Traditional Goal Setting Methodology is Broken. Heres How to Fix it

Traditional Goal Setting Methodology is Broken. Here’s How to Fix it An effective goal setting process is a critical step in building the foundational skills of leadership in your employees. However, many organizations are having a hard time finding a method that aligns with their organizational needs. Many organizations are still using traditional goal-setting methods, which aren’t producing the desired results they hope to see. The traditional goal-setting method is largely managed through top-down corporate hierarchy and is often too slow to adjust to the rapid strategy pivots needed in an agile economy and workforce. These types of traditional goal-setting methods aren’t working in today’s modern workplace, and there are several reasons why your organization should consider a new approach to achieving organizational strategy and elevating leadership at every level of the company.   Traditional Goal Setting Problem #1: Cascading Goals Most traditional goal-setting practices are outdated in a knowledge-based workforce. Even some of the trendy new goal-setting methodologies are stuck in the old mindset of command-and-control goals, which may, or may not, have effectively worked in the traditional industrial workforce, but certainly aren’t as useful or efficient in today’s modern knowledge workplace. Organizations and leaders can no longer afford to be of the mindset that all of the answers and direction come from the C-Suite, passing down goals from on high, like Moses descending from the mountain top with a set of commandments.   Recommendation Today, good executive leadership sets corporate strategy by inviting team leaders, teams, and individual employees to determine what the most important strategy is for a given cycle of the business. They look for more than just vertical alignment to corporate goals, but also seek to promote and encourage horizontal alignment across teams. This is where the feedback of the first-hand experience and customer feedback is most relevant in setting meaningful goals. For goal-setting to be truly useful in today’s knowledge economy, individuals and teams should be interpreting the most critical business needs of their internal and external clients, then translating them into an organizational strategy. An excellent goal-setting process allows for robust, and often intense, conversations about the real business objective needed to be achieved before setting out to assess the measurable results of that goal. A good goal-setting method also includes discussions about the individual and team’s ability and/or motivation to pursue the goal. Motivation is a critical factor in setting goals and subtly affects the healthy pursuit of a goal, and it can cause significant collateral damage to leaders and organizations if not carefully considered, before, during, and after the pursuit of a goal at any level of a company.           Traditional Goal Setting Problem #2: The Culture Clash The most significant problem with any goal-setting methodology is that the company’s culture isn’t ready for it. Goal setting is hard work. It takes time to collaborate with teams and individuals to make sure everyone is clear about the objectives and the key results needed to achieve the objective. Confounding the culture clash through goal setting is the lack of goals that are aligned with the organization’s core mission, vision, and values. Mission, vision, and values are often promoted and hung from the walls throughout corporate hallways but rarely incorporated into how the company goes about its business. Taking time to discuss goals, let alone align them with the values of the organization, is time-consuming. Many organizations want to wave a magic wand and see goal-setting have a positive impact on their organization and bottom-line business results. However, if they don’t have the norms and conditions set in place to make goal-setting work, the process can be disconn ected from the purpose of your business.   Recommendation Make sure your organization has dedicated time, on a quarterly or tri-annual basis, to discuss, debate, and set meaningful, transparent goals that can be measured and evaluated on a regular cadence. Clear goals are the foundation of excellent performance, and leadership guidance should be a normal part of your organizational culturenot just a separate training of leadership skill sets. Set aside time for goal summits and values discussions at the start of every performance period. Make it part of the norm for individual contributors to take the time to align key personal and corporate values with the goals they are pursuing so they have a better understanding of why they are pursuing certain goals.   Traditional Goal Setting Problem #3: Out of Sight, Out of Mind Once goals are in place, many traditional methods only check back in at the end of their scheduled completion. Waiting once a year, or even once a quarter, for a manager to have important conversations about an individual’s progress, challenges, ability, and motivation to achieve the goal, isn’t going to give your employees the direction and support they need to achieve their goals. Without regular conversations about goals, there is little to no insight for managers or senior leaders to understand how the company is executing on their strategy. Recommendation Make sure the organization has regular check-in conversations on goals at the team and individual level. Companies that have regular One to One meetings between team leaders and team members to discuss the goals they are pursuing have higher levels of engagement and performance than organizations that do not have consistent conversations around goals. Seek to integrate your conversations through an effective performance management or goal setting software that integrates with other important Human Resource and Business Intelligence data platforms. Traditional Goal Setting Problem #4: A Lack of Understanding for the Art and Science of Goal Setting Another major issue facing the effective use of goal-setting methodology is that most managers and individuals haven’t been trained in setting proper and effective goals. It’s both an art: how you put together a goal, and science: how you’ll go about pursuing the goal. OKRs and SMART goals are simple approaches to an effective goal setting practice, but it takes some skill-building to master using those methods effectively. Many companies expect teams and individuals to have goals, but they do very little to train best practices in goal-setting methods.   Recommendation Having an intentional and consistent approach to goal-setting through the organization is the first step in having the practice adopted into the culture of an organization. It also sets the tone for performance throughout the organization. Without goals, it is challenging to evaluate performance objectively. Establish a dedicated training approach to onboard new employees in your organization’s goal-setting methodology, as well as keeping veteran employees up to date with best practices in setting and pursuing goals.   Traditional Goal Setting Problem #5: Big Goal Syndrome Most traditional goal-setting methods are annually focused. Annual goals are just too big and slow to pursue effectively in today’s knowledge economy. Reasonable goals are flexible, yet specific. They should aim for long-term success while remaining agile with the ability to continually assess performance in real-time, and include goals at a corporate, team, and individual level. Long-term goals are an effective plan for the future, but shorter, agile goals help increase the impact of measured progress toward the bigger picture strategy. Big Goals are much more complex to understand, pursue, and track over time. It can be difficult to understand the different levels of knowledge and motivation to pursue a goal if it has so many different elements caused by an annual pursuit of the desired objective.   Recommendation Agile goals describe a set of values and a process of achieving outcomes that evolve through small cycles of collaboration with in-tact or cross-functional teams. Performance goals are designed to measure, analyze, and improve over time. Quarterly corporate goals inform the real-time process towards long-term success. Shorter, agile goals maintain clear and consistent communication, define and maintain perspective, and sustain growth and autonomy in shorter and more achievable segments.   Traditional Goal Setting Problem #6: It’s All About the Money Finally, most traditional goal-setting methods only focus on financial numbers (How much did the company grow revenue? How much can we save financially in the next quarter?). Smart companies realize they have to go beyond financial goals to achieve a more desirable outcome with other important objectives (Why you’re pursuing the objective). Getting to the ‘why’ of an objective is more important than the ‘how’ or ‘what’ that goal produces.   While financial success is critical to the overall health and vitality of an organization, it’s not the only factor that should be considered when implementing a goal-setting methodology in your organization. Financial Key Results or Performance Indicators only tell part of the story. You could have stellar numbers related to your performance as a salesperson, but it could be completely dysfunctional in how you achieved those numbers. By only focusing on financial results, rather than process or solutions based results, you may be unintentionally undermining the vision and values of an organization and individuals if you only focus on financial success. Recommendation Great organizations, leaders, and individuals are as obsessed with a healthy process and high engagement for achieving objectives as much as healthy financial numbers. It’s not just what you achieve; it’s how you achieve it that matters. Today’s organizations need to extend their focus to setting goals for the culture of the company and the people themselves, rather than just the hard numbers the executive team is indebted to. As Behavioral Science begins to evolve and research efforts prove the profound effect meaning and purpose has at work, leaders also need to evolve with what we are learning about human behavior. Step into the 21st Century The old way of tracking goals, through spreadsheets or word of mouth, isn’t working in today’s evolving workforce. You need to train and develop your employees to effectively set and pursue goals in their own space and within their role while contributing to the larger organizational success. Organizations need to use modern technologies to make the goal-setting process seamless and proficient across the entire organization. With a structured goal-setting plan worked into your leadership development program, your leaders should establish goals that align with corporate values, individual roles, and team tasks. With various types and ways of goal-setting, it can be easy to lose focus on your desired outcome. It’s essential to remember what matters most when pursuing goals at every level of an organization. About the author:  Jason Arnold is the  Director of Leadership Solutions at  Inspire Software. Jason has more than 15 of experience training and developing leadership concepts in the classroom and virtual learning platforms. At Inspire, he helps integrate leadership philosophy into the Inspire software and introduced a new approach, Leadership as a Service, to the leadership development market. He has been mentored by some of the most recognized leadership and business book authors in the leadership development industry and is an experienced professional leadership facilitator and instructional designer in leadership theory and application. His passion for leadership began while working with the best-selling business author, Ken Blanchard, as a literary assistant and media director of a small internal media team that served Blanchard’s clients.

Creating an Online Creative Writing Publication Resume

Creating an Online Creative Writing Publication ResumeAn online creative writing publication resume is essential if you are to get the position you want. If you are applying for a job with an online creative writing publication then you should be able to get the position you want. In order to do this you should have a well-written, professional resume that showcases your ability and experience.If you want to get hired for a position with an online creative writing publication then you should know how to write a creative resume. There are some tips to help you in this regard and these tips will show you how to create a great resume. The first thing you should know is that you have to get yourself a resume template so that you can write your own resume.This will save you the time that you would normally spend on writing your own resume. A good resume should not only highlight your skills and accomplishments but it should also highlight your knowledge and experience. You should also thi nk about your hobbies and interests. Include all of these in your resume and try to have a strong and professional introduction that will show that you have the ability to handle yourself in different situations.You should know that a resume submitted by you to an online creative writing publication will probably be seen by many other people. Because of this, you need to ensure that you tailor your resume so that it is impressive to most people. You should start off with your qualifications, which should include details about your past jobs and details about your skills and experiences. You should also include some details about your hobbies and interests, so that it can be more convincing to the company.If you feel that you have done your research well and the writing and experience are well highlighted in your resume then you should consider sending the resume to the editor or a co-editor from a local newspaper. Make sure that you include the right contact information such as emai l address and telephone number so that you can easily get in touch with them.The main purpose of a resume is to get you a job so you should ensure that it is as impressive as possible. You should focus on the experience, qualifications and skills that you have got. You should try to highlight the skills and abilities that you have in your resume and leave out all of the details that might be irrelevant.An online creative writing publication resume is very important because the editor will be looking for specific details from you during the interview. By writing a resume that is professional and that highlights your abilities and knowledge and the responsibilities that you have taken then you will be getting the job you want. You should also make sure that the resume you send to the editor is brief and simple to read and you should not make it too long.One mistake that a lot of people make when they apply for an online publication is that they get too technical in their answers or th ey give too much details about themselves. This is not a good way to answer the questions of an editor. In order to get the position you want you should have a well structured and professional resume that showcases your ability and experience.

Moving from Disappointment to Success - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Moving from Disappointment to Success - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Have you ever felt like giving up? We tend to believe highly successful people are either born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they got lucky, or were brilliant from the moment of birth. They never had a bad day in their life. And then we wonder, “Why couldn’t we be that lucky?” Reality is sometimes quite different from what we initially perceive to be true. This is the reason why the better route is to build the relationship first in order to ask additional and deeper questions about the successful person’s path to success. By doing so, not only will the facts reveal themselves, but also, you may learn unique steps and strategies for more rapidly moving along your path for increased accomplishment. “Mike” is the perfect example of the type of success we see upfront. He worked very hard over the years building his business. Today we see him mixing with the affluent, having put several children through private college, and able to afford anything his heart desires. In fact, he will be selling his business at a fairly young age to contemplate the remainder of his life and what his next steps might be. Was it always this way for Mike? Absolutely not! Over time, trust built as we got to know one another well. And with great surprise, his deeply guarded secret was revealed. This is the best lesson everyone can learn from to make a difference in his or her own life. Mike’s secret is, upon graduating from college, he tried two different careers and did miserably at each. Some may even say Mike “failed” at his initial chosen endeavors. Had they been in Mike’s shows, they might possibly have given up to do something menial instead believing they were incapable for anything better. But Mike didn’t see these opportunities that didn’t work out in that light. The difference is Mike was motivated to succeed and used the power of positive thinking. In his moments of positive thinking, Mike chose to view his poor experiences as finding direction to a better path where he might excel. For him, the experiences were merely an elimination process to recognize and strengthen his top performing skill-set. And pursuing and strengthening his skills is exactly what he did by very gradually building his own highly successful business. Sometimes we view the saying, bad things happen for a reason, as a feel-good mantra to get over the pain more easily. But in fact, there is truth to that phrase. When we are able to look at circumstance not as failure but as a learning lesson to move on to the next idea or path, we are able to forgive ourselves for unintended error and to freely move on to find the success awaiting us. In the end, Mike built a solid personal brand with his ability to weed out what was not working for him to recognizing how to build a highly successful company. Once again, continual learning from poor and good circumstances, from others, and finding what will bring you greater reward, will put you on the wave of he Smooth Sale! Author: Elinor Stutz, CEO of  Smooth Sale,  (800) 704-1499; authored “INSPIRED Business A New View for Building Business and Communities”; “Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results”, and “HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews“. Elinor was designated as a “Top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012.”