Startup Goals and Objectives
You’re in the initial stages of launching your startup. Maybe you have an idea for a product or service. Maybe…
Many goal setting methodologies come with this one grounding caveat: your goals have to be reasonable, realistic, and accessible. In the day-to-day, this is a useful, budget-preserving boundary to have that helps a company take organized steps forward with the resources already available to them. In terms of long-term growth, employing the ideology of realism and reasonableness can be a dampener.
And that’s why it’s important to make sure that, every once in a while, your organization shoots for the moon. In this article, we’re going to go over aspirational goal setting, how to set audacious objectives, and what that may look like for you.
The two most commonly talked about OKRs are committed, and aspirational.
Committed OKRs are those that fall into the “reasonable and realistic” category. They are achievable goals which have a set timeline in which they should be met, and often act as stepping stones to larger or more grandiose objectives. They can be used for the benefit of individuals, teams, departments or the organization as a whole.
Example: Increase customer retention through an improved customer support experience.
Aspirational OKRs are those out-of-this-world dreams which often defy the parameters of the current systems and institutions. Aspirational goals differ from committed goals in that they rarely are based within resources or policies currently at an organization’s disposal. Instead, an aspirational goal imagines what could be possible for your organization if there were no limits.
Setting an aspirational goal can be an incredible strategy for business transformation because it often requires a great deal of change in order to be achieved. They are designed to challenge your team, and even if they are unmet can result in incredible achievements.
It is important to use these two concepts in tandem when setting objectives for either individuals or greater teams. Using only committed OKRs can mean slow progress or uninspiring change. But using only aspirational goal setting with no realistic follow-through can be exhausting and discouraging. The best strategy is to dream big, and then support that dream with a practical and actionable strategy.
Here are the steps you can take to set aspirational goals.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of aspirational goal setting for individuals as well as organizations at the enterprise level.
A new employee at a major retail company is inspired by the competency and commitment displayed by her store’s HR specialist. She has always thought about entering Human Resources, but her previous experience lies mostly in food service management and so she believed the goal to be unrealistic. But one day her supervisor compliments her for her ability to “rally the troops” on the floor, and this gives her the inspiration she needs to take the first steps towards her dream.
She sets the aspirational objective to become Chief Human Resources Officer at her company within the next 10 years.
Her key results include:
Leadership at a mid-sized enterprise corporation has felt moved by recent social movements, and motivated to shift company culture to be more accommodating and inclusive towards marginalized employees.
They set the aspirational objective to have diverse representation at every level of their company.
Their key results include:
If your company is out to change the world you have to include aspirational goal setting in your repertoire. Set your organization up for success, now and well into the future, by taking practical steps towards audacious objectives.
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