It's not rest if you can't sleep

Photo by Shashank Kumawat.

Yes, you have to set goals.

We know. This year has been an exercise in just how unknowable the future is. How humans make plans and covid laughs. The futility of trying to make business objectives as the ground shifts beneath you. And then shifts again as local and global regulations try to anticipate the next moves of an invisible enemy.

This week, the first vaccine doses have started to roll out across North America. Though all the experts say we have a ways to go before we're back to office potlucks. In the wake of promising news, it's tempting to kick goal-setting further down the road.

Let's see how it goes. Keep doing what we're doing. And pick it up once we know a bit more. After all, isn't now a good time to take a break?

The temptation to punt on goals is real. We understand why this feels impossible. But we need you to ignore the siren song of waiting it out.

In boring times, goals are a fundamental tool for organizational alignment and predictability. At the close of 2020, every boss we know would love to go shopping at the alignment and predictability store.

Goals are how you pay in cash for that alignment and predictability. You don't get one without the other. And if that makes you tired, this is the last thing we need from you before you go rest those weary bones.

Perfect doesn't exist

Our kindergartener came home one day and said "Perfect doesn't exist." She learned it at school. Teachers these days are super into growth mindset stuff. And the idea of perfect gets in the way of kids trying and failing - which is basically how anyone ever gets good at anything. When anyone in our house says "perfect" - she pops up like a small, serious elf to remind us that "perfect doesn't exist."

Our gift to you this end of year planning season is in the form of this small, serious elf. If you're waiting for perfect strategy, or perfect goals, or perfect context, the elf is here to remind you. Perfect doesn't exist.

So why bother setting goals if there's no such thing as perfect? And if all our context is guaranteed to change?

Two reasons:

The first is that your people need clarity. Even if you don't know all of the details, chances are good you have some. And at the close of a year of uncertainty, anywhere you can illuminate things, you ought to.

Annual goals are an opportunity to repeat the core truths of your business. Or challenge them and tell a new story about what we're here to do and for whom. If you've been in the shit for the past 10 months, goals are an invitation to pick your head up and look around.

The second is that your people need a win. Setting goals means we can mark progress. We have a way of stepping outside of the grind to say, hey, we did a thing. And then a shove to celebrate.

All through the year, we've been talking to founders and CEOs. And we ask, how's it going? For many of them it's rough. But for others, their businesses are growing. The pandemic accelerated a bunch of digitization in their industry. And their biggest problem is keeping up with demand.

There's a concern around not wanting to tempt fate. Or appear boastful. But the result is that many teams haven't celebrated a win together in almost a year. Do you know how hard that is on morale? To have scrambled and pivoted and been successful at it. Only to find that there's a sign at the end of the race that says "26.2 more miles to go."

It's no wonder so many people see that sign and want to lie down.

Top down, then bottom up

So okay, so maybe you can see the value of putting up wins for your team. And the value of clarity. But leaders who can see the value of those things still often get hung up on the Right Way to author and communicate them. They're looking for perfect again. It's why, in our work, we see organizations adopt and abandon goals frameworks more than any other management tool.

We're not devout fans of any particular system, we're just fans of the stuff that works. And a core element of what works for goals is their directionality. Successful goals systems usually have a "top down, then bottom up" structure built in explicitly.

That means that goal setting starts with the CEO. If you're a CEO reading this, we need you to get us going. Not because you're smarter than us, or more strategic than us, or some kind of wizard. But because it's what we're paying you to do. We're paying you to see the whole business and its place in the world. When there are things that keep you up at night. When there are things that you can see coming at a distance. We need you, in the simplest language you can find, to spell it out. What is make or break for our organization, and why?

The next step is for you to tell that story to the senior team. Help them understand where there are threats and where there are opportunities and why these are the most important things to get done. If you're a member of that senior team, we need you to do your job, too. The thing we pay you to do is to understand the needs of the organization, and then also figure out how to get your teams aligned to accomplish those things.

And then each senior leader goes and tells their team. And on it goes through the entire organization. But at every step, the story telling is crucial. The bringing it back to existential questions and simple language is crucial. And if you're a boss in one of these meetings, your job is to ask questions until you understand. Don't just nod politely, or scoff cynically. Chew on it until you understand the why and the how. Because we'll need that for the next bit.

The departments of yes and no

The next bit is to start pushing feedback back up. It's where you as a boss take a hard look at what you're being asked to sign your team up for. And in December of 2020, you want to be taking a hard look. Your boss is asking your team for a commitment to an amount of work. So ask yourself some questions.

Is this work realistic? Is it sustainable? Is it healthy?

Some bosses are departments of yes. They always agree to the work because it's what the company needs, even if it puts their team at risk. Other bosses are departments of no. They see themselves as protectors of their team, and default to pushing back in order to ensure their team has room to breathe.

Do you see yourself in either of these? Because neither of these are effective strategies.

A boss who consistently refuses to help is a boss who will get routed around or removed. A leader who burns out their team is putting massive risk on the books just to make their own boss like them. To be good at this job, you need to get into the shit. Why this target and how much room is there to maneuver? If we had to trade X against Y do we all agree that Y is more important? I can't commit the team to X unless we drop Y, Z, and anything else we're currently on the hook for.

People will not always like these answers, and that will be hard. But the thing we pay you for is to be the one who owns the health and effectiveness of your team. Maybe when you grapple with it, and get into the details, the hard truth is that your team is too damaged by 2020 to be able to commit to much of anything in Q1. Then that's what we need you to say. And if the truth is that your team has been spared some of the brutality that others have faced, and you have an ability to shoulder some extra load in Q1? Then we need you to say that, too. Speaking up with a thoughtful point of view that balances the needs of the team and the organization is leadership integrity. The world could do with more of that.

It's exactly that easy and it's exactly that hard. When goals flow top-down in a deliberate way with a clear story, that's alignment. When every leader feeds back capacity and resilience information and the organization adapts, that's predictability. If we seem a bit extra on the subject of goals, this is why.

Everyone is telling you to rest. And of course you should rest. We are all worthy, and deeply in need, of rest. But the bosses we know don't rest very well while their team is in chaos. And many times the people on their teams don't rest, either. Goals are hard work, we know. But they are how we buy ourselves some clarity. And for us, at least, clarity is what lets the rest actually happen.

- Melissa and Johnathan