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Why Goal Setting Matters

Companies that focus on goals achieve better results. Alignment and output are
higher, employees feel more connected and engaged, and their sense of purpose is
clear. Getting to that point takes work.

While we instinctively know this to be true, there’s a documented link between goal
setting and better outcomes. For example, one university study found that simply
writing down a goal — whether it’s a New Year’s resolution or business objective —
makes you 42% more likely to achieve it. Others have studied the positive impact of
goals on a range of professionals, from athletes to entrepreneurs. The world’s most
dynamic companies, from Google to Slack, swear by them.

When departments and individuals have clear, tangible goals to work toward, they
feel like they have a stake in the business. Specific and measurable targets help define
what success actually looks like, facilitating better (and less biased) feedback and
performance reviews. If your company ties merit and compensation, decisions around
promotions and raises also become more equitable. Indeed, research shows that
organizations without formal goals and performance management processes are
more likely to exhibit bias against women and people of color.

Bringing Goals and Technology Together

Need to convince leadership that goals matter? Using

technology to set, track, and report on goals yields $3.5
million in benefits and a 195% return-on-investment. You
can learn more about the value of goal-setting
technology in this Forrester Total Economic Impact
study.

Lastly, teams that take goal setting seriously aren’t just more effective — they’re more
engaged. Having clear and realistic goals correlates to higher satisfaction and
engagement, especially when employees feel they have a say in their targets.
According to a Gallup study, employees whose managers involved them in the goal-
setting process were nearly four times more likely to be engaged. Engaged teams
lead to better business outcomes, higher retention, and even greater client
satisfaction — making goal setting one of the most impactful processes a People
team can implement.

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Table of Contents
Models and Approaches to Consider 5
Identifying Your Needs 5
SMART Goals 6
What do SMART goals look like? 6
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) 8
What do effective OKRs look like? 8
How should OKRs vary between teams and individuals? 10
30-60-90 Day Plans 11
New Hire Plans 11
New Manager Plans 12

Strategies for Success 14

Goal Cadence 14
Motivating Employees 15
Goal Difficulty 15

Leveraging Technology 18
Keeping Goals Top of Mind 18
Celebrating Employee Success 19
Bringing Goals Into Performance Conversations 19

Conclusion 21

About Lattice 22

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 CHAPTER 1

Models and Approaches

to Consider

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CH APTE R 1

Models and Approaches to Consider

Identifying Your Needs
As you’ll learn, there’s more than one way to approach goal setting. For decades,
business leaders experimented with various models (and catchy acronyms), looking to
capture that perfect mix of practicality, motivational impact, and demonstrated
results.

First things first: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to goal setting. Before
adopting any of the models we’ll discuss, you’ll need to reflect on what your business
requires from a goal-setting framework. That means asking questions like:

• What’s your current company size?

• Is your organization growing? How fast?
• Are employees distributed or mostly in one location?
• How predictable is your industry or business?
• Is your organization flat or hierarchical?
• Have you implemented goals before? What went right or wrong?

Answers to these questions won’t just tell you which models to choose but also inform
logistical details. For example, cascading goals aren’t suited for non-hierarchical
companies. At fast-growing organizations, forecasting business targets for the year
ahead — let alone the next six months — might be impractical, necessitating that
you adopt a quarterly goal cadence.

As we go through each goal-setting model, don’t just consider whether they’re suited
for your organization today. Implementing any performance management process
takes time, and you’ll want to adopt a model that you won’t outgrow within a year.

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SMART Goals
On their own, goals can improve your chances of success. But if they don’t provide
context or specifics, employees will have difficulty understanding what needs to get
done or what success looks like. That’s where ”SMART” goals come in.

Associated with Peter Drucker’s management by objectives concept, SMART goals

encourage employees to go through the exercise of detailing how their goals will be
accomplished. Setting SMART goals means writing them in a way that makes all of
the following criteria clear:

• Specific: Does the goal have specific means and ends?

• Measurable: Can the goal be measured? How?
• Actionable/Achievable: What are the specific actions that will lead to this goal?
What do you need to do to accomplish it?
• Relevant/Realistic: Is this goal relevant to your job duties, team, and company? Is it
based on factors that are under your control?
• Time-bound: What is the time period? Does it depend on a deadline or target date,
or is it on a regular schedule?

SMART goals fill an urgent need, as nearly half of employees report that their business
objectives feel unclear. Vague goals can lead to burnout, lack of focus, and even
regrettable turnover.

Conversely, SMART goals help everyone, from managers to individual contributors,

know what they need to do to reach their targets. The benefits are so universal that
individuals can even apply the same philosophy toward smaller projects or personal
goals. In fact, the SMART approach is often touted as an effective technique for those
wanting to learn a new language or improve wellness.

What do SMART goals look like?

The SMART goal approach helps everyone, from managers to individual contributors,
know what they need to do. For more context, we've put together an example of how
SMART goals can give direction to otherwise vague objectives.

As you read through the examples on the next page, don’t just pay attention to the
difference in length — note the specificity. Sentence by sentence, imagine checking
off each of the letters in SMART.

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 Regular Goal:
“Get the company to use SMART goals.”

SMART Goal:
"Teach managers how to set SMART goals ahead of next quarter’s performance
review cycle. Use software to track goals and help managers and employees
own their performance targets. Encourage managers to check in with
employees at the end of the quarter.”

 
As a supplement to the goal listed above, consider asking employees to write down
more detailed information following SMART goal criteria. Doing so gives owners even
more clarity on what needs to be accomplished before the goal is marked complete.

Specific:
“Teach managers how to set SMART goals and get them to show direct reports
how to do the same. Managers and employees will collaborate to set goals, so
both have clear expectations regarding what success looks like.”

Measurable: 
“Use a performance management system like Lattice to track employee goals.
This will help managers ensure they and their direct reports are on the same
page.”

Attainable:
“Our small HR team can’t singlehandedly train the company on how to use
SMART goals. Asking managers to teach their employees will help you build a
workable action plan with target dates.”

Relevant:
“Setting these types of goals will make our company more productive,
motivated, and engaged. Employee engagement is important to the success of
the business.”

Time-bound:
“Tell managers to check in and renew direct reports’ goals by the end of the
quarter. Ongoing goal setting throughout the year as a means of encouraging
employee engagement.”

If you’re looking for additional examples of SMART goals, read Lattice’s full overview
here. You can apply some of these ideas right away by downloading our free SMART
goal template.

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Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Objectives and key results (OKRs) are part of a goal-setting framework that focuses
on defining and tracking individual, team, or organizational goals and their outcomes.
Each OKR consists of one objective and three to five key results. OKRs help
organizations stay aligned by connecting company, team, and personal goals to
measurable results.

While many credit Google for popularizing the OKR model, it predates the company
by over a decade. Andy Grove, former President at Intel, introduced the theory in his
1983 book, High Output Management. Since then, thousands of organizations across
every industry have caught on, including household names like Adobe, Microsoft,
Netflix, and Yahoo. Even the United States Navy uses OKRs as part of their operations. 

Hundreds of books have been written about them, but OKRs are relatively
straightforward in practice. In essence, they’re about two essential questions:

• “Where do I want to go?” (Your objective)

• “How will I get there?” (Your key results)

Need an example? We’ll jump into real-world scenarios shortly, but let’s shift our
attention away from work. In Back to the Future, Doc Brown needed to build a flux
capacitor to travel through time. There were clear things he needed to accomplish
first — like acquiring some plutonium. While ambitious objectives might look daunting
alone, they feel more achievable when broken down into key results — especially
when shared among other stakeholders, like Marty McFly (or another colleague).

What do effective OKRs look like?

As an HR professional, you’ve likely read that targets should be specific, measurable,
realistic, and so forth. But while that’s mostly true for OKRs, there are additional
nuances to consider.

First, objectives are ambitious. They should push beyond what seems possible or even
comfortable. If you’re sure that you can accomplish them, you’re not thinking big
enough. While they might include a metric (e.g., “Hit $1 million in revenue”), they don’t
necessarily have to. Companies usually opt to make objectives more qualitative. And

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just so no one ends up overwhelmed, it’s best practice to limit company, team, and
individual objectives to no more than five per level.

On the flip side, key results are measurable. They should be written so that you can
quantify progress over time. For scoring purposes, they also shouldn’t be absolute — if
you’ve made progress, even if it falls short of your original expectations, that should all
be recordable. Similar to objectives, rein in your total number of key results to no more
than five. As the saying goes, if everything is a priority, then nothing is.

Let’s shelve the time-travel example and look at a situation closer to home (especially
for HR teams). By balancing ambition, measurability, and transparency, the below
makes an excellent company-level OKR.

What happens if you nail the first two key results but fall just short of the last one?
Importantly, OKRs aren’t typically scored on a binary, pass-fail scale. In fact, scoring
perfectly for every objective or key result may be a sign that your targets weren’t
ambitious enough. Key results should be graded from zero (“we failed to make
progress”) to one (“we delivered”) and subsequently averaged for an overall objective
score. This added nuance gives individuals and teams the ability to identify what went
right and potential areas of improvement.

Importantly, note that OKR grades do not represent an overall performance score.
OKRs can be used as one lens to evaluate an individual, but are not a comprehensive
method of analyzing performance. If OKRs are synonymous with performance
evaluations, individual contributors may be encouraged to “sandbag” or temper their
goals to show success.

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How should OKRs vary between teams and individuals?
As mentioned earlier, OKRs are set at the company, team, and individual level. While
they don’t have to cascade perfectly, each group’s objectives should be informed by
the next-highest level’s. Here’s a breakdown:

• Company OKRs are the high-level focus areas for the entire company. These
represent the big picture. Everyone should be bought in and agree on these.
• Team OKRs define priorities for a group but are not a collection of individual OKRs.
• Individual OKRs define what specific people are working on. They’re ideally set by
individuals, not managers, with the company and team goals in mind.

While these descriptions sound intuitive enough, examples can make the difference
crystal clear. Below are some sample company, team, and individual OKRs. Pay
particular attention to wording and how the objective and key results’ scope gradually
gets narrower as you progress to the individual level. We’ve included specific examples
from a customer service and sales team for context

From Lattice Advisory Services

“If you’re stuck in the drafting phase, workshops are a great way to support
newcomers to the OKR methodology. Our customers typically facilitate
workshops internally or with consultants at the executive and department levels.
Participants will come with their OKRs already drafted and will review them with
the group to get feedback and look for redundancies and dependencies.”

It’s important to remember that company, team, and individual OKRs don’t necessarily
have to align or cascade verbatim. For example, if one of your company-level key
results is “acquire 10,000 new users,” that doesn’t mean your marketing team needs to
have that listed as an objective. Instead, consider opting for an objective like “Create a
brand that users love,” with key results to enforce it. This approach is referred to as
directional alignment (versus strict alignment) and is preferred by most organizations,
given it’s easier to adopt and administer.

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30-60-90 Day Plans
Change can be overwhelming. Whether you’re starting at a new company, taking on
additional responsibilities, or transitioning into management, you might feel pressure
to hit the ground running right away. Take a deep breath — setting realistic
milestones along the way will help you adapt to the change and ultimately succeed.

That’s where 30-60-90 day plans come in. These three-tiered plans help employees
gradually navigate major changes in their responsibilities or scope. Akin to how the
SMART methodology helps add clarity to your goals, this model can add much-
needed structure and predictability.

New Hire Plans

New hire 30-60-90 day plans empower hiring managers to set clear expectations,
benchmark performance, and empower new hires to deliver value within their first
few months. It also gives managers an incentive to do right by their employees and
set them up for success.

Whether or not new hires come in with a specific plan, they likely have a vision for
their first few months. During the employee’s first week, managers should make time
to talk through their plans and learn about their personal goals and objectives.
Working together, they can develop a 30-60-90 day plan.

Specifics will vary depending on the scope of the role, but most new hire’s first 90 days
can be divided into three periods: learning, contributing, and taking action.

30 Days 60 Days 90 Days

Learning Contribution Taking Action

What your new hire will How your employee will The ways your employee
need to learn/evaluate begin digging into their will be proactive and take
early on. new role and start on new initiatives.
contributing.

The sooner managers and new hires draft a 30-60-90 day plan, the quicker they’ll get
up to speed. Managers should periodically check in during weekly one-on-ones, but
consider holding more frequent check-ins during the first 30 days so there aren’t any
lingering questions.

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New Manager Plans
Transitioning into management is scary — and also a great opportunity to leverage
30-60-90 days planning. But unlike new hire plans, leadership plans are usually set by
the individual going through the change. Though higher-level leaders might provide
general advice, the new manager owns drafting and iteration. These plans are
divided into three phases: learning, planning, and delegating.

Within the first 30 days, new managers should prioritize understanding the company’s
(and their team’s) culture and everyday norms. They will also meet with their direct
reports, an HR representative, and cross-functional teams on a regular basis to get a
baseline. This phase is often dubbed a “listening tour” and should come before any
formal goal-setting process.

30 Days 60 Days 90 Days

Learning Planning Delegating

What managers need to How the manager will How the manager will set
learn about the company, begin to improve their goals and subsequently
their team, and their role. team and identify delegate ownership.
priorities.

Based on all of their conversations and observations, new managers will transition to
the 60-day phase. Here, managers will begin to determine what their team should be
prioritizing. In most business settings, this means running a SWOT analysis to identify
the team’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on these
findings, the new manager will rank their top opportunities by impact and ease of
completion.

In the last 30 days, managers will draft and assign goals to each of the opportunities
they identified. Applying the SMART model will give these goals clarity and make it
easier to delegate — a critical component of management that new leaders tend to
shy away from. Managers should empower reports to take the lead on some of the
goals and subsequently report on progress during one-on-ones.

Ultimately, new hires and managers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from
30-60-90 day planning. This three-tiered approach can empower you to achieve
ambitious personal and professional targets, making it just another technique in your
goal-setting toolbox.

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 CHAPTER 2

Strategies for Success

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CH APTE R 2

Strategies for Success

Goal Cadence
Earlier, we touched on how size, industry, and the general state of your company will
dictate how you approach goal setting. This is especially true concerning cadence, or
how frequently you set goals and for how long. 

For example, a business growing at a slow and steady pace has entirely different
requirements than in a fast-changing environment. In the latter scenario, setting goals
once every six months isn’t just isn’t practical. Within the first three months, business
realities may have changed drastically — making it inefficient to wait six months to
discuss whether goals were met. In cases like these, quarterly (or even monthly for
hyper-growth companies) could be a better option.

From Lattice Advisory Services

“Every company is different. Still, if you’re looking for that ‘goldilocks’ cadence,
consider opting for quarterly goals. Lattice user data shows that over 50% of
company, team, and individual goals have a timeline of 90 days or less. Not only
does this cadence make goals feel more tangible for everyone, but it also gives
your team the ability to adjust targets as needed.”

In some cases, employee turnover and the pace of development may dictate your
goal-setting cadence. For example, setting quarterly goals for contractors or
temporary employees might not be frequent enough, depending on the project.
Similarly, if you’re at a high-turnover organization like a call center, managers will want
ample opportunity to check in on progress and course-correct employees as needed.

The nature of employees’ day-to-day also dictates goal cadence. For companies (or
teams) with project-based work, you'll set goals to reflect those deadlines. For
example, a six-month project should at least have quarterly goals included, since you’ll
want milestones that represent the halfway mark and ending. This has the added
effect of motivating employees, as it cuts down the time it takes to complete
individual key results. It also creates additional opportunities to recognize employees
along the way.

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Motivating Employees 
It sounds intuitive enough: You can’t get employees excited about goals without
understanding what actually excites them about work. One employee might have
their sights set on management — another may be more interested in mastering their
craft. While professional development goals differ from traditional business goals, the
former can inform the latter.

Based on prior development conversations, managers should seek to connect goals

to what excites people about their work. Doing so affects employee performance, as
they’ll see the goal as something they can integrate into the flow of their everyday
work. Research shows that this strategy taps into employee motivation far more
effectively than praise (or even a raise) can.

When setting goals for your employees, think about their long-term trajectory and
how to get them there. For example, if an engineer wants to run product
development, talk about using a feature launch as a chance to coordinate a team —
rather than framing it as a product addition that must be pushed out for the sake of
the company. In other words, ask yourself: “What’s in it for them?” Encourage
managers to find the common threads between employee wants and business needs.

Goal Difficulty
Another factor relating to motivation is goal difficulty. Reach or “stretch” goals seem
lofty or ambitious. For someone in sales, that might mean doubling their quota. A
recruiting professional might set a goal of cutting time-to-hire by 30%. These goals
push employees outside of their comfort zones. They’re also especially useful for high
performers who might be looking for more of a challenge.

Stretch goals are powerful but should be used conservatively. As a general rule of
thumb, individuals should have at least one stretch goal. On the flip side, having more
than two or three can quickly lead to overwhelm — and make goal-setting feel like a
“pie in the sky” exercise. Further, stretch goals aren’t exempt from fulfilling SMART
criteria. If you can’t come up with a plausible explanation of how you’ll meet each of
the acronym’s requirements, you might need to temper expectations.

Using data makes this process a little easier. Reference past benchmarks can help
determine what are realistic improvements. In doing so, be sure to consider context.
For example, it doesn’t make sense for seasonal businesses to just increase their
targets month-after-month. Retailers don’t set January or February revenue goals
based on what they brought in during the holidays — they look at historical data from
those respective months.

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 From Lattice Advisory Services
“Setting goals that are challenging leads to better performance, but you don't
want something so challenging that it's demotivating. Goals shouldn’t do more
harm than good — if your team missed the mark on a goal because it just
wasn’t realistic, don’t be afraid to scale it back.”

Still, let’s be honest: Goals may need to change, even within the same quarter. For
example, the COVID-19 pandemic obliterated project timelines and reset career paths
across the board, which made reassessing plans a priority at companies worldwide.
And it’s underscored a clear reality: Some goals, no matter how fiercely wanted or
assiduously worked at, are unattainable.

Rather than demoralize employees by inevitably falling short, reassess. Consider

which factors influenced the goal. Was it unrealistic from the onset, or did factors
outside of your control take over? Shrink the goal, delegate ownership to additional
team members, or reconsider whether it was worth prioritizing to begin with. 

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 CHAPTER 3

Leveraging Technology

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CH APTE R 3

Leveraging Technology
Keeping Goals Top of Mind
There is no set-it-and-forget-it approach to goals and performance management.
Tracking progress and making adjustments along the way is critical. That means
employees, managers, and even senior leaders need to keep their goals top of mind
year-round.

While you could set recurring calendar reminders to update goals or check in with
your manager, there’s a more efficient way. Weekly one-on-one meetings between
managers and their reports should be encouraged by People teams, if not required.
They’re a fundamental management tool, giving teams a chance to check in
regarding any issues, big or small — including progress on goals. If you use a people
management platform to facilitate goals and one-on-ones, the former can be easily
accessed as part of the weekly agenda.

In addition to regular one-on-ones, asking employees to write a weekly update or

“snippet” also helps everyone stay on top of progress, upcoming priorities, and
challenges. Usually a Friday afternoon or Monday morning activity, snippets give
employees a means of reflecting and posing potential talking points ahead of their
next one-on-one. Explicitly asking employees to list out the week’s roadblocks also
gives them a way to address goal challenges before it’s too late to make adjustments. 

When you make regular touchpoints like these part of the routine, it makes it easier
for everyone to stay on top of their targets. While you can facilitate these manually,
leveraging technology makes the process effortless. For HR teams, these tools
represent the closest thing to “autopilot” you’ll find for reinforcing goal-setting habits. 

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Celebrating Employee Success
As any HR professional will attest to, compensation alone doesn’t drive employee
engagement. Despite US companies spending nearly a quarter of their budgets on
compensation, research shows that 80% of employees still don’t feel recognized.
Further, 40% of surveyed employees said they would work harder if they were. That’s
especially true for millennials and Generation Z, who statistically value recognition
more than past generations.

With respect to goal setting, showing employees that you appreciate their hard work
is just as important as the goals themselves. Importantly, the time for that recognition
isn’t just when the goals have been accomplished. Along the way, it’s critical that
employees receive recognition for reaching their monthly milestones, completing key
results, or simply putting in the effort. It may feel like a small gesture, but the boost
could make all the difference to the goal’s outcome. 

One way to easily show your appreciation is by utilizing communication tools like
email, Slack, and people management platforms like Lattice. Praise is most effective
when it’s public — so sharing these messages company-wide could give your team an
extra boost. Who’s giving the feedback also matters — while colleagues and direct
managers might be most aware of an employee’s achievements, having someone at
the executive level occasionally acknowledge them adds extra meaning.

Bringing Goals Into Performance

Conversations
Goal setting motivates employees and helps them understand how they contribute to
the business. But the value of having goals and OKRs extends past their completion
date. When your company uses a people management platform to set and track
goals, it creates a historical record that employees can cite when writing self, peer,
and manager reviews.

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This is especially important when managers conduct traditional, downward
performance reviews. HR software or low-tech alternatives, like printed handouts of
the review periods, can give managers something tangible to work with when writing
evaluations. Because this data represents long-term results, it can also be used to
mitigate the role of “recency” bias, or judging employees on how they’ve performed
lately versus the entire review period.

But there is another, even more meaningful way that goal-setting tech impact
reviews. Because well-crafted goals serve objective measures of employee success,
they can also help curb unconscious bias. In fact, research shows that organizations
that lack performance management structures like goals and OKRs are more likely to
exhibit heightened bias against women and people of color. When structured
properly, goals and reviews can help HR teams and managers foster a more equitable
workplace for everyone. 

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Conclusion
Even the best goals are wasted when they collect dust. The only way to make goal
setting your performance management differentiator is to make it part of the whole
team’s everyday routine. Picking the right goal-setting methodology, following HR best
practices, and leveraging technology can make the difference between your goal-
setting launch falling flat or supercharging your workforce.

Lattice's people management platform integrates goals into everything your team
does. The results are tangible in other ways, too: more aligned and productive one-on-
ones, actionable feedback, and stronger performance reviews centered on shared
success. Employees can set ambitious, meaningful goals to self-motivate and engage
in their work. According to one independent analysis, Lattice’s people management
platform delivers a 135% return on investment over three years.

We empower over 2,000 companies to develop engaged, high-performing teams.

Schedule a demo to learn how we can help you set and realize your goals.

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About Lattice
Lattice is a people management HR software company that aims to help companies
drive and retain engaged, high-performing teams.

Lattice’s product offerings include a continuous performance management suite as

well as engagement surveys and analytics. With Lattice, it’s easy to launch 360
reviews, share ongoing feedback and public praise, facilitate 1:1s, set up goal tracking,
and run employee engagement surveys. 

By combining performance management, employee engagement, and career

development in one solution, HR teams get powerful analytics that leads to
actionable insights. Lattice is the only company that offers all three of these tools in
one solution. 

Lattice works with companies who aspire to put people first and see people as part of
how they’ll be successful. Whether redefining the beauty industry or building self-
driving cars, all of our customers have one thing in common: they value their
employees and want to invest in the development and success of their people.

Trusted by the best places to work

Join 2,000+ organizations that use Lattice to help
power their people strategy

Book a demo on lattice.com

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