Hot goal summer

Photo by Pixabay.

Raw Signal Group has been a certified B Corp since 2019. By the skin of our teeth. An 80 is the minimum score to qualify. We got an 80.2. We did not sail over the finish line. We crawled there. So when our recertification came up, we knew we wanted to get a higher score. Both because it would mean we'd made progress on things we care about and also because it would be impossible to score lower and actually recertify.

These were good ingredients for an OKR. It mattered to the business, was time-bound, had firm metrics attached. There was just one problem. The B Corp team was backlogged. The recertification was due to happen in 2022. And then it didn't. It wasn't even close. When we scored our OKRs at the end of the year, that one was a miss.

So we hung out in B Corp recertification purgatory. Every couple weeks, they would email to say one of two things. Either that they were waiting on information from us and could we please send it. Or that they were processing the information we sent most recently and they would be back in touch when they needed the next thing.

Quarter over quarter, we carried that goal forward. Each time, having to mark it red and incomplete. We teach bosses that if they find themselves kicking a goal forward for more than one quarter, it's time to stop and figure out if it still matters. To you. And to the business.

Faced with the question of whether it made sense to keep chasing this one, our team was aligned. It mattered. The goal was significant. But hitting it in 2022 wasn't realistic.

What was supposed to take four weeks ended up taking seven months. Last week, the B Corp team emailed to say congrats. Not only had we recertified, we raised our score by more than 15 points. If you haven't been through it this may not seem like a big deal but trust us, there were a lot of party parrot slack emojis when we found out.

This story has a happy ending but the core tension in mid-year goals review is something a lot of bosses feel.

This thing is important. And it's never gonna happen.

- or -

This thing will definitely happen. And when it does, no one will care.

If this is you, welcome to your July goals review.

The vibe is in shambles

Most people don't want to think about goals in July. And in our past lives as startup execs, we'd have been counted among them. It's the worst. Maybe you got a ton of clarity, direction, and alignment from your January planning sessions. Maybe. But that well of inspiration ran dry months ago. And while it's already pretty clear that the plan is at risk, there's also time? Maybe something surprising will happen? The vibe we get from a lot of managers during July and August is the same one we used to give off, ourselves.

Just give me a few more months of wishful thinking and denial and then I promise I'll feel urgently bad about things in September. Or October. Definitely by October. If it helps, I already do feel bad and kinda guilty, maybe? But in a farther-away way? I'd like to just stay in that place for a bit longer.

This isn't a good vibe.

Sometimes we meet bosses who have sublimated those guilt feelings into anger, and they say, "This is why goals suck!" (These bosses use a lot of audible excalamation points.) "Things always change! January's goals are never accurate in December! The whole thing's a joke!"

Also not a great vibe!

But we get it. Because by now the writing is on the wall. You already know which of the goals on the list you'll miss, but you have months to go before you can score them. All you can now do is practice the sad faces you plan to make at the EOY goals review. The writing on the wall is so inescapable that, if you care about your team's wellbeing, you're better off ignoring the goals altogether at this point. Focus the time you have left on building a narrative that proves it isn't your team's fault.

Worst vibes.

The writing on the wall washes off

We want to offer to you that there is a better way to do July. The opportunity in July (or whenever your mid-year review period lands) is to go back to the whole point of the exercise. Goals exist to do a couple of things: set priorities, align your work, and give the org some predictability.

If the goals you wrote in January are still the right ones, that's great. A testament to your team's ability to plan effectively. Hooray for that. But if your goals have become... not that, now is the time to say so. Because goals that no one believes in. Goals that people roll their eyes at. Goals that have been pressed into some weird mutant interpretation in order to carve out a polite pass. Those are not tools of alignment and predictability, those are political bullshit. And you still have time to fix that.

So let's bring back those two tests we mention above. The first is Significance. Do you give a shit whether this work actually happens? Put down the 20-messages-deep email fight with your PM about the definition of, "At risk," and ask yourself if this work matters. Is it worth the time it's getting, and the opportunity cost of the things not getting done? In your gut, do you care a lot about it?

If the answer is "yes," that's an important signal! We are working on something that matters, and other things should get out of the way. If the answer is "no," that's also important! Maybe we were wrong in January, or maybe the context has changed. Either way, working on a thing no one cares about is a grind for no payoff. Be the hero for your team. Get it off the list.

The second test is Realism. How confident are you that this work will get done in the time that remains? On a percentage scale, what's your bet? 100% isn't the target, but it's helpful to know what your level of confidence is, and how it compares with the confidence of your team.

Different teams have different appetites for risk. Google says they aim for 60-70%. We tell bosses that anywhere in the 40-70% range is plausible for most teams. Once you fall below 40% confidence, this goal moves from "stretch goal" to "wishful thinking." You can scope it down, or take other things off your plate, but right now it's probably not gonna happen. More than 70%, this goal is approaching a shoe-in, and you should figure out whether you can pull in the timeline so you can get it done and move on to whatever's next.

If all you do — whether it's every leader in your org, or just you as a lone hero — is run your goals through these tests. Is it significant? Is it realistic? Check with your team. Talk with your peers and your boss and the org about it. What should we drop, what should we reframe, what do we need to add? If that's all you do, we promise the next five months will go better.

More predictably. Better aligned. With less cynicism about the plan, less burnout for things that don't matter. Maybe even with an actual sense of purpose and meaning to the work. You can be a team that gets hard, important things done because you got the other stuff out of the way. That feeling is worth the effort. Those are the best vibes.

Or you can keep shouting about how OKRs just don't work. We suggest a lot of exclamation points.

- Melissa and Johnathan