Using your Values to Supercharge your Goals
Your company values should not be a poster on your wall, unmentioned after your employee’s first week at the company - they should be living, breathing document that influences everything your team does throughout the company. They should also shape your goal setting process. When you tie your goals to your values - and you have your employees do the same - your company creates a shared language of what excellent work looks like, and defines the important qualitative aspects of how things get done that sets you apart from the competition. When we are intentional about choosing goals that align with who we are, and think in advance about who we need to be or become to achieve our goals, we supercharge our performance. Values are a great framework to do this.
Start this process by developing your goals for a given time period. This could be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals, even longer term projects and visions up to 3 years ahead. It can help to use a popular goal setting framework to chunk down the goals - an OKR framework works well, as do SMART goals, Management by Objective, or KPIs, whatever works best for you. Once you have your top level goals laid out, and perhaps even the action steps you will take to get there, grab your list of Values and your guiding principles, if you have these. Ask yourself a simple question:
How will I practice my values as I pursue my goals?
Write down your answers in paragraph form. Be as descriptive as possible. Where will this value be most important? What will it look like when I practice this value day-to-day? How will this impact the people around me? How will practicing my values influence the way I feel? As you write, visualize your answers to these questions as a rehearsal.
Next, we’ll create a daily practice to reinforce commitment to values as the avenue for achieving your goals. A mindset key is this: we do not always have control over the outcomes of our goals, but we have 100% ownership of the process. Tying our self-measurement to process instead of outcomes, and rewarding ourselves for a job well done and constant learning and growth versus achieving a specific target, is a sure way to set yourself up for more satisfaction and fulfillment each day and in general! We recommend you print or write out both your values and your goals and place them in a spot where you will see them each day while you work. You might create a summarized version that looks something like this:
Goal: Increase NPS score to 70
Value: Joy. Lead every customer interaction with joy even if someone has a complaint
Value: Consistency. Reply to every customer ticket within 12 hours
Goal: Establish a Revenue Achievement Standard for SMB/OUS clients
Value: Impact. We take pride in scaling our solutions to impact the most number of people, and we need to find partners that want to do the same
Value: Self-sufficiency. We first try to solve problems ourselves, and so we need to provide what’s necessary for our partners to do the same and streamline the process
Etc. etc…
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by lack of clarity or stray away from the true target when you don’t know what the important underlying qualities of success look like for your work - putting this summary by your desk will keep you on track. You can continue to grow and evolve it as you make progress towards your goal.
As you work together with your team on shared goals, in your meetings, refer to these goals to see how the daily practices are going to move towards them. Instead of measuring solely on progress, measure also on how the values are showing up and how diligently your team is practicing them.
This is one of the most powerful tools we teach, and implementing it can truly transform your results. For further support, please visit our contact us page!