Pillar 3: Having a clear strategy and goals
A shared understanding of what's truly important
The call center turnaround
I’m again thinking back of my time in Prague, Czech Republic, over 16 years ago today, when I had just moved abroad and started my “working life” at the large corporate service provider. It was my first job after finishing my business studies at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. It was a relatively simple job in an inbound call center where we answered questions of employees of our corporate client, whose HR admin and payroll we were processing.
It was nine months after go-live and, while the general vibe in the team was great, there was also a lot of stress. We found ourselves in the midst of a massive email backlog of 200+ unprocessed emails, insufficient capacity to answer the incoming calls in time, and a continuous back-and-forth of “can you remind me how this and this works exactly?”
The main KPIs colored deep red and many clients were unhappy with our service. We should answer the calls faster, respond to emails within a day, and close 70% of incoming requests immediately upon the first contact. But the targets felt way out of reach. While the twelve of us gave it our all, it felt like we were fighting a losing battle.
A few months in, patterns began to emerge, and a strategy to deal with these challenges began to emerge.
I noticed how the most experienced team members (the subject matter experts) rarely got to answer calls and emails, because the less experienced ones were constantly asking them questions.
I also noticed how 80% of the incoming requests were usually the same eight to ten questions (again a beautiful example of the 80-20 principle at work).
This led us to initiate a simple strategy to deal with the emergency situation. We initiated an FAQ, a central document where team members could find their answers without having to disturb the team experts.
This freed up the experts to process calls and emails. It also helped to reduce the average call time and increased the quality of service (because every time the exact right answer was provided; no more confusing variants or unclearly formulated responses).
Within a few weeks, the email backlog was gone. Average call times dropped, and the “first call closure” rate skyrocketed. A few months in, the team’s KPIs coloured green, and by that time, nine people were enough to maintain the service levels, instead of the initial twelve.
While all of this may sound simple (and I agree this is no rocket science), there are several ways in which this little story can serve as a metaphor for your own team(s) and organization.
In this article I write about the value of having clear goals and a sensible strategy. A plan you can work, diligently, all together, day-in-day-out.
How clear goals direct your team’s attention
“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” (attributed to Napoleon Hill)
In my first article I made the point that your team’s collective attention is the (hidden) most important key success factor for your organization’s performance. Because our minds are our creation tools, and as a team, our collective mind power is our main resources for manifesting the organization’s goals.
If life and work are a journey through space and time, goals are what gives direction to that journey. They create a clear image in everyone’s mind of where you are going and what the intended outcome looks like. The strategy is about how you intend to get there.
When both the goals and the strategy are continuously on top of mind for each of your team members, it helps direct their focus, set the right priorities, and act in alignment with the rest of the organization.
Again, while this may sound simple, the true value is in getting them right, formulating them really well, embedding them into your operational processes, and continuously aligning your team’s attention with them.
As opposed to my prior articles about pillar 1: documenting your best practices, and pillar 2: effective team meetings, with pillar 3: a clear strategy and goals it is more challenging for me to provide a clear-cut approach that works in every organization.
Because what works best in your unique organization depends on factors such as:
Your organization’s structure: is it strictly hierarchical with many layers, is it relatively flat, or fully self-organizing?
Your culture: how open, inclusive, collaborative are things done around there?
Decision-making: who calls the shots, who is consulted? Is the standard way to set directions more top-down or bottom-up?
Purpose: is your organization focused on net profit and shareholder value, on status and growth, or on a higher purpose and societal impact?
Team size: it is easier for a team of 10 to act in alignment than it is for a team of 1000.
In this article I focus on generic elements which apply to every organization. Use this content as a mirror for your current processes and identify improvements in the way you are doing things. No matter how small and insignificant they may seem, realize that each process improvement has an exponential effect to the overall performance of the organization.
Remember: sometimes it takes as little as tuning one screw to double an entire machine’s speed. As you read this article, keep your eyes (and your intuitive intelligence) open for what that little nugget (“screw”) can be for your organization.
Best practices for organizational goal-setting
“Plan your work, then work your plan.” (Napoleon Hill)
While the exact right approach is different for each organization, there are several best practices that work everywhere.
To increase the chances of attaining your organization’s goals, consider whether each of these elements is in place, and whether they are really (really?) acted upon consistently:
You need your goals to be SMART: specific, measurable attainable, realistic and time bound.
You need each individual team member to fully 1) understand and 2) support both the goals and the strategy.
You need to continuously monitor your progress and make it visible for everyone involved.
You need to regularly reflect on the progress and refine your strategy: do more of what works, let go of what doesn’t work, and generate new strategies and ideas based on newly gained experience and incremental insight.
You need to celebrate milestones and engage in many “high five moments”, so the team feels emotionally engaged and their hard work is truly seen and honored.
Additional incentives
You probably also want to have incentives in place for extra motivation and focus.
While it may seem simple and logical to tie incentives directly to financial performance (e.g. sales bonuses and profit-sharing), pitfalls often come with that which may hurt the overall long-term performance, relationships and impact of your organization.
Creative approaches to consider includes shared ownership (employee stocks), time off and flexible work, internal competitions and peer recognition, special project assignments, and personalized / customized rewards.
A clear desired outcome
“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination.” (Steven Covey)
Consider this on a smaller project scale, for example cooking a meal. Before taking any action - to prevent wasted effort or missing your target altogether - you need to first start with a clearly defined desired outcome in mind. For example: a nutritious meal with rice and vegetables, with the ingredients you bought at the farmer’s market today, enough for four people, ready by 7pm.
I am using this metaphor to emphasize how important it is to begin with the end in mind. Manifestation starts with visualization, and the stronger we can (individually and collectively) hold that image of the desired future situation in mind, the greater the chance it manifests in time and with excellent quality.
Thinking your goals through, clarifying them, and verifying they are indeed the optimal way to go is usually a great investment of your time. Why start running before you know exactly where you are going? Imagine the course of a ship: even if you are only a few degrees off, after a few hundred kilometers you end up somewhere completely different than you originally intended.
Input versus output metrics
In my next article on pillar 4: strategic data collection, I will zoom in on metrics, KPIs, dashboards and data-driven decision-making.
For now, I just want to highlight the the difference between inputs and outputs, and how your focus on managing inputs can “automatically” get you the outputs you are looking for.
Consider a simple example of a sales department. If they want to grow their revenue by 30% this year (output), it makes sense to set this as a goal and track progress throughout the year. Only, the outputs are typically outside your sphere of influence. Instead, it makes sense to analyze what actionable activities are the inputs which influence the output.
In the sales team example, the team may have discovered that on average, one in ten calls results in a sale. As a result, setting a goal to increase the number of outgoing sales calls by 30% (or 40%, or 50%), or contacting 150 prospects per day in writing, gives your team an actionable target to work on: a concrete input which impacts the desired output, an actionable goal inside their sphere of control.
Similarly, the quality of the sales calls may be such an input, and can (somewhat) be measured in terms of the percentage leads converted into long-term customers (per agent). Now, the team has specific topics to work on which are actionable, can be made measurable, and are open for continuous improvement (kaizen).
To take value from this understanding, now ask yourself: what are your team’s main goals for this year or quarter? Which are in your direct sphere of influence? Which are inputs and which are outputs? For the outputs, what do you think are some actionable inputs that influence them?
To really understand a causal relationship between inputs and outputs, deeper data collection and analyses will be needed. While common sense, experience and intuition are usually great ways to point us in the right direction for inputs worth aiming our attention on.
Connecting the goals and strategy to your organizational purpose and “why”
Be careful what you wish for.
Many entrepreneurs and organizations optimize for net profit and shareholder value. Which makes sense at first glance, but when you zoom out and look at your organization’s role in the world holistically, it is easy to see how a focus on profit maximization typically brings undesired side effects and gets you involved in a race to the bottom.
… Stress, burnouts and exploitation of the workforce
… Squeezing suppliers
… Hurting our natural environment
… And so on.
Of course, it is important to grow a financially healthy and sustainable organization and you need to monitor its financial health, but is profit truly your organization’s reason for existence?
So what else to measure, besides your organization’s financial health?
Definitely consider the satisfaction and engagement of your team members, your suppliers, and of course: your clients.
Consider purpose-specific goals too. Setting goals around creating the next building block for the “empire” that your organization is becoming: for example to create a new product or service feature, open up a new revenue stream, design or improve a marketing channel, set up a program to attract talented team members, and so on.
So what is your organization’s purpose?
What is it that makes all your work and effort truly worthwhile?
What does it ideally look like in 3, 5, 10 years from now?
This deeper essence should be leading in your conversations around goals and strategies.
For example: Gaianet’s purpose is uniting New Earth contributors in co-creation. The entire organization works in service of this purpose (instead of shareholders and investors). It is our north star. It is what all team members sign up for. It is on top of everybody’s mind, and helps everybody focus and prioritize by simply asking: does what I’m about to do now, help Gaianet unite New Earth contributors in co-creation?
When we define our semi-annual goals and objectives, we ask ourselves: what is the highest-leverage-seven-league-boot next step we can collectively take from where we are now in the direction of Gaianet’s ultimate purpose?
In Gaianet, every meeting begins with a 2-minute reminder of Gaianet’s purpose and why. It is a fixed meeting agenda, right at the start, to remind each participant of the bigger purpose and the importance of the work we do. The meeting facilitator asks who feels inspired to remind the team of Gaianet’s bigger purpose and why. Then, whomever feels inspired steps in and shares for one or two minutes. It is always a creative, new, unique expression of the purpose and mission we all feel inside of us. You can probably imagine how this simple practice inspires fire, harmony, focus, connectedness, and alignment among all the team members.
What impact do you wish to make?
With this in mind, ask yourself: do your organization’s purpose and why align with your own deep personal inner being’s purpose and why?
Do your current goals support the long-term value you wish to create for all stakeholders involved, or are they designed to extract short-term money and improve its own status and survival?
What is the “one thing” your organization wants to be the best at? Measure that, and set goals around continuously improving that core capability.
Making it a team effort
One final thing to consider is the extent to which you involve your team in the process of defining your organization’s strategy and goals.
Traditionally, in top-down organizations, the directors meet in a room, make a plan, and then tell everybody what to do. The layer beneath then breaks down the goals into smaller goals, instructs the layer beneath them, and so on.
While this approach is fast and efficient, it usually leads to team members being less motivated, and important risks and opportunities being overlooked.
What if the directors would invite everybody into the room, asking for their perspective, wisdom, experience – knowing the people who do the actual work probably see and understand many things which the directors themselves will not ever be aware of?
Depending on your organization’s culture, team size and decision-making processes, consider kicking off the year (or quarter) with a facilitated team day. An external facilitator can guide a large group through a process of reflection, idea generation, and in some cases even decision-making.
Depending on your organization’s size, the entire team can be present, or a representing member of each team (for example the captain and/or subject matter expert).
Even if no substantially new ideas would be generated, the mere act of getting together and hearing everybody creates a level of connection, engagement and understanding far beyond that of everyone simply being told what to do.
Improving your goal-setting processes
Which of the elements you read about will you implement?
Which meeting elements, goal-setting practices, or follow up mechanisms will you implement into your management operating system (MOS), the set of recurring meetings and activities – your organizational habits?
Let me know in response to this article!
Keep calm and stay creative 😉
Alexander