Goals, KRs and Metrics

One common challenge teams face is aligning their goals with the broader objectives of the organization. This can be difficult, particularly when teams lack context regarding what is happening within the larger organization. Not having a clear, genuine understanding of the "big picture", most teams will simply iterate on what they were already doing, which may add limited value to what the company really needs. Therefore, it is essential to identify, agree on and communicate what truly matters before diving into goal setting.

These metrics play a significant role in defining your team's purpose, as well as objectively measuring your success or failure.

Metrics

Metrics (or KPIs) can be an amazing way to achieve this clarity. The discussions necessary to boil down countless competing priorities to an agreed upon set of metrics are invaluable. Metrics make success or failure far less subjective and knowing which specific metrics your team is responsible for allow you to focus your efforts much more effectively.

For instance, if your team supports customers, relevant metrics may include customer satisfaction scores and ticket response times. In the case of attorneys and consultants, tracking billable hours may be key, while startup founders often monitor metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

We have designed Clarity Forge such that metrics are established at the team level, because the key measures of your success should be fairly consistent over time. These metrics play a significant role in defining your team's purpose, as well as objectively measuring your success or failure. If the goals you are considering do not relate to the metrics for your team, it is important to understand where the disconnect is.

Once you have identified the key metrics for your team, the goal setting process becomes much more straightforward - you look at your metrics and determine what needs to change. For example, if you find that your Customer Acquisition Cost is too high, you might set a goal to "reduce CAC by 20%." Achieving this goal will likely require multiple actions, which is where Key Results (KRs) come into play. Here’s a possible breakdown:

Reduce CAC by 20% by the end of Q1.

Key Results:

• Reduce social media marketing spend by 35%.
• Reduce search engine marketing spend by 40%.
• Improve SEO organic ranking for the top 10 keywords by 25%.
• Launch a new customer referral program.

When you follow this formula for creating goals, your goals will easily meet the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

When you define the key results for your goals, Clarity Forge allows you to create relationships between the KRs and the relevant metrics. This way, the progress and outcomes of your KRs can be tracked using the metrics you've defined. As your marketing spend decreases over time, you will be able to see the progress on your KRs and overall goals reflect that change.

It is worth noting that an over-reliance on metrics can lead to issues like teams sacrificing long term success for short term gains or toxic managers justifying questionable leadership methods by pointing to metrics. Ironically, some of these risks can be mitigated with better metrics, but strong leaders are the only way to ensure business is being done right.

In summary, ensure that your team clearly understands the metrics they own and develop goals in relation to those metrics. When your metrics are not where you want them to be, put together a plan to improve them. Finally, leverage Clarity Forge's ability to link KRs and metrics to help you monitor your progress toward achieving your goals.

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Our mission is to empower organizations by fostering cultures of clarity and transparency, engagement and collaboration. Through innovative tools, best practices and partnership with leaders, we strive to unlock the competitive advantages inherent in healthy organizations.