In 1994, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined the term “big, hairy, audacious goals” or BHAG in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. The BHAG concept was born to galvanise organisations to go big and achieve something that might otherwise be unthinkable. Fast forward a couple of decades, the concept remains relevant. For example, SpaceX aims to enable human exploration and settlement of Mars.
“For a goal to be effective, it must effect change,” is the famous quote by Zig Ziglar. But organisations express yearly goals in financial, market and product-based outcome. It’s all pretty mundane stuff. So what needs to be done to effect change?
Aligning goals between teams is indispensable. This is easy to say but harder to do. In some organisations, it is rarely done.
If you need to effect change, communicating the strategic intent behind your goals is a compelling start. Make your strategy come alive and remind people of your journey to date. What have you learned from the hits and misses? What is the desired journey forward? Never underestimate the power of storytelling. It makes it easier for people to connect emotionally to what the company is trying to achieve.
“We have competing priorities” is a typical red flag. Today’s organisations tend to comprise teams that are heavily dependent on one another. But teams need to deal with the frustrating reality of silos. The best thing you can do is to lead a conversation about the underlying assumptions of the goals. What do they mean for people?
Leaders who collaborate to align their goals serve their teams well. Sometimes agreements need to be brokered: what needs to change and who needs to do what. Those who have experience doing this will often assure you that this is often a difficult conversation, especially in matrixed organisations.
Once the assumptions are aligned, go one step further to agree on data points that can reflect progress throughout the year. Beware of using only business KPIs that reflect the outcome. It might be too late to switch course. Include leading indicators. For example, productivity metrics are leading indicators of sales outcome, and absenteeism is a leading indicator of employee engagement. These let your teams know if they are on the right track.
Suppose you can effectively communicate the intent of the strategic goals, align on underlying assumptions, and agree on mutual priorities across the organisation. In doing so, you strengthen your people’s ability to connect what they do to the company’s desired destination.
What gets in the way of business achieving goals is rarely the lack of intelligence but rather the lack of alignment and collaboration. Sage leaders invest time, focus on give-and-take and broker agreements with their peers. In times that are anything but usual, collaborative leadership can make all the difference.
Valerie Tan Ronchail specialises in Organisational Strategies. Start a conversation with Valerie at valerie@mingz.co or LinkedIn
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