Making goals worth aiming for: the MARS framework
I’ve been thinking about our team goal recently. It’s great to work in a team with ambition, especially when there’s so much we could do.
But it’s just as important to keep our feet on the ground when it comes to setting our team goal. This is our ‘North Star’ — everything we do should be working towards it.
I’ve reformatted the SMART objective framework often used in HR development reviews to form the MARS framework for team goals.
M is for Measurable
Just as important as having something to aim for is being able to measure how much closer you’ve got to achieving it.
Having a measurable goal means that we can clearly see how our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measuring our success.
Let’s say our goal was to create the best possible buying experience for customers. The KPIs here should be the conversion rate — how many people are buying — and, if it’s possible, some measure of customer satisfaction. Because this goal is about quality, quantity metrics like revenue or number of new customers aren’t relevant.
But we could have a goal that asks us to aim for, say, inspiring young people to become scientists. It’s a very worthwhile goal — but completely immeasurable. (You’ll find a lot of these types of goals in the not-for-profit sector.) As a team, we need a goal to work towards that fits with this overall vision, but that we can actually measure and impact — like getting more schools to book workshops that can inspire kids with science, for example.
A is for Actionable
We can measure the goal’s success, but can we actually do anything to move that needle?
An actionable goal is one that we, as a team, have the power to progress towards. This is crucial for a truly empowered product team. We shouldn’t be dependent on stakeholders, sign-off processes, budget, resource or access outside of the team’s control to achieve our goal.
That’s not to say that some or all of these things won’t have an impact. But we should be able to move towards achieving our goal as a team regardless, helped by but not relying on external support.
Let’s say our goal is to increase the number of people contacting scientists. We’ve got profile pages for each of them on the website, with a contact form that sends them a direct email. But their profile pages are automatically generated from software the scientists fill out themselves, so we can’t optimise these pages at all.
We should still be encouraging the scientists to keep their profiles up-to-date. But this isn’t a good goal for the team to aim towards, as we don’t have the power to change the main driver — the quality of the profile page. We should focus on something we can change ourselves, like making it easy to navigate the staff directory.
R is for Realistic
We have a goal that we can measure, and that we have the power to change. But do we actually have the resources in place within the team to change it?
For team morale it’s crucial that the goal isn’t too lofty (and the same goes for your KPI targets, too). This might seem similar to having an actionable goal, but it’s possible to have a goal that you have the power to change within the team, but the team just don’t have the capacity to achieve it.
An example of this is to become the top online destination for natural history content. It’s measurable: we can see how we’re doing in competitor analysis and search rankings. It’s actionable: we have the power to change it within our online publishing team, and it’s not dependent on anyone outside the team for success.
It would be fantastic if it happened, and we absolutely should be measuring how we’re doing against our competitors as one of many ways to track our success. But realistically, there are some huge competitors out there — think National Geographic and BBC Earth, among others.
So it shouldn’t be our team’s goal. Instead, our goal should be to inspire and engage people with high-quality natural history content. If we do become the top online destination as a result — bonus!
S is for Strategic
We’ve got a goal that’s within our power and resources, and we can measure our success.
But we’re still part of a larger organisation with a vision, a mission and objectives to meet. Anything we do as a team should fit within these larger aims.
The immeasurable goal example I mentioned above, of inspiring young people to become scientists, is an example of a strategic aim we might have. We can clearly make the link between this aim and our measurable goal of getting more schools to book workshops that can inspire kids with science.
But if the strategic aim was instead to inspire adults to learn more about the natural world we live in, a goal of getting schools in for workshops wouldn’t be right for the organisation — even if it is measurable, actionable and realistic.
Summary
Product teams should always have goals that are:
- Measurable — we can define and measure success
- Actionable — we have the power to make progress
- Realistic — we have the resources to make progress
- Strategic — we’re doing the right thing for the organisation
Anything I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments.
