Monthly Archives: September 2022

Most people are not passionate about the goals they set at work or in their personal life. They set goals that are expected, including basic production and productivity goals, goals around hours of professional development, or perhaps the annual personal goals of eating healthier, losing weight, and hitting the gym three times a week.

These goals become rote or routine. Just as easily as they are set on New Year or at an annual goal setting meeting at work, they tend to slip out of focus until something pops up, like a quarterly review or a trip to the doctor.

One of the main reasons these goals fall to the wayside is they are not in alignment with our passions. There is no internal motivation to increase your productivity or to eat healthy, but there can be if you tap into your areas of passion and interests.

The Importance of Passion

Passion creates a natural curiosity about a subject, idea, value, belief, or learning opportunity. Passion is more than just a passing interest, it is a deep need to understand more, to take in knowledge, and to experience things that you find interesting and motivating.

When people are passionate about a subject area or interest, they find the time to work on this part of their life. If they are passionate about health, they will get up earlier to walk, run, or go to the gym. If they are passionate about photography, they take courses and learn as much as they can about the art and the science of taking great pictures. They are willing to make their area or areas of passion and interest a priority, and they do not have to be reminded or enticed to do it.

Passion is a driving force that keeps us moving forward. We can be passionate about things in our personal and professional life, and often those things overlap, allowing us to tap into that passion to help us achieve our goals.

The First Steps

The first step in setting goals you are passionate about is to write down your interests and what naturally motivates you to achieve your goals. Then, incorporate those goals into your life, even if they are not work related.

This integration of passion goals for your personal life will create a positive experience. It helps us to remember that goals are not just about work; they help is in all aspects of our life. Aligning our values, passions, and goals personally is the best motivation possible to achieve what we desire.

Well-written and well-developed KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are a simple and effective way to quantify progress on a specific project or goal. Similar to mile markers on a highway, they provide a clear, measurable map of progress on the things that are important for a given project, job, or corporate report.

Metrics are simply the way things are measured. For example, a metric could be a dollar value in sales, time on a project, new leads, or any number of other measurable data points. Think of metrics as the way to measure the progress towards the KPIs.

Developing Great KPIs and Metrics

The key to developing great KPIs is to choose an objective way to determine if an employee, manager, leader, team, or the company as a whole is moving towards their long-term goals.

The choice of a specific metric that can be used to quantify changes in performance toward meeting a strategic goal is important. The metric must specifically track that KPI to be an accurate reflection of change. The more this tracking can be automated, the more accurate the results. At the same time, automation for tracking (metrics) reduces the time the employees and the team require to process the data and creating meaningful analytic reports.

For example, a company could set a KPI for increasing productivity from the current level to X amount. The metric used could include units produced per minute, with the goal to increase by a specific number of units per minute within a given time. Different innovations, strategies, systems, or shifts can be compared to find out the most productive combinations to put in place across the company.

Starting With a Baseline

Having a baseline measurement is essential to determine reasonable KPIs. The baseline is where the individual, team, or company sits at this point in time. In the example above, it would be the production per minute with the current system configuration and processes in place.

This baseline is essential in determining progress over time. KPIs can be set on an annual, semi-annual, or quarterly basis. Some companies may even set weekly and monthly KPIs.

Teams and individuals can use the same process, choosing objective, quantifiable measures to monitor their progress. Sharing KPIs, metrics, and results is an effective way to communicate results to the team or the company as a whole. When the process is clear and transparent, everyone knows the goals, how they will be measured, and what is expected to achieve those goals.

Regular recording and analysis of metrics helps a company see patterns in productivity, sales, and even in customer engagement throughout the year. Knowing these patterns is essential in annual planning to optimize the use of resources and maximize revenue.

The fourth quarter of the year is always one of the most demanding, with the annual performance review just around the corner. With most people setting their professional and personal goals in the first quarter of the year, this is the perfect time to review those goals and make any necessary adjustments.

One of the most effective ways to have a great fourth quarter is to clearly understand your objectives and KPIs. This could include changing goals to meet the realities of the economy, changes in consumer habits, or other factors that may not have been known or anticipated when the goals were developed at the beginning of the year.

Celebrating and Adding New Goals

It is very likely that some goals may have been met at this point. This is a time to celebrate and recognize your achievement in meeting the goals in advance of the planned schedule. Sometimes, recognizing that a goal is met helps you to reallocate your time, energy, and resources into focusing on goals that are not met. This is true for both individuals as well as teams.

This is a great time to look at new short-term goals or to add a stretch goal. Stretch goals are designed to create a goal that is above the expected standards. They are designed to be challenging, and adding to a goal that is already met provides additional inspiration and motivation to work towards a level of top performance.

While stretch goals should be designed to be high-effort goals, they shouldn’t be impossible to achieve. It is a balance between pushing yourself and setting a goal that becomes impossible to meet and frustrating to consider. When setting a stretch goal, think of stepping outside of your comfort zone or creating a goal that challenges how you currently complete a task. Stretch goals are great for those who thrive on challenges and enjoy trying new, innovative, and creative things.

A Review

Evaluating yourself before the start of the fourth quarter is also an opportunity to see if you are working on all of the goals you set in the past three quarters. Are there areas where you are falling behind? Do some aspects of the current goals need to change? Do you need to have additional resources, support, or time to complete your goals?

The fourth quarter often seems to pass very quickly. Checking to see that you are in alignment with your short and long-term goals for this year takes a small amount of time but also helps you to address any areas where you may need to focus.

It may be hard to believe, but the last quarter of the year is almost here. This is the time for leaders to check in with their team members and provide the support, practical guidance, and the assistance needed to help them succeed.

Get the Ball Rolling

Leaders can proactively help their team to review their quarterly goals. As this is the last quarter, team members and leaders may need to make adjustments based on what has happened and the anticipated results over the next three months.

Many employees and leaders create their goals and fail to review them periodically. It is easy to overlook specific goals or to make the assumption everything needed is in place to help to meet those goals. Rather than wait until the mid or late fourth quarter, reviewing your plan and making the necessary changes helps to facilitate growth, succeed in meeting goals, or even adding some stretch goals in one or more areas.

Resources Required

This advanced review is the perfect time for managers and leaders to sit down one-on-one with employees for review. As a collaborative process, it is helpful to provide the employees with the opportunity to ask for specific resources that may be required to meet their goals.

Often these resources include additional training or support. Opening up the discussion allows the team member to articulate what they need and discuss the possible options. Perhaps this means sending the employee to training, creating the opportunity to job shadow a senior team member, or even creating a coaching or mentoring relationship to provide personalized support.

Goal Revisions

Occasionally, team members may have set lofty goals that are simply not achievable. Downturns in the economy, lingering issues with the pandemic, and changes in the economic climate over the last year can have unintended negative repercussions. If this is the case, reworking the goals now rather than facing a poor quarterly or annual performance review is a very wise decision. Leadership can guide this conversation and create a positive, open, and honest discussion and goal revision activity on an individual basis.

Approaching this proactively and in a collaborative way with the team member creates a very different dynamic than telling the employee or team member what needs to change. The employee feels supported and has the ability to request the resources needed to allow them to achieve their goals or restructure their goals for success.