to them to that they need to share downwards that the team has lost
Jennie:the simple part, if you know that it's been shared outwards, but not inwards. Is to hold that as that's your truth. So I, I've heard that the vision has been shared here and I'm wondering if we as a team can revisit it or next team meeting, the presentation that you gave to the senior executive. Could we as a team hear it so that we can align? The, the big part when you have to do that manage up piece is remember that you have to talk to them about what's important to them. If the vision is as important to them that they have to give it to everybody around them. That's really important to them. So let's lean in on that. This sounds, this is fantastic, or this is really important to you. We're hearing this importance. Can we have some time where we look at it and share it? I really have to just ask and ask in the sense that it supports the importance that they're holding to it.
Craig:Interesting question. Just caught my attention here in the chat. Is this just semantics or is the difference, is there a difference between setting goals and making commitments? The latter seems to involve a lot more buy in. I would
Jennie:go with that. Yeah,
Craig:especially
Jennie:in a lot of the things that we're talking about and a lot of the things that we do at work, what are you committed to? I don't think we'll lose the structure, like some of us need that time piece. I use that time piece all the time and in the next two hours, I'm going to do this just to help me focus and close the squirrel brain down for a little bit. But I think there's a, I think you said, I think there's a buy in to the commitment. If I commit to you, I'm going to stick to that.
Craig:So perhaps JennJennie should be coming up with our own MIT acronym for goal setting.
Jennie:That sounds like a challenge. We'll see what we can do. Sounds
Craig:like better than smart goals in your opinion. Final question I wanted to get to before we move on to the wrap up is a lot of organizations have moved away from formal performance goals or performance reviews, sorry. And as we talked about close to the start, often you set goals to then perhaps do a mid year review and year end review where you have organizations that have moved away from the formal performance review piece. I wonder what the danger, risk, and goal setting falling by the wayside is, and I wonder how do you work on making sure that you do still have some way to align on goals and follow up and measure?
Jennie:Yeah, I think this is fantastic because in our, in our hold tooth, we'll be able to set something in January, have a mid year review, and then close it at the end of the year. It's really individual. And it's really the story that we're used to. And so where this has gone, or you can do VAD and what if it started with a team conversation, what goals do we need to set? Where will goals help us? And. You've got around the table adults who are aligned, who want to take action and would like to have autonomy within that action. And so this opens up, all right, what are the goals? Do we need any goals, first of all? And I think that in itself is a good conversation. Or are we talking about commitments here? How long will our commitments run for? And different teams, different industries. There's different lengths of time in there, and, and you don't have to, if it's not your thing, you don't have to go into this whole sprint planning and Agile and everything, there's, we are permitted for the next month to this, or for the next week, whatever that might be, and I would We'll Blast away that mid year part, that doesn't have to be part of your story, that's legacy conversation. We'll reconnect on this in whatever that time frame is that you and your team set for. And then, and we haven't talked about this yet, but I do think it's important, is And this stems from James Clear as well. How will you optimize for the start line? How will you optimize to begin? Because back to your point, at the beginning of our conversation, we're always so focused on the finish line, on the outcome. Let's reverse that, let's optimize so that we're set up to do it right. And then our conversation becomes about the performance. That eventually, as you said, you'll get that outcome, you'll get that metric. You'll always get a result, but if you focus on that performance and helping people optimize for that performance, that's where we start to see the elevation around us.
Craig:And as you optimize for that performance, I think one thing that we haven't really touched on here yet is what are those check in points along the way? And how are you tracking, how are you measuring, how are you showing progress? How are you, how are you making sure you're on track, right? And how are you adjusting? Any final thoughts around those pieces?
Jennie:There's a really strong part of my brain that wants to say, if I am a skilled adult that's taking responsibility and making those commitments, I forgot that I can talk to you about that. So there's that two way conversation. And I see, we haven't talked about this too. I think that's important. This is a two way conversation. This is probably, if I work for you, probably more about me than it is about you. We flip it because you're very worried about the outcome, then I'm using this generically. And so that's why we forget that part. And there was that fantastic thing around on social media last year at some point with, what does KPI really stand for? Because we often use KPIs to measure and it's a performance. Indicator. So keep people interested, keep people informed, keep people inspired. I can't remember, there was four of them. And there's your job as a leader. Pay attention. This was the part in the stretch goals. People will work for stretch goals if they feel supported. Support is different than directed. Right? What are you doing? What's your numbers? What's your progress? That's a little bit of direction in there. Support actually looks at the performance and looks at me as opposed to the number.
Craig:Speaking of commitments, you always commit to get people out of here on time. They can get onto their 9 AMs and I think this has been another good conversation. It's, I think there's so many directions this conversation could have gone, but hopefully we've got some great takeaways here. Jennie, over to you to wrap things up.
Jennie:Thank you. And for those who are here for the first time, hopefully not the only time, we always conclude with, what was our big idea heading into the conversation? Sometimes it's our idea, sometimes it's someone else's. Two applied strategies, processes, contemplations that you can take away and put into action straight away. And there's three questions just to leave you to noodle as you embark on the close of your week. So our good idea this week is we just need to put some fresh air into here. And as always with the oxygen masks, you're going to put yours on first. Take a look at this from your perspective. But the other thing that I think often goes unsaid is where does the oxygen come from? We talked about this a little bit. What do you connect to? That's the important part in goal setting because if you see it as important, if you value it, if you love it, then you'll be that much more closer to what's being motivated, which is the tool that goal setting is. Our two things to take away is to remember. That carrot and sticks as a terms of motivation don't work very well. So we said this earlier on today in that a good goal is one that's set by the person who's working towards it. And it's fantastic when they set it voluntarily, they come up with it. on their own, like in order to do that, to fold that aligning alignment, we need that meaning. So the takeaway today is if you're a leader, how can you build that? The meaning, the purpose, the understanding of what contributions are. Towards what really matters. If you don't hold that leader role, remember you can still step into leadership. So take a peek at that question and where are you missing meaning, purpose, understanding what your contribution is. That's a great conversation for your next one on one when you have that with your leader. And then the second one is a reference back to remember goal setting is just a tool. And if you were in the sporting world and you were using hockey, we're talking about that at the beginning, if the hockey stick is faulty, you would change the stick. So is the tool achieving what you need it to achieve? And if it's not, do you need to change the tool? One that was mentioned, thank you to whoever popped that into the chat. Maybe shift towards commitments. Maybe shift the way you're doing the goal setting, maybe take a really good look at the process that you have, or the environment that you've created. Goals at the end of the day, aim to harness our motivation, drive a positive intention to the outcomes we're looking for, give us energy in the work that we're doing, and direction towards that work, as well as purpose, learning, and eventually, that's building our innovation too. And then on the right hand side, another process that we use all the time are these KPIs. Sometimes they work really well, and sometimes we just need to remember it's about keeping Ourselves or our people, informed, involved, interested, and inspired. And then, and I stopped at three, this is not a New Year's resolution, Craig, don't worry, we'll be back to four or six in a week or two. But there's three questions for This first week in January. So we've talked about this. Does your environment match the goals that you have? Are you setting yourself or your team up for success? What's your preparation? This is key. And I think we could spend a bit of time diving into this another time. What does preparation look like? And that might be two minutes before the meeting or half hour at the end of the day. And then another one we haven't touched on too much. How do you keep your foot on the gas pedal? So if fear of failure is something that normally moves your foot across to the brake, how can you use that and keep it on the gas pedal? Three questions, and that's me. Thanks Craig.
Craig:Perfect. Thank you. A couple other KPIs for everybody is keep providing, but thank you. We love the chat, the conversation that goes on there. It truly does, uh, make these more meaningful and much better conversation and keep popping in. We're back on January 19th. And I came up with both of those just now, Jennie. So I know I was pretty, I'm pretty proud of those. Oh yeah, we're back January 19th, and thanks for the feedback on that, like feedback, yeah. We look forward to you joining us and hopefully you'll be able to join us in person. Please keep watching for more information about our conference coming up in February. As always, Jennie, I appreciate you and thanks for everything that you do. Folks, have a great weekend and we'll see
Jennie:you soon. Thanks everyone. Cheerio.
Craig:Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow state corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content to the link in the show notes.
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