11 Tips For Setting & Achieving Team Goals

At League, we use the OKR (objectives & key results) model to set goals for the year. It helps our teams focus on company priorities, promote transparency and measure progress. Each team has its own set of OKRs that tie into the business’ high-level objectives. This ensures there’s a direct business impact and alignment by every member of the organization.

An example of an OKR we had this year was to improve accessibility by achieving 90% Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 AA compliance). I was responsible for driving this along with many of my fellow colleagues. Some were successful, others not so much. However, we learned a lot, and now I can share some of my personal learnings below.

1. Gather bottoms-up feedback

Some of the best ideas at League come from bottom-up feedback channels; so it’s an important step when defining team goals. It ensures the best ideas surface to the top and promotes innovation. You can collect bottom-up feedback through team workshops, retrospectives and open-ended channels.

Timing is also key, as you want the feedback shared with leadership before next year’s priorities are set. I find that year-end is a good time because learnings are still fresh and next year’s planning is still in progress.

2. Cascade goals for individual teams

OKRs should be set at the company level to start, then cascade down to individual departments and teams. It ensures that every team roadmap and activity aligns with the company vision. It’s also important for teams to understand which OKRs apply to them and which ones don’t. I’ve seen teams work toward a goal only to find out months later that it was not a priority for them.

3. Call out what is NOT a target

It’s not enough to define what your objectives are, it’s even more important to clarify what they are not. We learned this the hard way on a goal we had, which was to ensure teams adhere to testing expectations. Without realizing it, this goal grew to include related activities that were not part of the original scope. This created many project dependencies, added confusion and slowed progress. To solve this, we decided to call out what is not included in this goal. We also refocused activities on current testing expectations and measuring adherence.

4. Assign a project owner

Team goals become projects, and as such, they need a single owner who’s accountable for their success. This can be a manager or individual contributor who’s passionate about the subject or has the decision-making power to lead. Their role is to coordinate efforts, provide support, track progress and escalate risks.

I’ve found this to also be a good career growth opportunity for current and future leaders. They get to work with new people and learn how to drive large impactful projects. You can use this to recruit owners and volunteers, which can be challenging for less exciting projects.

Keep in mind, that although there’s a project owner, everyone is still responsible for making progress toward the goal.

5. Invest time in planning sessions

Like all projects, investing adequate amounts of time in planning will pay dividends in the long term. I’ve seen too many teams skip this step and get right to implementation. This often results in not solving the original problem.

Spending time planning provides the following benefits:

• Align expectations with stakeholders
• Define what success looks like
• Understand team capacity
• Help highlight risks
• Set realistic targets for tracking progress

You should also make sure to include people who can feed you the right information. This includes stakeholders, subject experts, cross-functional teams, etc.

6. Get a baseline of where you are today

I have a rule: don’t improve anything without having a clear baseline of where you are today. I learned this the hard way early in my career when I would take on a new project and implement solutions without clear data on what problems existed. Without this data, a few months into the project it was difficult to prove the solutions implemented made us better.

I’ve seen many people make the same mistake when working on team goals. It’s important to pull data on where things are today, confirm assumptions made, and set a baseline before you start working. For example, if your goal is to reduce the number of team meetings by 50%, start by collecting data on how much time your team spends in meetings today. This data will give you a baseline to build from, it’ll tell you how urgent the problem is and help you aim for a realistic target.

7. Identify metrics and set quarterly targets

Another rule of mine is to not work on anything that’s not measurable. It can be tempting to start working on a goal right away, but you should first identify metrics and targets you’ll use to measure progress. Doing this will also help align with the stakeholders on expectations of what success looks like.

At League, I’m responsible for improving our engineering hiring process. I have targets set at the beginning of each quarter in collaboration with leadership and the talent team. Some of the metrics include the number of new hires, hiring efficiency and time spent interviewing. Through this, we’re able to track progress, identify issues before they happen and align with the broader team.

Keep in mind that most targets set at the beginning of a project are arbitrary numbers anyway. It’s a good practice to revisit your targets and make sure they’re still relevant as you get new information.

8. Create a safe space for people to share failures

The OKR model talks about using stretch goals that are ambitious. This often adds unnecessary pressure on your team to meet 100% of the targets. I’ve seen people hide valuable learnings because it’s seen as a failure. This makes it difficult for the team to learn from mistakes and get better. That’s why it’s important to create a safe space where people can share challenges they’re experiencing on a project and reach out for support. Let your team know that this is a journey, not a do-or-die exercise. There are many things you’ll discover along the way and it’s okay to fail.

9. Check in regularly on progress

Don’t wait until the end of the quarter to check on your team’s progress. Define a cadence (bi-weekly or monthly) to review progress, address bottlenecks and make adjustments based on learnings. This will help build momentum and keep the activities relevant to the changing needs of the business. I’ve also found it useful to start check-ins with a presentation on the latest metrics; it helps everyone focus on what matters.

10. Stay flexible and agile

Business priorities change often and OKRs do too — especially for small startups. It’s important to stay agile through this process and adapt. You’ll find yourself adjusting targets and activities many times during the year based on new information. You may even decide to abandon objectives and targets because company priorities have shifted. Remember that this is a journey and the focus should be on continuous improvement, not on meeting static targets. Set these expectations early with your team and make sure they’re bought in on this mindset.

11. Overly communicate

When communicating goals with the team, you should start by explaining why they’re important; it’ll create buy-in and alignment. Starting with why will also help your team find creative solutions to the problems you set out to solve. Reinforce these goals to make sure people instinctively make decisions with them in mind. Don’t be afraid to sound repetitive! This is key to creating better alignment.

Next is to document everything, from project plans to decisions made. It’ll help keep everyone on the same page, especially stakeholders who may be removed from the day-to-day activities. As the team grows, new team members will also use this documentation to ramp up.

Key takeaways

Setting team goals can be a powerful exercise for your team when done correctly. Like many processes, it takes practice and discipline to properly execute. You’ll need to nail down communication, get the right people involved and preach an agile mindset. I hope the tips above help you in your next goal-setting exercise. Don’t hesitate to drop comments or ask any questions you may have, I’d love to help!