“Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are the means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.” – Peter F. Drucker
One of the most common challenges organizations experience when they are creating a VUCA strategic plan is around setting objectives. Simply put, most organizations (and their leaders) are just not very good at it doing this critical element.
Fortunately, there is an easy prescriptive solution that will help: the SMARTER framework for setting objectives.
Setting the Stage for VUCA Strategic Planning
Before talking about objectives, let’s review the two foundational elements required for effective VUCA strategic planning to take place:
- Core Ideology – defining the mission, values, and purpose of the organization. These elements describe why the organization exists and what it stands for. They form the “true North” guideposts for making strategic decisions and are the foundation for any VUCA plan. With this foundational framework you will have greater clarity when making critical business decisions that impact the future of your organization.
- Envisioned Future – defining a clear vision for what the organization aspires to become or achieve, and your long-term goals. These elements explain the desired future state of the organization, and the long-term goals you and your team are working towards achieving in order to get there.
With this foundation in place, leaders are then ready to consider strategic options. One of the key components of a VUCA strategic plan is to create short-term objectives which contribute and drive towards the attainment of the long-term goals articulated in the strategic plan.
Definition of Objectives
In strategic planning, all the elements need to fit together, and build from one to the next. In other words, your mission, values, and purpose should inspire your vision statement, which should inform your goals, which should then inform your objectives. Short-term objectives contribute to the attainment of long-term goals and fulfillment of the organization’s vision. Here’s how they fit together:
- Vision – Your vision is an aspirational statement that is not time-bounded. In fact, your vision may never actually be attained, but rather serves as an imagined picture of the future.
- Goals – Your goals are broader and longer-term, typically 2-5 years in timeframe. A goal is a broad and long-term desired result you want to achieve. You might use company goals to inform yearly strategies and guide the direction of all your efforts. Your strategic VUCA plan will undoubtedly have several goals.
- Objectives – Your objectives are the short-term, tactical action items to be accomplished within the next 12-24 months max. Each of your goals will likely have multiple objectives behind them, and they become a key component of the organization’s VUCA plan. An objective defines the specific, measurable actions individual employees or teams must take to achieve an overall goal.
Note: Objectives are critically important to successful VUCA planning because it is at the objective level that the ownership of the strategic plan shifts from organizational leaders to teams and individuals.
Objectives are where the actual work gets done!
Ultimately, the objectives you assign to your teams and individuals will help them to understand exactly what you expect from them. This is where their actions influence and contribute towards the achievement of the organization’s goals.
Common Challenges for Completing Objectives
Most challenges that organizations experience around the completion of the objectives in their VUCA strategic plan can be attributed to one of three areas:
- Poor design. This is when objectives are poorly defined, unclear, vague, and with no metrics. This makes it difficult to manage, or monitor progress.
- Lack of internal buy in or support. When there is no support or agreement on the objectives, then they generally do not get done. There are many causes, including a lack of training, poor leadership, and not having the right team. This will be the subject of future articles.
- External impacts. As we have seen in the past few months of the pandemic, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) environments have a way of derailing even the most well intended plans. It is here to stay, and something we need to account for in our planning.
This article will focus on the first, and most common, challenge – poorly designed objectives.
The Value of Clear Objectives for VUCA Planning
Clear objectives help leaders to define the target, and help teams to define the right path and determine when they have successfully achieved it.
Sometimes you will hear the expression “mission clarity” – this term is often used in reference to knowing the objectives of a “mission” or initiative or project. It is not referring to the actual mission statement of the organization. In the context of VUCA strategic planning, it means that leaders must makes sure that the assigned team or individuals have complete clarity around the objectives they have been tasked with achieving. Without this clarity, you can’t expect success.
In a VUCA environment, where unpredictable and disruptive events can happen very quickly, we need to embrace an agile approach to making decisions. In order to maintain this flexibility, it is imperative that we always “keep our eye on the prize” so to speak, knowing the ultimate objective(s) we are trying to achieve, while being flexible in the approach on how to achieve them, is the solution.
Having clarity around objectives enables business unit leaders and their teams to think creatively about how best to achieve results while considering all the inputs and realities of the situation, including making real-time pivots in the field.
Without this clarity of the end goal or objective to be achieved, no amount of strategic VUCA planning will be effective.
Clarity comes from good design. And well-designed objectives come from the SMARTER framework.
Creating SMARTER Objectives
The SMARTER framework is a proven tool I’ve used for many years to help leaders define specific objectives. It is an acronym that spells out guidelines and criteria enabling you to craft impactful and useful objectives that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound, Evaluated, and Recognized when achieved or Revisited when not:
- Specific – An objective must be clearly defined, without any ambiguity, and as specific as possible. It is almost impossible to be too specific! It cannot be subject to any individual interpretation, and should explain exactly what is to be achieved or the outcome expected. Without this level of specificity, there is no real target, just a vague direction that often leads to failure.
- Measurable – You need to clearly describe the criteria for successful completion of the objective, along with any related quantitative or qualitative metrics that you’ll be evaluating. This becomes the evidence that is crucial for determining if an objective is attained, and for your team to be able to provide the proof to confirm it.
- Attainable – This criterion emphasizes the importance of setting an objective that may be challenging for your team but is nonetheless achievable. Here is where you must “get real” and carefully consider if the objective is even possible with everything you know of the environment and any existing obstacles. An important component of this for leaders is to make sure the assigned individual or team has the bandwidth, resources, training, and authority required to accomplish the objective. (Note: It is okay to set stretch objectives that may flirt with being unattainable, but if they are completely unrealistic then you will lose credibility as a leader and risk demoralizing or alienating your team.)
- Relevant – Each objective must connect back to your organization’s Core Ideology (mission, values, and purpose) and Envisioned Future (vision and long-term goals). This linkage is vitally important because it provides the all-important “why” for the assigned team or individual to understand the importance of achieving the objective. Provided you have the right people, and have done an effective job as a leader in sharing the organizations strategic VUCA plan, then people will do whatever it takes to get there if they understand the objective and believe it is relevant. If there is misalignment, you will likely fail to reach the desired objective.
- Time-bound – A defined deadline is an important management tool. Each objective should at the very least have a specified time-frame to get done, including a specific start- and end-date. For longer-term, or more complicated objectives, it may also make sense to include any interim or critical milestones required to accomplish it. This level of detail will help prioritize activities, and is important for your team to organize their tasks and make more detailed action plans.
- Evaluated – Leaders have the responsibility to set challenging goals for their team but also to support them in reaching their targets by assessing the progress on a regular basis. This programmed check-in enables leaders to provide real-time input, recommendations, or coaching to overcome any obstacles. By defining specific checkpoints (typically via at a predefined frequency or critical milestones) and the related expected deliverables at that point, you have a way to measure progress and ensure successful completion. It also helps the objective owner(s) by providing them with markers to check their progress. Obviously, you do not want to wait for the objective to reach its time-limit to do deliver feedback…at that point it is too late to affect change. By following this guideline, the final evaluation of the objective will never come as a surprise to your team because the intermediate reviews have provided an opportunity for course-correction or remediation actions.
- Recognized or Revisited – The last SMARTER criterion has two dimensions depending on the outcome! When objectives are successfully completed, they should be Recognized. When objectives are not achieved, or stall out, they should be Revisited.
- Recognized – The successful completion of an objective has an obvious people management component: public or private praise, incentives, rewards, promotions, etc. To the extent possible these should be specified when crafting the objective. It should also include a post-mortem process to evaluate what worked well and what didn’t. This introspection will review the initiative and capture all the lessons learned so that the organization can benefit from the process and apply those lessons to future objectives.
- Revisited – Taking another look at the objective is something we must do when the initiative is stalling out, goes sideways, appears to be failing, or has already failed. This is an opportunity to make the classic start-up “pivot” and change the approach, or change the target. When setting the objective it is important to define the indicators that would necessitate a revisit. You can also specify any known options, in priority order, as an aid to decision making.
Conclusion
Clear objective setting is of critical importance to strategic VUCA planning because it is at this level that ownership of the plan shifts from the leaders of the organization to those teams or individuals doing the actual work and responsible for successfully achieving the objective.
I hope you can see that by using the SMARTER framework to create objectives, you ensure objectives are well designed, easy to measure and manage, and ultimately get done.
-Onward