With a team comes various dreams, objectives and aspirations. It also comes with different characters, personalities and capabilities. It is therefore important to set objectives and goals as a team.
Team objectives are important for any organisation that wants to grow and make their employees work their best. Team members are able to focus on their best selves towards the achieving the ultimate objective of the company.
These objectives are performance targets that largely depend on the input from every team member. The most effective team objectives are developed jointly with the team and coordinated with overall organisational objectives.
Here is a guide to set team objectives:
Put the company first
Even while it is a good idea for your team objectives to contribute to the overall corporate objective, you should make an effort to ensure that the team is aware of them before you establish your own team objectives. Finding out what the firm wants to accomplish is the first step in creating successful team goals.
As the owner or manager, you can get started by identifying the areas where the company is deficient and establishing an objective to address them. Alternately, you may begin by deciding what objectives you want the company to achieve over the coming days, weeks, months, and years.
In any case, make sure the objectives are challenging without being unachievable for your team. This makes it simpler to determine what each team will do and how to do it best.
Set SMART goals
Over the years, businesses have been adopting the Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound (SMART) strategy towards setting and achieving goals. This strategy helps businesses examine and analyse if their approach is Specific.
Your chances of success increase with how specific your objective is. It also dictates how targeted your efforts will be. For example, ‘increase quarterly sales by 25%’ is more specific than ‘increase sales’. This helps to create an action plan that will utilise strategies to produce results specific to this objective.
You must also consider the measurability of this objective. It can be tempting to set broad objectives like “have more fun” or “improve the client experience” from time to time. Although those objectives are great, they are too individualised to be of much service. How can you tell whether your team is having more fun or giving customers a better experience?
Another point to consider is if the objectives are attainable. Is this objective reachable, and does each contributor have the means necessary to complete it?
Sadly, many objectives are not successfully completed. Don’t make it easy for your team to fail.
Also, are the objectives relevant in the grand scheme of things, and how long will they take? How, for instance, does the specific initiative fit with the objectives, principles, and business plans of the company? What is the exact cutoff date for achieving the objective? It should be time to bound. It is simple for company objectives to become a movable target if there are no strict deadlines for when they must be accomplished.
Research and create an action plan
Setting objectives without a strategy for success or an action plan will be useless. How do you go about achieving the objective? What marketing strategies must you do? Who is your target market? These are questions you must ask yourself, and research that you must conduct to be able to create an action plan that not only stands out but also helps to achieve your objective.
Doing a Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis can help in your research to create an action plan. A SWOT analysis template will help you juxtapose your research with your plan to maximise efforts for optimal results.
Executive teams and managers must follow up thoughtfully after setbacks, which will inevitably occur. It is possible to achieve not only the crucial outcomes required for company growth, but also the kinds of accomplishments that guarantee an organisation — and its employees — will flourish and thrive.
Set team objectives first
Once you’ve decided what you want to accomplish, start by establishing objectives. Teams function more effectively and collaboratively when they have hard, worthwhile objectives to strive for.
Instead of competing with one another, it enables them to be in sync and have a shared vision. Of course, individual goals can (and need to) be separated from collective goals, but at the end of the day, every individual effort is tailored towards achieving the big objective of the company.
Write down the objectives once you’ve determined what they are. According to research, setting goals in writing increases the likelihood that you’ll accomplish them by 80%. One great way of doing this is writing it on a white board in the office or having it in print around the office. That way, employees constantly see it and are reminded of the objectives they are to achieve.
Conducting frequent employee pulse surveys lets the company know how their employees are faring and how the company itself is doing. They are called pulse surveys because they give a quick insight into the health of the company.
Set individual objectives next
As a smart manager or business owner, you want to know your employees for who they are and where they best function.
Start by identifying what personality each member of your team possesses and how you can channel that towards achieving the objective of the team and the company. The most important feeling you want team members to have is that they are doing meaningful work, and are contributing to something worthwhile.
Create specific milestones that take into consideration their unique abilities, resources, and experience after your team objective has been established. Remember the SMART framework when your team creates these objectives to create attainable and doable objectives for every team member.
An effective way to make sure that everyone is working to further the objectives of the company as a whole is to set individual objectives under the general heading of a team objective. Creating a job aid with simple and clear instructions on how to carry out a task or do better at a role is a great practical way to approach this.
Track and measure progress
Sometimes the simplest kind of praise for a job well done suffices. As soon as a team member succeeds, congratulate them. It is ideal to do this with friends. If the entire team hears your compliments, it has a far greater impact, because as a leader, it is important to motivate your team members.
For example, each month, convene a brief team meeting to discuss the accomplishments made and to recognise those responsible for each. Inquire from them regarding what they discovered that they can share with the larger team.
The reward system also works. It is helpful to encourage team members, but it’s more important that your strategy is focused on recognising their abilities and encouraging positive workplace habits, rather than the opposite. This will guarantee a positive development that is cohesive and conducive to success in every position.
Support your team
From your knowledge of your team members’ strengths and weaknesses, supporting them in their work towards achieving the objectives you have outlined becomes easy. Your efforts are tailor-made to each team member. There are different fantastic ideas to encourage team spirit whilst not losing focus on the objective ahead.
Benefits of setting team objectives
Collaboratively setting OKRs for your team has many advantages for you as the team leader, your team members, and the organisation at large.
The reason objectives and key results (OKRs) are effective for setting objectives is because they outline a company’s vision and translate it into measurable outcomes.
Some of the benefits of setting team objectives are:
For team members
- Members of the team are aware of how their individual contributions fit into the whole objectives. Better responsibility and ownership are made possible by this as everyone knows what they are contributing.
- Team objectives present chances to foster cooperation and trust.
- You might be able to identify ignored or unassigned team members and priorities by setting team goals.
- It also helps team members recognise their abilities, which they can use to get through challenges and solve issues. (This also applies to the group.) Team members can acquire new skills and advance their professional careers.
- Helps you become conscious of your weaknesses so that you can start to strengthen them and turn them into your assets. Each team member’s sense of self (or the self-image of the group) is awakened and quickened.
For the team
- It offers a framework for gauging the development of both individuals and groups.
- It offers your team a clear direction and action plan. There is a clear running track, so you can see where you need to go. The team’s contribution to the organisation is also made very clear through its aims.
- Provides inspiration for current triumphs and a sense of prior victories.
- Aids in visualising a plan for the team, which can then carry them out to attain their objectives.
For the company
- Individual and team tasks are tailored towards achieving the company’s objectives.
- Helps to focus on reality and distinguishes it from fantasy.
- Setting team objectives aids in maintaining alignment and improves resource planning. This is especially important for remote teams that work across different time zones or locations.
- Acts as a standard to help make decisions more informed.
Examples of team objectives
There are a wide range of examples of team objectives, but we will consider a few:
Boost ratings for customer satisfaction
Identify specific strategies to improve by evaluating current customer satisfaction ratings, particularly network promoter scores. Count the number of customers who remain with you over the long term or the number of customers who leave each quarter, then pinpoint any potential pain spots and try to address them.
Example: increase customer ratings to 95%.
Productivity
This is increasing the productivity per worker. For instance, an engineering team may have goals to complete more work, as shown by story points.
Example: raise story points by 12% each worker per month.
Efficiency
This involves increasing the number of outputs you generate from inputs. For example, a data centre team may want to cut the amount of power used for computation to 33%.
Example: increase the efficiency of power use by 33%.
Cost
This is lowering operating expenses to increase production.
Example: $1,000 in software licence savings
In Summary
Setting team objectives is really important, but it can be challenging to do so explicitly. Understanding what your goals might be is simple, but really writing them down and adhering to the rules for objectives setting is rather challenging.
Furthermore, it requires a lot of time. It can be challenging to win over everyone to set objectives, and the specifics of the objectives themselves. But keep going and try not to give up. It will ultimately be worthwhile to push through any difficulties that come along the way because setting these objectives is crucial to the success of the organisation.
About the Author
Tobi Ojenike is a writer and editor who enjoys strawberry milkshakes and long walks. With years of experience as a creative writer and editor, she currently is an SEO writer at Venngage.
