How to Set & Achieve Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals - Part 1 of 3

How do you achieve goals in your company? Like, BIG ones.

Every company wants to grow revenue, but how do you systematically go about this so you're not "hoping" you hit your revenue targets?

First, you need to understand the art of setting cascading goals.

Second, you need to determine your objective(s) for the year.

Third, you need to determine the milestones for the next 90-days.

Over the next three weeks, I plan to break down each component so you can finally pursue your goals systematically and with discipline.

Let's start with understanding the art of setting cascading goals.

No Focus, No Movement.

One of the primary challenges of a growing team is managing the complexity of compounding communication.

Recently, I posted about this on LinkedIn.

With two people on your team, there are just two lines of communication: one line from person A to person B and one line from person B to person A.

However:

↳ 3 People = 6 Lines of Communication

↳ 7 People = 42 Lines of Communication

↳ 11 People = 110 Lines of Communication

Even small companies have significant communication challenges to overcome.

This is why the company's top-level goals must cascade to every department and team member.

This creates alignment and focus.

Without it, your teams will work independently, trying to accomplish their own goals that may or may not get you where you want to go (from my experience, it does not).

The Art of Cascading Goals

I say it's an art because it's not just about creating goals and telling others about them. The art of creating goals starts with your Mission and moves all the way down to keeping your team accountable in your Weekly Team Huddle.

Here is how it works:

1. Everything starts with your Mission. Defining your Purpose and Focus. All decisions, plans, actions should be made to accomplish this mission.
2. Your 10/5/3 Year Vision sets the direction for where your company is going and what it plans to accomplish in a 10/5/3 year span. Without this, you can't set proper Goals.
3. Once you know where you are going, you can determine what needs to be done this year to march in the right direction. Setting Objective: Key Results (OKRs) is the best way to do this (and the topic of next week's email).
4. Once you know what needs to happen this year, you can set 90 Day Goals (my topic two weeks from now), creating more bite-sized pieces of your larger Objectives.
5. The Weekly Huddle manages your day-to-day. It is a meeting structure designed to ensure you stay on top of your 90-day goals, solve the problems keeping you from them, and hold your team accountable.

From Vision to Reality

This is how you systematically move from Vision to Reality in your company and crush all of your goals. 

I've seen it happen again and again. It's not complicated, merely systematic, requiring discipline and a belief that to scale your company, you need an effective operating system in place.

Over the next two weeks, I'll flush out 1-year OKRs and 90-day Goals, giving you the remaining pieces of the art of cascading goals.

Stay tuned.