March 31, 2020

Goal Setting

Kristen Fine – Assistant Account Executive

Are you like me and have struggled to create realistic goals and attaining them? I watched venture capitalist John Doerr’s recent Ted Talk that provides tangible ways to hold on to your objectives and goals to land key results.

John Doerr begins his lesson by painting the picture “Our leaders and institutions are failing us, but it's not always because they're bad or unethical. Often, it's simply because they're leading us toward the wrong objectives.”

Setting the right goals for the right reasons will lead to meaningful success and excellent execution. Objectives are what you want to accomplish and key results are how you are going to execute them. The “what” and the “how.” A lot of objectives are created and met but aren’t set by providing the reason to encourage and inspire their team.

Doerr reminds us that objectives need to check the following boxes to ensure success:
1. Significance
2. Concrete
3. Action-oriented
4. Inspirational

While our key-results or “hows” need to check the following:
1. Specific
2. Time-bound
3. Aggressive yet realistic
4. Measurable and verifiable

Google encouraged its employees to identify their objectives and keep track of their key results, not for bonuses or promotions, but for commitment and drive. Employees were able to set their own goals and watch their individual success while Google set its company objectives and exceeded every single one.

Doerr points out that employees have ambitious such as vessels that they pour into daily and the importance of leaders in companies to know your employee’s vessels that they like to pour into and what makes them ambitious. When there’s an understanding of those metrics, company objectives and values can be accomplished.

Objectives and key results can be applied outside of the company, with our families, schools, hobbies and more. We can hold each other accountable and have measurable success.

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