What is Goal Management? How to Avoid “Set & Forget" Goals

What is Goal management? 

Goal management is the process of setting, tracking, and achieving specific objectives within an organization. 

It involves:

• Defining clear, specific, and measurable objectives.
• Developing strategies and action plans to achieve these goals.
• Determining which goals are most important and allocating resources accordingly.
• Regularly tracking progress towards goals using relevant metrics.
• Modifying goals or strategies as needed based on feedback and changing circumstances.
• Assessing the outcomes and effectiveness of goal-related efforts.

When done right, goals can make your people 11-25% more productive—something psychologists Gary Latham and Edwin Locke proved back in 1990. 

Despite their research being over 30 years old, there are more than 1000 other studies that report similar findings—making the act of goal setting a solution that transcends time.

But the reality looks a little different. According to a study from the Economist, 9 out of 10 businesses fail to reach strategic goals. Why is this the case?

There are a few reasons:

• Most goals are written in corporate jargon and lack clarity, such as "maximize synergies across business unit to deliver for our global partners."
• There’s no process in place to monitor goals closely and follow up on those that are at risk or off-track. 
• Teams aren’t aligned or working on a shared strategy. 
• Senior management dictates direction without consulting their teams or listening to feedback. Goals are set in stone once a year and never change. 
• Employees simply don’t care about goals because they didn’t have a say in goal creation. 

This leads to “set and forget” goals and both managers and employees thinking goals are a “complete waste of time” (as one disgruntled manager shares on Reddit):

The 26 comments that followed were largely in support of this person’s experience, adding further complaints about their company’s goal setting and management process.We understand their pain and frustration.

At Mesh, our performance enablement tool, we helped organizations achieve ~22% more team and individual goals than legacy performance management systems, and we understand what it takes to make goal management work. 

It’s these four things:

1. A process where managers and each direct report co-create goals, objectives, and agree upon key competencies for strategic alignment
2. A way to ensure every goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) 
3. Goals that are continuously monitored and re-aligned if necessary
4. An ecosystem of real-time feedback, regular 1:1s, “nudges”, and constant progress check-ins to make sure goals are on track and not shoved to the backburner

How do you implement a goal management system that has these four components in place? We outline it in detail below. 

How to Implement a Goal Management System that Boosts Performance 

The key to effective goal management is a bullet-proof system that provides clarity, alignment, and accountability for everyone involved. 

To help you build that system, we gathered insights from our People Science leaders at Mesh and business owners and CEOs from around the web. 

Step 1. Have Leadership Set a North Star After Consulting Every Function

Senior leaders shape the company's future by setting a single North Star goal. This goal cascades throughout the business, aligning everyone toward a common purpose. 

Simply put, a North Star goal is a clear, overarching objective that guides an organization's strategy and aligns all efforts across the company towards a common, long-term purpose.

Examples include:

1. Customer Success Software Company: Achieve a 90% customer retention rate within the next year.
2. E-commerce Business: Increase monthly active users to 500,000 by the end of the year.
3. SaaS Startup: Reach $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of Q4.

On Mesh, our performance enablement software, your leadership team can easily set their North Star goal and cascade it throughout the organization.

As Rick Hanson, a psychologist, author and senior fellow at the University of California, wrote in a Psychology Today article, it’s crucial to figure out which principles will guide you because when “you find your North Star, you know where you're headed.” 

But having a North Star Goal doesn’t guarantee the direction you’re heading is the right one. 

To make sure it is, your Leadership team needs to consult with each function in the organization (from Marketing to Finance) to understand:

• Current growth challenges
• Emerging opportunities
• Critical factors for the company's future

Beyond setting a solid strategy that will help your company grow, you'll have a team that feels invested in organizational success because they were active contributors. 

Top tips for having these conversations:

• Schedule dedicated sessions with each function's senior manager
• Use a structured interview format to ensure consistency
• Encourage candid feedback by creating a safe, open environment
• Ask probing questions to uncover deeper insights
• Get together as Leadership to determine a singular focus
• Create a visual representation of the North Star for easy communication
• Plan for regular reviews to keep the North Star relevant as conditions change

Step 2. Communicate that North Star and Have Each Team Conduct a Workshop to Set Goals in Support

Jordan Erskine, President and Co-Founder of Dynamic Blending, believes that 90% of strategic goals fail because executives “fail to get the buy-in of the rest of the organization.”

And communication is key to getting buy-in.  

Once you have your North Star goal, you need to communicate it to the organization in a way that generates excitement. 

We recommend a quarterly all hands where you introduce the North Star, explain why it’s been chosen, and open the floor for questions.

From there you should have each team break away and come up with the team goals that feed into the singular company goal. You could give templates and frameworks for them to follow to keep things consistent.

Once they’ve agreed on their goals, have them share those goals with everyone else.

This process is important because it:

• Creates organizational alignment
• Fosters engagement and ownership at team level
• Ensures all efforts are driving towards the same overarching objective
• Helps identify potential gaps or overlaps in team strategies

Step 3: Implement a Goal Co-creation Process for Managers and Direct Reports

The next step is to create individual goals for each employee that align with the North Star.

But for decades, managers have been guilty of setting top-down goals, where the upper management decides what an employee should be doing. 

However, this top-down approach alienates employees, who feel like they don’t have a stake in the game and they’re just being “pushed around”. 

To avoid this, goal co-creation is key. 

Employees are more likely to be motivated to work towards a particular goal if they have a say in what goal it should be in the first place.

Samuel Timothy, Co-Founder of OneIMS, writes in this Forbes piece:

“If you hope to develop talent with goal setting, then managers and employees have to be actively involved in setting them. People tend to perform better if they feel ownership of their goals and the means of achieving them.”

Setting goals at the employee level is a more intimate process than setting them as a team. It requires reflection and careful consideration over what that employee needs to do—or develop—to help the company succeed.

The perfect place to agree upon goals is in a 1:1 between the manager and the direct report. 

In these meetings, the manager can:

• Communicate the bigger business and strategy goals
• Get to know about the employee’s individual goals, interests, sentiment towards the company, and motivation level
• Suggest weekly, monthly, or quarterly goals and objectives that benefit both the business and the employee 
• Coach or mentor employees 
• Provide feedback on performance, including praises and areas of improvement
• Understand what resources the employee needs and discuss how they can get the resources to them 

And the employee can:

• Understand clearly the role they play in achieving business goals, and how doing so will benefit them
• Let their manager know about their own individual goals and interests, and where they want to be in the organization in the future
• Agree upon goals and objectives or suggest alternatives
• Get timely feedback on areas of improvement so they know how to rectify their trajectory
• Ask for resources they need to complete their tasks and reach goals

This two-way communication is key to:

• Empowering employees to take ownership of their performance and development
• Strengthening the manager-employee relationship
• Ensuring individual goals contribute to broader organizational objectives
• Identifying opportunities for employee growth and skill development

Our People Science leaders at Mesh recommend managers have 1:1s at least once a month for an hour. 

Depending on your organizational culture, you could have shorter 1:1s (e.g. 15-30 minutes) every week or bi-weekly, but once a month is the absolute minimum we recommend.  

With Mesh, your managers can set 1:1s with any direct report in just a few clicks. 

Mesh also reminds managers on their main dashboard when it’s time to set up a call with a direct report. This helps managers constantly stay on top of goals and fix issues before it’s too late. 

📚 Further reading: 10 Best One on One Meeting Software & Scheduler Tools for HR 

Step 4. Have Each Team Sense Check Another Team’s Goals

Have teams review each other's goals in a structured "Goal Exchange" program. 

This process creates an opportunity for fresh perspectives, identifies potential conflicts or overlaps, and fosters a deeper understanding of how different parts of the organization work together.

This is also a chance for people to challenge the language of the goals and if it meets SMART goal setting criteria. 

Mesh’s AI coaching co-pilot, Mesh Maven, gives real-time suggestions on how to write SMART goals that align with your business objectives, saving you hours of training and changes. 

Here are some tips to help make this step effective:

• Match teams that have natural touchpoints or dependencies
• Focus on problem-solving rather than criticism
• Give each team time to revise the goal based on feedback

📚 Further reading: 6 Best SMART Goal Software for 2024 (Achieve More, Faster)   

Step 5. Monitor Goals Regularly on a Dynamic Dashboard 

The best goals are not static—life happens, circumstances change, and managers need to continuously track and adapt goals to ensure they remain achievable and realistic. 

Andrew Schrage, Co-Founder of Money Crashers Personal Finance, recommends businesses to “err toward aggressiveness at the beginning” but “monitor progress on the goal over time and scale it back if necessary.”

This is best done on a dynamic goal dashboard that reports on progress, documents challenges, and flags if a goal is falling off track. 

Such a dashboard will help:

• Managers spot issues and address bottlenecks proactively
• Employees become more accountable for their performance
• People teams understand which teams are meeting/not meeting goals and measure the success of their goal management system

On Mesh, managers get a bird’s eye view of goal progress for each direct report or team. They can also zero-in on goals that require their immediate attention by filtering to “At risk” and “Off track”.

Managers can also see the performance and progress of each employee using this Card layout. It lists only the goals (objectives and key results) that the said employee is an owner of. 

If they want to see the entire flow of Objectives down to the very last Key Results, they can do so in Tree layout:

What’s more, managers can also easily re-align Parent or Child goals (objective or key result) easily on Mesh.

To make sure employees don’t forget goals, Mesh sends them “nudges” about which goals are “At risk” through Slack or Teams. 

This way, they can quickly take action, ask for resources, or re-align goals to be more realistic. 

They can also update their progress easily and leave comments about what they’ve achieved and where they’re struggling with.

People leaders can also access a dedicated dashboard for goal-related analytics where they can spot trends, analyze goal health, and identify issues.

With a goal dashboard like Mesh at hand, goal setting, tracking, and adjusting becomes so much simpler and easier. 

If you do implement a tool like Mesh, you won’t have to worry about building processes for steps 1 through 5 because the platform either supports or handles them for you.

And remember, Mesh is so much more than a goal management tool—it supports ongoing skills development through its capabilities tracking, turns managers into effective coaches through meaningful 1:1s, and equips your People team with the insights to improve organizational performance. 

Learn how Mesh can put you on the path to positive performance - Book a demo today. 

Successful Goal Management Programs - 2 Case Studies

While many companies struggle with goal management, there are those who have successfully built lasting programs that are translating to real growth among their people. 

Here are a few examples to inspire you as you build your program:

LinkedIn’s $20 Billion Success Off the Back of OKRs

When Jeff Weiner became CEO of LinkedIn in 2008, he introduced a mission and vision goal model, essentially adopting the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework. 

As a result, the company rose to a $20 billion valuation.

LinkedIn's unique approach to OKRs:

• Each team member sets 3-5 ambitious quarterly objectives
• Objectives become increasingly significant higher up the organizational ladder
• Progress tracking through regular in-person meetings
• Focus on aligning team objectives with broader business goals

Adobe’s Reduction in Attrition Thanks to Goals and Regular Check-Ins

Adobe’s cumbersome process for performance reviews was leading to a yearly spike in employee resignations, threatening the company's ability to retain talent.

Executive Donna Morris identified the issue and sought employee input. Overwhelmingly, Adobe’s people wanted a goal setting process that motivated them and let them know how they were performing continuously.

Key aspects of Adobe's approach:

• Emphasis on employee-driven goal-setting
• Frequent check-ins to align individual and company objectives
• Focus on ongoing feedback and career development

After they introduced OKRs and a ‘Check in’ program, the company saw employee attrition rates drop. 

They credit their success to employees having regular insights into their performance.

Goal Management - FAQs

Below we’ve answered some common questions we get from clients about goal management.

1. What are the benefits of goal setting and management? 

At its core, effective goal management provides clear direction and focus, aligning individual efforts with the broader organizational objectives. This alignment is key to driving productivity.

And it increases engagement. When individuals have clear, achievable goals, they're more likely to feel a sense of purpose and direction in their work. This leads to higher job satisfaction and, consequently, improved retention rates.

Goal management also facilitates better resource allocation and prioritization. By clearly defining objectives, organizations can make more informed decisions about where to invest time, money, and effort. 

2. What are some examples of SMART goals?

SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound - help create clear, actionable objectives.

Some examples of them are:

1. "Increase monthly website traffic by 25% within the next quarter through targeted content marketing and SEO optimization." 

This goal is specific (focused on website traffic), measurable (25% increase), achievable (with focused efforts), relevant (to marketing objectives), and time-bound (within the next quarter).

2. "Reduce customer support response time from an average of 24 hours to 6 hours by implementing a new ticketing system and training staff within the next 60 days." 

This goal clearly defines what needs to be achieved, by how much, and within what timeframe.

3. "Launch a new product feature that increases user engagement by 15% within 6 months, as measured by daily active users." 

This goal ties the launch of a new feature to a specific, measurable outcome within a defined period.

4. "Improve employee satisfaction scores from 70% to 85% by implementing bi-weekly one-on-ones and a revised feedback system over the next year."

 This goal sets a clear target for improvement and outlines specific actions to achieve it.

3. What are some common pitfalls in goal management and how to overcome them?

While goal management can be highly effective, there are several common pitfalls that organizations need to be aware of and actively work to overcome.

Pitfall 1: Setting vague or unrealistic goals 

Solution: Use the SMART framework to ensure goals are clear and achievable

Pitfall 2: Lack of alignment between individual and organizational goals 

Solution: Implement a cascading goal system and regular communication about company objectives

Pitfall 3: Infrequent goal reviews and updates 

Solution: Establish a regular cadence for goal check-ins and updates (e.g., weekly or bi-weekly)

Pitfall 4: Failure to adapt goals in changing circumstances 

Solution: Build flexibility into your goal-setting process and encourage periodic reassessment

Pitfall 5: Lack of employee buy-in 

Solution: Involve employees in the goal-setting process and clearly communicate the purpose and benefits of goals

Pitfall 6: Insufficient resources or support for goal achievement 

Solution: Ensure proper resource allocation and provide necessary training or tools

Pitfall 7: Overemphasis on quantitative metrics at the expense of qualitative improvements 

Solution: Balance quantitative and qualitative goals, and consider the broader impact of goals on the organization

Pitfall 8: Neglecting to celebrate achievements 

Solution: Implement a recognition system to acknowledge progress and accomplishments