Overview
Live Goals allow your team to track and see progress against projects and initiatives. They are as much about communication as they are about alignment. Most remote and hybrid teams suffer from an “alignment gap” because the tools they currently use do a poor job of keeping teammates focused on the big goal. These tools are too close to the daily work.
This typical “alignment gap” is a source of enormous frustration for so many teams: competing priorities, infighting, disconnection, lack of focus, overly large meetings, and more. Everyone is working feverishly, but it seems like no progress is being made toward the big things that matter to your team. This gap can be excruciating for a leader who has to deliver results.
Live Goals fill that gap.
Each Live Goal exists as sort of a short-lived micro-blog with regular, rich context updates right alongside the Goal. No longer will you get to the end of the quarter only to be reminded of that goal you set at the beginning that you haven’t heard anything about in 90 days.
You’ll go from the present day of having a fuzzy understanding of what your team is doing to a totally new way of working with a living high-level view of what’s going on without the surprises.
Live Goals Best Practices
The smallest unit of measure should be “project sized”.
Live Goals are about the big picture over periods of time, not granular tasks. With that in mind, the smallest unit of measure for a goal should be “project-sized”. Keep in mind that every goal assumes that whoever “owns” the goal will provide updates on it. Don’t make a goal for it if you don’t want to report on it! Roll it up with a similar goal into a broader objective instead.
Creating effective Live Goals
Goals come in infinite flavors, but you should ask yourself two questions before creating a goal:
Will this be helpful for me to see every day? Live Goals show up on your daily check-in sidebar. Ideally, you want a goal that’ll help you maintain focus on the kind of progress you want to make.
Do I want to write about this? Remember that Live Goals are essentially short-lived micro-blogs about a particular subject. If you don’t want to write about it or don’t think you’d have anything to say, consider a different goal.
Keep it focused
Live Goals exist to create focus. Creating too many is inherently counterproductive. People should own one to two max. It keeps focus high and “alignment effort” low.
Live Goals are great for team professional development too
No one’s stopping you if you want to make a “Let’s improve our accessibility” goal that you use to share, learn, discuss, and reflect.
Live Goal owners shouldn’t only be managers
If only a few people own Live Goals, only a few people get heard. When everyone owns a goal, everyone has a dedicated venue to share their work.
Live Goals are most effective when they’re not handed down
Alignment requires buy-in, and buy-in happens when everyone has a hand in crafting their Live Goals. Consider a cascading approach where the manager/leader sets a top-level goal, and folks underneath create their own goals that support it.
Higher level = lower frequency
Consider longer cadences like bi-weekly or monthly for team goals, and weekly cadence for individual goals. That means whenever it’s time to provide a team goal update, you’re guaranteed to have updates from supporting goals on tap.