Think You Can Achieve Team Alignment without Aspirational Goals? Think Again!

I’ve been talking about Team Alignment in the past couple of weeks and last week I went into the details of how the Mission and Vision come into play. In the 8 Questions for achieving Team Alignment, this topic covers question 4. It’s right in the middle of your journey as a leader to get your team aligned. To get a full view of Aligning Your Team, read about knowing all the right questions to ask.

If the purpose of your company’s existence (Questions 1 to 3) gives you the direction and the motivation to achieve something meaningful, an aspirational goal provides fuels the team and subsequently gives them energy to go over and beyond their comfort zone and prove that #impossibleisnothing.

The Best Aspirational Goal of All Time

One of the most famous aspirational goals of all times was articulated in J.F. Kennedy’s ‘putting a man on the moon’ speech. Kennedy masterfully captured the imagination and energized a nation with the words:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Wow if that doesn’t get the best out of you, I don’t know what will!

We may not all have the opportunity to set a man on the moon, but what we can do is have a clear and meaningful purpose that’s carried by all the stakeholders. By articulating an aspirational goal, you’ll be able to capture the imagination of your team.

What’s a Realistic Aspirational Goal?

One of the biggest push backs I often get from clients in the process of setting an aspirational goal is the amount of realism that the goal should possess. My position is very simple on this and can be broken down into two points:

• It should make you feel uneasy, it should feel like OMG this is going to be impossible.
• Only if it creates that kind of inspiration will people make difficult decisions, put in energy and focus to achieve it.

The only exception is with organisations who in the past have set goals and never have been able to deliver them. Then as in every other performance conversation it’s all about setting small and incremental goals. Once you have a track record of achieving them multiple times, you shoot for the moon.

The Easy Way Out – Financial Aspirational Goals

Choosing your aspirational goal is as important as articulating your purpose. It requires as much involvement and alignment of your extended leadership team as well. Companies I’ve worked often choose financial time-bound aspirational goal such as:

• Revenue of 1 billion by 2020
• 300% profit growth in 5 years
• Become market leader in the next three years

These are easy to understand, easy to measure and easy to communicate. In my experience nobody has ever chosen ‘achieve a certain shareholder value’ as their aspirational goal. I think this is because focusing on making shareholders richer doesn’t put employee’s pants on fire.

Other Options for Aspirational Goals

Financial measures don’t have to be the only choice for an aspirational goal. Leadership teams could dive a little deeper and identify what’s the single most important thing that would drive a financial indicator. Take the following examples of elements that various businesses could look at:

• Internet startup – Number of members
• Healthcare providers – Number of patients cared for
• The retail industry – Number of outlets
• The pharma industry – Number of new drugs in the pipeline
• Consulting firms – Reputation

In choosing your aspirational goal you have to look at the following two criteria:

1. What indicator would fuel your purpose, and
2. What goal would galvanize your stakeholders, especially your employees.

My personal ‘Shoot for the Moon’ goal is to become a New York Times bestselling author. Crazy you might say and possibly rightly so. But it has driven me to where I am today. Will I get there? Maybe. But even if I get my work published in HBR I will have achieved more than I ever dreamed of prior to setting that crazy goal.

So what’s your ‘Shoot for the Moon’ goal? What is your personal aspirational goal and what drives the fuel that’s driving your employees towards team alignment? How is your organisational achieving it’s purpose? Answer these questions and then move onto Understanding Where You Stand Today.

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