4 Tips on how to achieve aspirational targets in organisations
None of us like to fail. So we have learnt it is safer to set easy targets and avoid failure. This happens often in organisations where going for aspirational targets could be setting yourself (and your team) up for criticism or a smaller slice of the bonus pie if you do not achieve your performance targets. We look around and learn from others that it’s better to game the system and go for safe targets you can manipulate and achieve, than to go for aspirational targets you could miss.
What I have found however is that aiming high, even when you don’t achieve your aspirational goals, produces higher performance overall and builds confidence in your team to deliver outcomes that go way beyond the results from achieving safe mediocre goals. We get some clues as to why this happens from Dan Pink’s classic book Drive, in which he summarises research done over more than forty years that points to three core drivers of human motivation and high performance – the human need for autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Aspirational goals have the potential to meet some of these human needs in ways that safe targets don’t. But as a leader you need to approach aspirational goals in ways that are most likely to unleash people’s drive and potential to deliver the kind of results that Michelangelo hinted at.
Ambitious targets, by their very nature, are harder to achieve – so how can you increase your chances of success? This week I thought I would share four tips on how to set aspirational performance targets and lift the performance and engagement of your team and achieve outcomes you might have thought too high and unachievable.
Tip 1: Start with the customers’ and front line staff’s pain points
People are highly social beings and most share a common motivation to make a positive contribution to others in their community. For most organisations that means customers.
How well an organisation is succeeding in adding value to its customers and community is most clear at the front line. All the systems, processes and work of people in the organisation come together at the front line to reveal how well the organisation is functioning in its basic task of delivering value to customers. The front line of service delivery is where you will find the best information on the outcomes that need to improve and the greatest untapped human potential to help you make this happen – from customers and front line staff and their supervisors.
So for anyone wanting to aim for transformational change or for significant organisational performance improvement, understanding the issues of front line staff in delivering services to customers and using their energy and insights for delivering better performance is a way to create transformational targets that people are likely to buy in to and that will make a real difference to your business. By unleashing the energy in people to deliver exponentially better performance in the cause of something they care about, achieving aspirational targets becomes easier.
Tip 2: Engage influencers and shift mindsets about what is possible
People’s life experiences shape their beliefs about what is possible and often result in them setting targets too low.
Over the years I have learnt that much of what people think is impossible is actually possible with the right mindset and leadership. So part of the role of a good leader during change is to create the opportunities for people to step out of their normal constraining world views, see what others have already done, and challenge their assumptions about what is possible. This helps to shift mindsets and break down barriers and beliefs and opens up insights that make the impossible possible.
To make change easier, I ask myself early in a change process - who or what has already solved this kind of problem somewhere before, how can I find them and can I use that experience to accelerate my change more easily. When people see what others have done and find out their solutions can be borrowed, adapted or bought to accelerate their own change, the boundaries of the possible start to shift, and change becomes easier and quicker.
People then bring the stories about what they have seen back to their workgroups and the thinking starts to expand about how they could achieve those aspirational goals more easily.
I have been in change programs where we adapted or used solutions from other industries and used business models and customer service solutions and work practices that were new to our own sector but had been operating successfully in another sector for over a decade. The silos between industry sectors, organisations or functions are major opportunity areas for transformational performance improvement.
Customers deal with a wide range of service providers across sectors and see trends earlier than people operating within the confines of organizational roles. So engaging customers, or prospective customers, to bring fresh eyes and their experience to accelerate solution design is a technique used in globally renowned models for innovative solution design like Design Thinking and Blue Ocean Strategy. Use it yourself to make your change easier.
Tip 3: Create a clear compelling vision that creates focus & tackles entrenched system & culture issues
One of the quotes I remember from early in my career is:
“You have the goal and then you see – you do not see first.” Human beings have an amazing ability to focus in on a goal and achieve it - if it makes sense to them and they care about it.
A compelling simple vision that creates a clear picture of what success looks like is a hugely powerful tool to focus people on what is important. The most effective vision like this I have used was a simple plan on a page (with lots of white space) that we called our organisational DNA. It described the vision, values, strategy, deliverables and success measures and a simple business model diagram. I used this often to tell the simple story to staff, suppliers, and other stakeholders about what we were aiming to achieve, and to help people make choices about which path to choose during change and where our priorities should be.
A compelling vision that people buy in to provides a focus for achieving aspirational targets and unleashes human beings’ enormous goals-directed problem solving ability.
Tip 4: Make change leader-led and find quick wins that empower staff to make a difference
Because people take most notice of their immediate group and manager, aspirational goals need to be understood and owned at the local workgroup level by leaders and translated into opportunities for people in the group to contribute to some meaningful relevant quick wins. This creates a sense of empowerment that shows people they can make a difference and encourages more contribution and willingness to contribute further to goals.
Unfortunately, research shows that most leaders, even in the top executive team of organisations, cannot remember or explain their organisation’s strategic priorities and goals and how they fit together to make targeted outcomes important for their team. Unless leaders can make sense of goals and create a workplace where people see the importance of the goals and how they can contribute, it is unlikely aspirational goals will be achieved.
Quick wins, managed well, help embed an understanding and create a sense of empowerment in a group and a workplace that builds confidence to achieve the goals. Leaders will usually need help to get the ball rolling in this process, but once started, the positive results will snowball and gain a life of their own.
So to position yourself for success when you aim high, start with following these four tips:
This will create a workplace where people buy into aspirational goals and see they have the opportunity to contribute and make a difference. Providing the reinforcement of some quick wins in areas that are important to staff and support your goals will build confidence and an eagerness to contribute energy and ideas. With this approach people will not be condemned to aiming for mediocrity or uninspiring goals but will have the satisfaction of striving for outcomes that help them learn and grow as people and achieve outcomes that give purpose and meaning to their work lives.
Susan Kehoe
Consultant | Advisor | Change Leader
Work with Susan
Susan specialises in people-focused strategy development and implementation, people and culture, human resource management, and transformation and change. She brings practical experience and thought leadership gained from many years of leading successful performance improvement and change in some of Australia’s leading businesses and government.
What I have found however is that aiming high, even when you don’t achieve your aspirational goals, produces higher performance overall and builds confidence in your team to deliver outcomes that go way beyond the results from achieving safe mediocre goals. We get some clues as to why this happens from Dan Pink’s classic book Drive, in which he summarises research done over more than forty years that points to three core drivers of human motivation and high performance – the human need for autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Aspirational goals have the potential to meet some of these human needs in ways that safe targets don’t. But as a leader you need to approach aspirational goals in ways that are most likely to unleash people’s drive and potential to deliver the kind of results that Michelangelo hinted at.
Ambitious targets, by their very nature, are harder to achieve – so how can you increase your chances of success? This week I thought I would share four tips on how to set aspirational performance targets and lift the performance and engagement of your team and achieve outcomes you might have thought too high and unachievable.
Tip 1: Start with the customers’ and front line staff’s pain points
People are highly social beings and most share a common motivation to make a positive contribution to others in their community. For most organisations that means customers.
How well an organisation is succeeding in adding value to its customers and community is most clear at the front line. All the systems, processes and work of people in the organisation come together at the front line to reveal how well the organisation is functioning in its basic task of delivering value to customers. The front line of service delivery is where you will find the best information on the outcomes that need to improve and the greatest untapped human potential to help you make this happen – from customers and front line staff and their supervisors.
So for anyone wanting to aim for transformational change or for significant organisational performance improvement, understanding the issues of front line staff in delivering services to customers and using their energy and insights for delivering better performance is a way to create transformational targets that people are likely to buy in to and that will make a real difference to your business. By unleashing the energy in people to deliver exponentially better performance in the cause of something they care about, achieving aspirational targets becomes easier.
Tip 2: Engage influencers and shift mindsets about what is possible
People’s life experiences shape their beliefs about what is possible and often result in them setting targets too low.
Over the years I have learnt that much of what people think is impossible is actually possible with the right mindset and leadership. So part of the role of a good leader during change is to create the opportunities for people to step out of their normal constraining world views, see what others have already done, and challenge their assumptions about what is possible. This helps to shift mindsets and break down barriers and beliefs and opens up insights that make the impossible possible.
To make change easier, I ask myself early in a change process - who or what has already solved this kind of problem somewhere before, how can I find them and can I use that experience to accelerate my change more easily. When people see what others have done and find out their solutions can be borrowed, adapted or bought to accelerate their own change, the boundaries of the possible start to shift, and change becomes easier and quicker.
People then bring the stories about what they have seen back to their workgroups and the thinking starts to expand about how they could achieve those aspirational goals more easily.
I have been in change programs where we adapted or used solutions from other industries and used business models and customer service solutions and work practices that were new to our own sector but had been operating successfully in another sector for over a decade. The silos between industry sectors, organisations or functions are major opportunity areas for transformational performance improvement.
Customers deal with a wide range of service providers across sectors and see trends earlier than people operating within the confines of organizational roles. So engaging customers, or prospective customers, to bring fresh eyes and their experience to accelerate solution design is a technique used in globally renowned models for innovative solution design like Design Thinking and Blue Ocean Strategy. Use it yourself to make your change easier.
Tip 3: Create a clear compelling vision that creates focus & tackles entrenched system & culture issues
One of the quotes I remember from early in my career is:
“You have the goal and then you see – you do not see first.” Human beings have an amazing ability to focus in on a goal and achieve it - if it makes sense to them and they care about it.
A compelling simple vision that creates a clear picture of what success looks like is a hugely powerful tool to focus people on what is important. The most effective vision like this I have used was a simple plan on a page (with lots of white space) that we called our organisational DNA. It described the vision, values, strategy, deliverables and success measures and a simple business model diagram. I used this often to tell the simple story to staff, suppliers, and other stakeholders about what we were aiming to achieve, and to help people make choices about which path to choose during change and where our priorities should be.
A compelling vision that people buy in to provides a focus for achieving aspirational targets and unleashes human beings’ enormous goals-directed problem solving ability.
Tip 4: Make change leader-led and find quick wins that empower staff to make a difference
Because people take most notice of their immediate group and manager, aspirational goals need to be understood and owned at the local workgroup level by leaders and translated into opportunities for people in the group to contribute to some meaningful relevant quick wins. This creates a sense of empowerment that shows people they can make a difference and encourages more contribution and willingness to contribute further to goals.
Unfortunately, research shows that most leaders, even in the top executive team of organisations, cannot remember or explain their organisation’s strategic priorities and goals and how they fit together to make targeted outcomes important for their team. Unless leaders can make sense of goals and create a workplace where people see the importance of the goals and how they can contribute, it is unlikely aspirational goals will be achieved.
Quick wins, managed well, help embed an understanding and create a sense of empowerment in a group and a workplace that builds confidence to achieve the goals. Leaders will usually need help to get the ball rolling in this process, but once started, the positive results will snowball and gain a life of their own.
So to position yourself for success when you aim high, start with following these four tips:
- Start with the customers’ and front line staff’s pain points
- Engage influencers and shift mindsets about what is possible
- Create a clear compelling vision that creates focus & tackles entrenched system & culture issues
- Make change leader-led and find quick wins that empower staff to make a difference.
This will create a workplace where people buy into aspirational goals and see they have the opportunity to contribute and make a difference. Providing the reinforcement of some quick wins in areas that are important to staff and support your goals will build confidence and an eagerness to contribute energy and ideas. With this approach people will not be condemned to aiming for mediocrity or uninspiring goals but will have the satisfaction of striving for outcomes that help them learn and grow as people and achieve outcomes that give purpose and meaning to their work lives.
Susan Kehoe
Consultant | Advisor | Change Leader
Work with Susan
Susan specialises in people-focused strategy development and implementation, people and culture, human resource management, and transformation and change. She brings practical experience and thought leadership gained from many years of leading successful performance improvement and change in some of Australia’s leading businesses and government.