Putting Goals to Good Use

There are people out there with life plans, lists of goals and how they’ll get where they want to go. That has never been me – I’ve taken an opportunistic, it’ll-all-work-out-somehow approach to my life’s unfolding. Of course I have desires and worries, hopes and fears, and ideas on how to achieve the first and mitigate the second. But I have never strategized my life plan.

But I’m going to suggest you do it anyway, at least for work. Why, since I roll my eyes whenever I see #goals on Facebook? Because our annual performance review process requires us to develop goals by the end of this month, and if you are going to have to do it anyway, you might as well get something out of it. The “somethings” you can get out of goal-planning are real and substantial – a roadmap to a promotion, for example, or a shift in your tasks or roles, or simply clarity on what it is you want to do.

Our organization uses SuccessFactors to manage our APR process, and when you go in to do your goals as required, it will ask you for Major Responsibilities (a few), Goals (a few), and Professional Development Goals (a few). What does the HR jargon actually mean?

• Major Responsibilities are the most important parts of your job, the core things you regularly do. These Major Responsibilities should come from your job description – it would be hard to argue that something is a Major Responsibility if it isn’t in there!
• Goals are very similar to Major Responsibilities – SuccessFactors doesn’t mean “Goal” like “increase insecticide treated net use in Mali by 5% in 6 months.” It means: take a Major Responsibility that is amenable to it, and make it SMART. If we were widget makers, this is where we’d say “fabricate 10 widgets per hour,” or if we were clinicians maybe we could say “see 4 patients per hour” or if we were journalists we could say “write 2 stories per day.” But we don’t make widgets, see patients, or write news stories (mostly – I see you, PR people).
• The last piece, Professional Development Goals, are steps you plan to take to increase your skills. Training, reading, workshops, classes, etc.

Okay, so those are the pieces that make up our required process. How can you make them more than just a lot of blah blah blah? It depends on what you want. I can think of two common things people want that this process can help with: job growth (i.e. promotion/reclassification) and re-calibrating workload.

Job Growth. If you think you are ready (or overdue) for a promotion or reclassification, this process is your friend. It is playing the long game, not instant gratification, but use it well and you’ll get where you are going in the end.

• Start by putting your job description side by side with the JD one job up from yours. Highlight the differences. There may only be small variations in words, like “leading” something rather than “managing” it. Those words matter. Now, use your Major Responsibilities section to document your current work. Look at the language one job up. Are you doing things in that higher JD as part of your Major Responsibilities? If so, use that language in your Major Responsibilities. If not, these are things to aim for.
• Move on to Goals. Your aim here is to quantify (make SMART) an important part of your JD. Again, look at your current JD and the JD you want. Take something from the JD one higher that you believe you will have the opportunity and capacity to grow into in the coming year – maybe it is providing STTA independently, or contributing to proposal development – and make it a goal, something like “Take 2  STTA trips independently over 9 months.”
• Finally, go on to Professional Development. This is where you look at the job one above yours, think about the feedback from your APR, and identify where you need to develop new skills in order to achieve the Major Responsibilities of either your current job or the job you want. (Aside: If you haven’t done so, you can ask your supervisor if there is a skill or attribute that is holding you back from the next level. Listen really carefully – sometimes the answer is not a hard skill, but a soft fuzzy one that is embodied in the leap from doing something “with guidance” to “independently.” Supervisors have a hard time talking about unmeasurable things like judgement or demeanor.)
• How is all of that documenting going to help with a promotion? Well, you and your supervisor are going to discuss your goals plan, and agree on its reasonableness. At your mid-year check in you’ll discuss progress toward it, and you’ll do that again at APR time. You have now built a ladder from your current job to the job one level up, with concrete, documented rungs to climb. Do this documentation well, and show evidence of your good work over time, and you and your supervisor will have grounds for a promotion discussion.

Re-calibrating Workload. If you have too much (or too little) work and need that to change, think how you can use the goals process to document the challenge and set some benchmarks. Think here about documenting not just the work (STTA trips and proposals) but the process. One goal might be to have a 30-minute priorities-setting meeting with your supervisor every Monday, or to do a short time-use tracking to see how you are using your time and discuss with your boss how to change things. In your Professional Development Goals you could identify classes or books, or plan to ask for a mentor to help you with workload or work life balance. Simply stating the challenge in the formal APR/Goals software is a good step toward making changes – it forces the conversation with your supervisor, documents the request for something to change, and lays out practical solutions.

It’s worth a shot. Just don’t call them #workgoals.