What are goals and objectives and how do you achieve them?

What are goals and objectives?

Goals represent a dot on the horizon: a place that you or your organization, department or team would like to reach, often within a certain time frame. Think of a personal goal such as completing your studies in two years, or a business goal such as achieving a market share of 22% by the end of the year. You describe a goal as an objective:

An objective is the formulation of a goal that you want to achieve as a person, team, department or organization within a certain time.

By formulating an objective you indicate that you really want something: you make a commitment to yourself and others. You have to be able to visualize the goal and the road towards it, be dedicated and then persevere. Every objective should really be formulated SMART, but that happens less often than it should. The most characteristic feature of a good objective is that it always contains a moment in the future, so that you can work towards it purposefully. Some examples:

• We want to become the best supermarket chain in the Netherlands.
• Minimizing the number of errors in a process to less than 1%.
• Shortening the lead time of a specific process to a maximum of 2 hours.
• Reducing the transport costs of a specific route by ten percent.
• Achieving the sales targets in the coming quarter.
• Reducing the energy consumption of your factory by 30%.
• Finding a good business location this year.

Every person or organization can pursue different goals. That depends on what you want to be good at and what the higher or long-term goal is. The specific knowledge you need to know how to achieve a goal is crucial.

Types of objectives

First of all we distinguish between personal, team, departmental and organizational objectives: the scope. But the most used classification is the trio operational, tactical and strategic.

• Operational: these relate to your daily work. For example: you consistently answer all e-mails every day.
• Tactical: these are about the way you approach your daily work. Every day you answer only the e-mails with a high priority.
• Strategic: these are about the strategy of your company or work. You decide to stop answering e-mails and to handle everything via chat or face to face.

With operational objectives you do more of the same and risk lagging behind the facts. With tactical objectives you do less of the same and optimize the process, so that you get more grip. With strategic objectives you take a completely different tack. It is very important to scale up in time from operational to tactical and from tactical to strategic.

Operational versus strategic objectives

The two ends of the trio side by side.

Bring coherence to your objectives

Within one organization there are sometimes hundreds of objectives, and employees have personal goals too. How do you align them all? With a balanced scorecard. It brings a clear structure to all (types of) objectives so that they do not get in each other’s way. You then reach your goals faster and more smoothly.

Formulate objectives in line with the strategy

Every organization has formulated objectives, but not every organization consistently links them to the organizational strategy. Setting goals without a strategic component is comparable to wanting to drive from A to B within half an hour without anyone knowing what to do there. Objectives must always have meaning: a higher goal or the mission of the organization. So make sure your operational and tactical objectives fit within the business strategy.

Objectives and data

You must be able to follow the progress on your objectives: you want to see where you stand in relation to the goal. So you need data and information, and fast and reliable feedback. Often you do that with a dashboard or business intelligence. Sharing and discussing the insights that emerge is crucial. You want to take decisions that eliminate any delay on the way to your goal.

Make objectives measurable with the goal tree

Suppose your company has to look for a new business location. With a goal tree you can simply and visually break the objectives down into sub-goals, so that everyone understands what is important to reach the highest goal and to what extent the sub-goals contribute to it. See also the KPI tree.

Objectives must also be SMART

You never achieve objectives that are not formulated SMART. So always formulate SMART goals: specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and time-bound.

5 tips to reach your objectives faster

1. Make the why crystal clear for everyone involved. If employees forget the goal, they can still act in line with the why. They understand what it is about and can empathize better, which leads to much greater support.
2. Always make your objectives measurable by formulating SMART goals. Then you can adjust in time when unforeseen circumstances occur or accents have to shift.
3. Make sure that different objectives and sub-goals do not clash. This prevents loss of energy and waste.
4. Provide your employees with the right resources, so that they can make their contribution to the goal. Take complaints seriously.
5. Work with small or medium-sized intermediate steps towards the dot on the horizon instead of trying to get there in one go. That way you achieve successes along the way, which gives everyone positive energy.

Further reading

• SMART goals: formulating goals with examples.
• Strategic goals: the link with the strategy.
• The balanced scorecard: coherence between objectives.
• Key performance indicators: measuring progress.

About the author

Leo Kerklaan is a strategy professional. He advises, teaches and writes about many aspects of strategic performance management, in the Netherlands and abroad, in business and in government. He studied Dutch law at the University of Amsterdam and is the author of several management books, including the bestseller De cockpit van de organisatie.

About Diamond Decisions

Diamond Decisions helps organizations become better by enabling better decisions. We don’t start with data, dashboards or AI, but with the decision that needs to improve, and work back from there to KPIs, data and technology. We do that in four steps: inspiration and alignment, business modeling, analytics and data platform and data-driven decision makers. That way BI and AI don’t remain an IT project, but deliver value every day.