Find Your Goal

Problems pop up all around us all the time. And we are encouraged to set ambitious goals for ourselves, our projects and our companies. Our usual reflex is to start running and go to solutions that we already know or have heard of from friends.

But it seems a lot more logical to define the actual outcomes we want and let the experts find the solution. This is what Find Your Goals helps you do. It will help any team that’s looking for the right solution to the right question. Some examples:

 

• Management teams defining strategic or tactical goals and need to convey them to operational departments and team.
• Program and project managers who want to make sure their results are a true answer to the organizations questions.
• Policy makers trying to get to the bottom of societal issues and their most useful and acceptable solutions
• Product development or innovation teams analyzing customers jobs to be done and translating them into requirements.

 

How can I use Find Your Goal?

Find Your Goal is especially suited to be used by any kind of team at the start of (a new phase in) a project or program or strategic cycle. It uses different types of exercises to provide an interactive way to discuss the true nature of the problems you face or the goals you want to achieve. It then goes on to help you define success: whatever solution we choose, what should it offer us?

Based on that, you can let experts do their work, secure in the knowledge that they know what is required of them.

 

Revisiting Find Your Goal later in your process will help you check if your initial choices stand up to new circumstances.

 

What outcomes can I expect?

Find Your Goals will create a clear vision across your planning cycle:

• What are the truly important goals and problems we face? Why are these so important?
• When will we be satisfied with results? What should our solutions achieve and how will we know they truly did?
• What solutions will we choose? How will we achieve our goals?

 

How does it benefit me?

Building in the second step to your process will force decisionmakers to stay away from operational choices and limit themselves to the strategic or tactical level where they belong. At the same time, they are required to give very specific guidelines concerning the outcomes of the work.

Operational expert can use these guidelines to do what they know best. They can take responsibility for their own work, instead of being told how to do their job.