Goals are intermediate objectives that lead the company to an achievement, such as increased revenue, market share, or production, for example. They help keep the company on the right course, using all resources to maximize results and achieve strategic business objectives more quickly. In short, it is goals that lead to the viability of the business strategy.
Many companies establish their goals and leave them solely at the strategic level, sometimes going as far as the tactical, but rarely reaching the operational. This prevents each employee from understanding their role in achieving results and truly committing to their work.
The best way to ensure the company is successful in achieving its strategic objectives and goals is by carrying out the strategy deployment, a technique that consists of sharing responsibilities, determining a goal for each hierarchical level of the company, thereby generating a positive cascading impact throughout the organization.
Why break down goals
The main reason you should implement goal cascading is to ensure strategic alignment throughout your organization. When your employees know what they need to do and what their objectives are within the company, they feel more involved in decisions, become more engaged and committed, which increases productivity and, consequently, your results.
Furthermore, it becomes much easier to achieve the business's strategic objectives when more people work towards them. The environment becomes more collaborative, people see meaning in their activities, and they are willing to give more of themselves for the company to achieve success, after all, the success is also theirs.
Goal deployment levels
Each company has a certain hierarchy, but generally, we can visualize any company in three levels: strategic, tactical, and operational. The strategic level is where the company's board of directors is located, responsible for strategic planning. The tactical level would be the management, responsible for putting the action plan determined in the strategic planning into practice. The operational level is the execution, where most employees are found.
Goal deployment should proceed from strategic to operational, considering the egalitarian distribution of responsibilities according to the capacity of each department and employee within the company. Let's look at a practical example:
Imagine that one of your company's goals is to increase revenue by 40 million per year, totaling 100 million. This is the strategic goal, the overarching objective that will guide all company actions from now on. Your company has 5 business units, each contributing to the total revenue as follows:
- Unit 1: 30%
- Unit 2: 20%
- Unit 3: 20%
- Unit 4: 15%
- Unit 5: 15%
This way, sales goals will be distributed at the tactical level according to these shares, being as follows:
- Unit 1: 30 million
- Unit 2: 20 Million
- Unit 3: 20 million
- Unit 4: 15 million
- Unit 5: 15 Million
But we still have the operational level to consider, so we can distribute this responsibility among everyone, making sure the salespeople also have goals to meet. Let's take Unit 1 as an example:
- Seller 1: 6 million
- Seller 2: 6 million
- Seller 3: 6 million
- Seller 4: 6 million
- Seller 5: 6 million
Notice that the responsibilities are equal for everyone at the operational level. But is this model feasible in any market? Do all salespeople perform the same? Or is it possible to break down goals in another way?
Stay tuned to our blog because we'll soon have the continuation of this new conversation, with new ways to achieve goals that may be of interest to you! See you soon!
