Ask any leader how to help teams achieve their goals, and they are likely to mention factors related to specificity, measurability, and achievability.
While all of these factors are important, a well-crafted goal can still fail if the team is not unified in their determination to successfully achieve it together. If leaders want to help teams achieve their goals, they involve them in how the goal is developed. That’s why the “A” in our smarter S.M.A.R.T. goal model stands for “agreed-upon.”
In the first two installments of this series on our adapted S.M.A.R.T. goal model, we focused on the importance of specificity (being clear about what we’re working to improve) and meaning (emphasizing why the goal is worth achieving). With that foundation in place, the next step is building staff commitment – individually and collectively – to the changes in practice that will be essential to achieving success.
Following are several tips for how to help team members achieve their goals and achieve success:
Involve team members in crafting leading goals and tactical plans
While many financial, operational, and quality goals may be set at an organizational level, teams can and should be involved in the problem-solving that sets specific leading goals to achieve targets. These leading goals, and staff support of them, are essential to driving a team’s ability to meet the larger organizational metrics. For example, leaders should include care teams in developing the leading goals related to patient placement and/or education to meet organizational patient fall reduction goals. (For more detail on setting effective leading goals, see our earlier blog on the importance of making goals specific.) When we give staff members a say in how we’ll achieve success together, they feel a higher degree of ownership and commitment to meeting or exceeding targets.
Spend time talking about goals, not just posting them
Organizations and department leaders too often distribute well-written goals – either via email or simply tacked on a bulletin board – without giving teams the chance to really understand their intent. Giving teams members opportunities to ask questions and to discuss how the goal will be achieved is crucial for them to truly embrace the objective and be committed to success. Team goals should be a recurring topic on Interactive Staff Meeting agendas.
Celebrate success; course-correct for shortfalls
Discussing a goal once is rarely enough for a team to fully support its achievement. Updating plans to achieve individual goals should be a regular agenda item at department team meetings, during rounding with staff, and at huddles. We’ll talk more about how to effectively “track” goal status in our final post in this series.
“Agreed-upon” is all about increasing employees’ sense of ownership and commitment to the achievement of operational, quality, service, and financial goals. The litmus test for optimal team endorsement can be summed up in one question to staff: Is this our team’s goal for improving care or their (meaning management’s) goal to meet a company target? The answer says a lot about not just goal setting but also organizational culture.