A. Agree on Goals and Key Results

Beyond SMART Goals

Goals are not only assessed based on the SMART criteria. Another factor that you need to consider when helping your remote workers set their goals is the type of goal. There are two types of goals that employers and employees must set regardless of the nature of the business or the role of an individual. These are Outcome and Process Goals.

 

Outcome Goals

Outcome goals give you an idea as to how the result of your efforts should be. They define what needs to get done and what the team is working on.  First, you need to agree on outcomes. What will failure look like? Describe the overall customer experience. Once goals are in place, your team should decide on three components:

1. Actions. What steps should be taken to achieve these goals? It should include key ideas, contingencies, checkpoints for monitoring the work, guidelines for keeping stakeholders informed, and who needs to sign off on each stage.
2. Deadlines. When will each step be taken? Work backward from the final due date, estimate how long each step will take, and allow buffer time.
3. Metrics. How will the team measure progress? What are the criteria for completion? You may gauge financial performance, productivity, and quality. Metrics spur members of the team to work hard but they will discourage people if they are not within reach. They also need to be specific to avoid multiple interpretations.
   

 

Process Goals

Process goals describe how the team works together. the team’s approach to working together. They direct how individuals do the work and interact with one another.

Clear process goals allow you to blend individual team members into one cohesive unit. Due to a diversified team, each member probably has a different understanding of what teamwork means and how to collaborate, their different styles and preferences.

You need to define team culture by addressing the following:

1. What will it feel like to work with the team? Inclusive or dictatorial? Mutual respect or backstabbing or political alliances? Optimistic or pessimistic? Supportive or competitive?
2. What will the relationship look like? Equal or hierarchical? Open or closed? Trusting or suspicious? Social and personal or all-business?
3. What do we want from those relationships? Get the task done or develop long-term connections? Divide and conquer tasks with minimal interaction or learn from and mentor one another?
4.  What do we value? Speed or accuracy? Take risks or comply? Innovate or build on core strengths?

A team’s culture evolves whether you talk about it or not, so it is better to spell out what you’re aiming for, giving people the opportunity to reject undesirable behaviours. Otherwise, you will evolve in the wrong direction. It is important to incorporate personal goals into your process goals. Otherwise, members of your team may act on their personal interests instead of the group’s.

How to start the conversation about process goals?

Recall best and worst team experiences. Call out common themes and build your goals around them. Be mindful of people’s personalities as they influence the types of relationships they want with team members and what qualities they value in team settings.

Tap into team members’ aspirations and styles.

Once you’ve established process goals, keep reinforcing them. Mention them during meetings. Include them in company emails or post them in common areas. Doing so can help avoid reverting to old behaviours and veering away from agreed upon ways of operating. Review process goals regularly.

 

Attributes of Well-Defined Goals

Setting clear goals is the starting point of performance management. Working with your remote workers to establish targets help ensure that the time and energy spent are not wasted. Doing so enhances motivation and performance and promotes accountability. Agreeing on specific targets is only part of the goal setting process. You must also define how your remote workers’ progress towards these objectives will be evaluated as well as how to measure results and gauge behavioural expectations. You also have to work with your remote workers in establishing a set of goals that suit them.

But before you start your goal setting session, know the characteristics of a well-defined goal:

1. Aligned with your organisation’s strategy and are beneficial to the company. Your remote workers focus their time, energy, and resources on things that really matter.
2. Specific and measurable. You and your remote workers will know whether goals have been achieved or not.
3. Framed in time and with clear deadlines. Setting deadlines can help ensure that your remote workers can achieve their goals.
4. Achievable yet challenging. Stretch goals energise remote workers.
5. Future-focused. They should be geared towards improving current performance and spurring future growth.
6. Tailored to each member of your team. Your remote workers will feel a sense of ownership and become more naturally committed to the things they own, which in this case, is their goal.
7. Documented and not forgotten. Keep objectives in mind at all times and assess them regularly to avoid burying them in a file cabinet somewhere.

These characteristics of a well-established goal will help ensure that your direct reports focus their time and resources on the results that will most benefit the organization while still providing room for individual growth.

 

Power of Stretch Goals

• Setting realistic and achievable goals can be good for the morale of your remote team. However, realistic and achievable do not necessarily mean simple and easy to do. Goals as such can also be challenging, stretching your remote workers’ capabilities a little more than usual. Establishing stretch goals, for instance, can be quite rewarding despite the great risks these goals pose.
• Stretch goals are not your average challenging endeavour. They are extremely difficult to achieve and something no one else has ever attempted. There’s a reason they are referred to as “stretch” because they will require you to try and reach sky-high expectations. Besides working harder than ever for these goals, you will have to work differently as well as they require you to take the road no one has ever taken.
  
• Despite the level of difficulty and novelty of achieving stretch goals, research says that a lot of companies are attempting them. However, it is quite rare for these goals to be used successfully, and failure to achieve stretch goals have resulted in dire consequences in morale, motivation, and performance. Here are some possible consequences you should keep in mind:
  

1. Burnout. Suffering a great loss after working beyond their limit can be devastating for your remote workers. As the loss sinks in, they start doubting their capabilities. They lose the confidence to do a good job. As a result, they feel afraid to take risks next time and just play safe with their decisions and actions.
2.  Unnecessary Risks. Failing to achieve a stretch goal can also have an opposite effect. Instead of becoming too careful with their actions and decisions, your remote workers may become reckless and take more risks than they already do. They may become too obsessed with hitting the target goal that they lose sight of its objective.
3. Unethical Behaviour. High expectations can cause extreme stress and anxiety to your remote workers. They may become too desperate at a certain point while working on achieving a stretch goal. When that happens, they may not just take excessive risks, but also resort to any means possible, even illegal, unethical, or unacceptable ones.  

That being said, stretch goals are not impossible to achieve given the right conditions. Successfully achieving seemingly impossible goals rides on two major factors.

 

The right momentum

The right time for setting stretch goals is right after achieving a major goal of successfully completing a series of projects. During this time, team members are in high spirits. They possess a positive attitude, are more ambitious, and motivated than ever. In other words, taking on stretch goals require strength, so teams with weak results and dejected remote workers are not advised to jump the gun and begin working on stretch goals.

 

The right amount of resources

If your company has more than enough resources such as money, time, manpower, knowledge, experience, and equipment, then you are ready to take on stretch goals. You have the luxury to experiment, explore possibilities, and remain committed without worrying about your finances. It is not just about securing funds; it is more about having the confidence and freedom to go test out ideas and act on decisions.

When achieved, stretch goals will inspire your remote workers to stay committed, put in more effort, and perform beyond expectations. Just make sure that you gauge your company’s and employees’ overall readiness.

 

So, should you take on stretch goals now?

Pursue stretch goals if you are running a thriving company. Surprisingly, companies who are in the best position to aim for stretch goals experience what we call risk aversion. They feel reluctant to take risks, thinking that they should not do anything to avoid losing what they have gained. As a result, they miss out on high-potential opportunities. If you feel uncomfortable making a risky move, ask yourself this question: “What could we possibly lose if we do not take advantage of this opportunity? It is just a matter of perspective.

Hold off plans of taking on stretch goals if your company has no recent success. Paradoxically, poorly performing companies are more inclined to pursue stretch goals despite not having slack resources and recent achievements. Research shows that those who are struggling have a tendency to seek risks and be more aggressive with their decisions and actions. Know that overcoming a recent failure by pursuing stretch goals will not help you turn things around, so resist the temptation and think things through

 

Nevertheless, this does not mean that there is nothing you can do to achieve anything remarkable. There are alternatives to pursuing stretch goals if you are not in the position to take bigger risks. You can pursue small wins and losses and continuously build your slack resources.

By pursuing small wins, you can build your momentum, energy, and resources. It will prepare you for more ambitious goals later on.

Experiment with new ways of doing things that are mildly risky and may result in small losses. They can be considered as “mini-stretch goals”. Pursuing these goals will be a great learning experience for you because you will get to identify which methods work, should be improved, or not viable. It also builds resilience and confidence, albeit little by little.

Building your slack resources can be done in two ways. You can either form an alliance with a more successful partner or enhance your existing resources by setting learning goals that can eventually result in better performance downstream.