How to be successful in meeting your corporate goals

It is lonely at the top, especially for CEOs. Most CEOs lack a means to systematically gather the precise information from all levels of the business. While CEOs are often drowning in data, it is almost always historical. It provides little help in answering the critical question of “How likely is my company to meet its corporate goals?”

It seems like such a simple question. However, for many CEOs, it is challenging to answer, especially as companies grow. I have previously provided an insight into how to create a breakthrough in organizational performance as a roadmap to assist in meeting this challenge.

When a company reaches about 25 staff, CEOs no longer have a direct influence on the day-to-day work and priorities of each employee. Without a clear vision and an active system of two-way communication, CEOs are course-plotting a ship without any timely feedback. The CEO is e unable to guide their team in the correct direction or receive the information from staff that they need to make the required course corrections. The news that CEOs do receive is often tactical, outdated and just irrelevant to the future of the business.

What is the most significant thing you can do to ensure organizational performance so that progress continues?

Adopting an evidence-based mindset, an open-minded attitude that would seek to identify what has worked in the past, what has the best chance of working in the future — and endorsing those policies, as opposed to just expressing an allegiance to political ideology or tribe.” — Steven Pinker, Harvard

All organizations exist to create shareholder value. There are two necessary conditions for this to occur: engaged employees and satisfied customers.

No direct tie between work and corporate goals

Employees who see no direct linkage between the organizational goals and their work will still perform tasks. However, the guiding principles that they have may lead them astray. Employees will make decisions based on the priorities of their manager, their department or themselves. Often these do not line up with the CEO’s new priorities.

With no understanding of the company’s overall goals, employees may thoughtlessly follow organizational policy without regard to how it impacts customers or the business. Then, they will report on individual or departmental metrics. This reporting does not help the CEO understand how well the company is tracking towards the future.

Often only guiding factor that drives decision-making is the static budget that is six or nine months old. This tyranny of the annual budget makes it difficult to adapt to changing business conditions. Often when it is time to make a decision, the information is often sadly out of date. If the only goal the CEO has communicated is to stick to the budget, then that may be achieved. However, it will be at the expense of business opportunities that could lead to growth.

Working in not-for-profits, I was also amazed the Board wanted to set a profit target as an organizational goal. They miss the opportunity to achieve the mission of the organization by not investing the cash in activities that advance the organization. It is entirely appropriate for a not-for-profit to establish revenue goals. However, it is not-for-profit!

In for-profit organizations, shareholders expectations are that the returns of the entity will be higher than just keeping money in the bank. Not communicating goals beyond the budget often leads to unused budget and missed opportunities,

Outdated information also prevents CEOs from understanding if the company is meeting its goals. Sometimes a CEO discovers an issue only to find out that a lower-level employee knew about it six weeks ago. Without an active process to consistently gather information from throughout the organization, surprises become the norm. By the time the problem hits the CEO’s desk, it’s often too late to do anything about it.

My insight on how to be a better CEO focuses on self-awareness, and you can get more out of your team. It helps if you show your appreciation and recognition for all accomplishments. A system to recognize the value created leads to better feedback and a desire to create more value.

Outcome-based goals

All organizations require a clear vision and a set of outcome-based organizational goals that the CEO owns. The CEO must manage the goals every quarter and link talent to value. Getting the best people into the most critical roles does not happen by chance. It requires a disciplined, evidence-based look at where the organization creates value and how its top talent contributes.

Unlike yearly goals (HR often drives that), establishing quarterly goals (or monthly goals):

• enable the CEO to communicate the company’s priorities
• adapt to dynamic business conditions
• engage employees

The CEO needs to ensure that every employee understands the goals and how their daily job contributes to them.

Having weekly two-way feedback mechanisms helps to align employees to the goals continually. Having a regular feedback protocol provides an opportunity for staff to report on any issues. It also offers an opportunity for the CEO to celebrate success. The CEO must review the status updates on every organizational goal, along with alerts to problems as they arise.

Explaining strategy and priorities to the individual employees is essential for knowledge workers. They need the information to be more productive. When they are productive, they are more likely to be engaged. Engaged employees will understand how their jobs support the corporate goals. They can then communicate timely, relevant information about how they are actively contributing to the company’s success. With a system to gather and analyze this information, the CEO has more influence in the organization. Also, there are fewer surprises — they can act on issues before it is too late.

They will have an informed answer to the question that keeps them up at night: “How likely is my company to meet its corporate goals?” 

On average, teams make better decisions 75% of the time, and teams rarely do worse than managers and executives deciding alone, according to Cloverpop business decision database. As CEO consider creating a high-performance decision-making team to focus on the above question. A high-performance decision-making team will do better because you have the right people working on a task. Team members must have diverse skills and perspectives to create a multiplier effect. Since decision-making drives business performance, that decision advantage goes straight to the bottom line.

Meeting corporate goals requires goal alignment

Goal alignment is essential to the achievement of your strategies. It ensures the needed flexibility to respond to evolutions in goals and associated strategy rapidly. It provides that employees see the direct tie between the corporate goals and their work.

We focus on optimized alignment of corporate structures and budgets to your overall strategies. We view these structures collectively as "governance chains.” All resources must increasingly contribute to achieving your mission and vision.

Our Goal Alignment Program - GAP^TM offers analytics and methodologies that provide you with the tools to rapidly model, assess and optimizes your organization. We determine the relative value of each employee goal. Employees and departments’ goals automatically align with corporate goals as their performance are evaluated based on the relative contribution of each of their goals to organizational goals.

No need to have sleepless nights searching for the answer to the question: How likely is my company to meet its corporate goals?