Latest / Enhance.training / Why We Should Set Objectives for Our Team

Transcript

Why We Should Set Objectives for Our Team · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why we should set objectives for our team may seem obvious to some, yet many teams I started working with didn't have objectives or specific goals to achieve.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to go through why we should set objectives for teams and individuals and six key benefits that you, the team and the business get out of setting objectives.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of this podcast I share tips on how to use objectives to get great team results.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So keep listening.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles and I spent 25 years working in corporates and household names through to SMEs at all management levels.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've been involved in turning around businesses and team performance multiple times.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first things I do is set goals and objectives because it is so important to improving performance.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're new to this podcast, Enhanced.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues and visit us at enhanced.training.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest, setting good, useful objectives at team and individual level is time consuming, and it takes quite a bit of effort.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can understand why many managers, in effect, pay lip service to setting objectives, particularly if they have been told to set objectives but have not really been taken through why they should set objectives and how they can personally benefit.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or as individuals, you might think that objectives are just a management tool to measure my personal performance.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if I don't set objectives or I get away with vague objectives, I'm much better off.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with this approach is that you and your manager don't know when you've done a good or a great job either.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: At best you're stuck at average.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: As a manager, if you put minimal effort into setting objectives, then you'll have a nice piece of paper with a few headings on it, which will probably go into your drawer and be forgotten about until appraisal time.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: This really will be a waste of your time as you'll get next to nothing from setting objectives.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Setting objectives are only going to be useful to you as a manager of a team if you use them properly.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the video I summarise how to use objectives to get great team results.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: First, let's go through six great reasons why setting objectives is so useful to managers of teams no matter what size your team is, big or small.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is not an exhaustive list but it covers six key benefits.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So benefit one, objectives are great for setting expectations.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We all like to know what is expected of us.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of team members want to do as good a job as they can.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: If as a manager you set out what you think good looks like, in this case the objectives that are agreed, then each team member can work towards achieving the objectives knowing that doing so means they are doing a good job.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: If your manager has not set expectations, then you are not sure if you're doing a good job or not.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have no reference points to compare to where you are now.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of opportunities for disagreement and disappointment on both sides, which with no expectations being set.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you might think you're doing a good job by carefully working through 10 claims per day.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your manager might be thinking you're doing a poor job because the average claims handled each day is 20.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: If expectations had been set, you would probably spend less time on each claim, get it good enough rather than perfect, and deliver 20 claims per day.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Manager and the team member are both happier with expectations being clear and of course when they're being met.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: By setting expectations, certainly in my experience, you get more out of your team and it is easier to motivate the team towards meeting those expectations.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So set expectations clearly.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: The objective setting for individuals or teams is a formal way of setting expectations and capturing the goals incorporated in those expectations.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Benefit two.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Objectives create a focus or direction of travel for the team.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than each individual travelling in the direction that they think is best, which is probably going to be alter all points of the compass, you agree with the team through setting expectations that you're all going to travel in one direction, or a broad direction, they're going the same way.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: If everyone is going in their own direction, you'll have plenty of occasions in which one person or more is working in the opposite direction of others.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: This really hinders the team in collectively delivering more results, activities, and benefits for the company.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you had a sales team, you could let them create and convert all the opportunities they could be able to source themselves.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: This might easily mean that two or more salespeople contact the same potential customers.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: This could easily result in those customers being lost, particularly if the salespeople don't work together or even against each other to try and win the work.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So each salesperson could be organized around geography or a customer list or a sector or any other practical ways to split target customers.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Objectives and goals for each person in the sales team would then formally capture this split.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another example could be a finance team having to increase the cash of a business, and this would be their key team objective.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Those managing the customer invoices could be targeted with getting invoices out earlier.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those in credit control could be targeted with collecting more money to the payment terms agreed with each customer.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole team could be targeted with resolving customer queries more quickly and so on.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Each of these individual steps helps the team goal of creating more cash for the business.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Creating a common goal or objective means that all members of the team can have individual goals and objectives supporting the common team goal.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: This makes it much more likely that the team goal will be reached quicker and with less effort, which is better for everyone.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Create a clear objective or several objectives and then tell the team how to get to that objective.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: This creates focus and you and the team will deliver more as a result.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Benefit three.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Objectives coordinate activities across a business, particularly those larger ones.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: As businesses get bigger and employ more people, it becomes harder to coordinate the activities of one part of the business with another part of the business.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Setting objectives and goals is a very good way of helping coordinate activities so that departments and teams support each other rather than cause problems in other parts of the business.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's use the classic trade-off between sales and finance departments within a business as an example.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sales teams are tasked with making more sales and therefore driving revenues.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Finance teams are tasked with making the business more profit and cash.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Without a common objective, the sales team might go out and win loads of contracts.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those contracts would make a profit and some might make a loss.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: The sales team would be over the moon and the finance team would be having an absolute nightmare.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: The business might even fail with this approach, with both teams losing their jobs.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: There have been plenty of real life examples of companies failing because of exactly this dynamic being set up.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: If a common objective were agreed with both teams and both teams work together, the company would be much better off, and indirectly, so are both teams.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Say the objective was for both teams to win contracts with a profit of at least 15%.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: If they did this, then both teams would be doing well.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Overall sales might, but not definitely be lower, because the sales team would say no to contracts they might previously have accepted, but profits would definitely be higher.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Both teams would keep their jobs, and the finance team could help the sales team by providing information, analysis and modelling to help the sales team select the profitable contracts.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen the above example work really well, and we grew a business from a hundred million turnover to over 500 million turnover in four years as a result of working closely together with different skill sets being bought into the same team.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Use objectives and goals to coordinate activities and projects across multiple teams.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: This in turn will improve the overall performance of the business.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Benefit four.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Set objectives to create personal and team accountability.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Creating accountability and visibility within a team usually improves the performance of the team or business, sometimes dramatically.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: A fundamental step in creating accountability within a team is to set and agree goals and objectives with the team members.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: You need to set goals so you can measure progress against the goals set and understand if you are on track, ahead of a plan or behind.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have objectives, then you simply don't have any reference points to compare against.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: You are also likely to have quite different individual performances between people with the same jobs.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some will be poor, some will be good, etc.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you have goals and accountability, then performance is a lot more likely to be consistently higher.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most employees don't like failing or being last, for instance.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how to create accountability in Teams, then take a look at our podcast on creating accountability in teams.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Benefit five.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Setting objectives helps drive team performance.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Setting goals or objectives and using them properly will help increase the performance of individuals and teams.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen this time and time again.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Building accountability is part of this, and throughout our education and life we are trained to reach goals, grades at school, winning sports games, etc.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people strive to reach goals and get satisfaction from doing so.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Businesses further incentivize staff with rewards to hitting targets.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Setting objectives taps into both of these.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: A very simple example.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Say you're a digital marketeer and you've been told that you will get a£5,000 bonus if you achieve your objective of generating£250,000 of sales for product X with a marketing budget of£45,000.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Say if you are at I don't know£214,000 at the moment with 60 days to go, the chances are that you will work harder to get to your£250,000.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You might create additional variants for your adverts and do one more test each day, thus improving the performance of your sales funnel more quickly.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: This helps you get to your bonus and the company is also much better off because they get more sales and profits.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most team members want to do a good job.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Setting a goal they agree with and own will help create better performance from that person.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Rewards will further incentivize staff members to perform well.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Set objectives to help drive individual and team performance.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Benefit six.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Achieving goals provides a basis to reward team members.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you have objectives and goals, rewarding the team members or teams that reach their goals is common practice, thus reinforcing the benefits to individuals for achieving their objectives.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of ways to reward individuals.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: You could have private praise, or you could have public praise and recognition.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: You could award non-monetary prizes, or you could provide bonuses, or you could provide promotions, of course, or access to other events, or access to better projects.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: The list goes on and it's as long as your imagination.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We all want recognition for good work and good behaviour.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is a fundamental part of human culture and motivation.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So make good use of it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Take the time to praise staff for good work and behaviour when deserved.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Think of lots of different ways to reward staff that do well and create additional value for the team and the company.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: As a tip, create multiple levels of goals rather than just one goal.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we think back to the digital marketeer example we used earlier, they currently had a£5,000 bonus if they hit£250k of sales.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you could also add a say if they got to£300,000 of sales, they could have a£10,000 bonus.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: If they got to£350,000 of sales, maybe you give them a£20,000 bonus and so on.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: By having multiple levels, you can offer increasingly bigger and more valuable rewards, which keeps the employees striving for the next level.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: By using this multi-tiered approach, you increase overall performance over and above the much more common all-or-nothing reward schemes.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: With one target schemes, once you have reached the reward level, you are much less incentivized to continue working hard.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So as promised at the start of the podcast, I'm going to share some practical tips of how to, as a manager, use objectives to drive better team performance.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, if you forget about the objectives, then your team will too.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you and the team have chosen your objectives, make sure they're visible.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, put a poster on the wall, maybe in somewhere that the team walks past regularly.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you're constantly reminding them what we need to achieve in terms of our objectives.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or bring up the objectives in each team meeting to remind the team.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, measure progress against the team objectives and make this visible.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about what we can do as a team to improve progress on getting to our goals.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say make it visible, you know you could share progress against objectives every month and send it around as an email, you could incorporate it into your team meeting, you can use it in a hundred different ways.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The most important thing is that you share this information regularly with the team.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, when you're meeting with team members in your one-to-one catch-ups, your private catch-ups, go through the individual's objectives and discuss progress and any problems delivering it against those objectives.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal is to coach and mentor them to reach their objectives.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Think of any other ways that you can remind the team members about their objectives without appearing to be micromanaging them.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then do your best to help them achieve their objectives.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: The more emphasis you put on meeting objectives, then the more focus the team will put on achieving their objectives.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, you must work equally hard at hitting your own personal objectives if you want the team to hit theirs.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You are the leader and what you do sets the tone for the team.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that gives you quite a few practical tips of how to ensure that you use your objectives to drive team performance and individual performance.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So in summary, when you set objectives, you are setting expectations and providing guidance to team members of what is expected of them.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Setting objectives is a very important step to improve performance in teams and businesses.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Without taking this step, it is much harder to increase accountability and ownership to actually drive and deliver results.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: By setting objectives, you can measure progress towards objectives and give everyone a very clear picture of where they are compared to the objectives that have been set.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can then reward individuals and teams who meet and pass their objectives or goals.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: This creates a win-win situation for the staff and the company.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do take a look at our podcast on how to set team objectives, where I take you through a more detailed step-by-step approach to practically set objectives for teams and individuals.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy managing and leading your team.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And do visit us at enhance.training and take a look at the courses and resources to help you manage your team more effectively.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.