Quarterly Goals
Inspired by Verne Harnish, we are adopting a quarterly goal system at Webmail. We’re going to put together, and publicize internally, five goals each quarter. We’re also going to ask each employee to come up with three to five personal goals that they would like to achieve. Each goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible. They also need to be goals that are outside of the daily, routine tasks that are going to be accomplished regardless of this goal setting activity. For example, a salesperson’s goal shouldn’t be to meet quota for the quarter just like a developer’s goal shouldn’t be to finish a project they are already scheduled to finish. They need to be stretch goals. And at the end of the quarter, we need to be able to look at our goals and truly determine if they were accomplished, or not.
In order to create an accountability system, we are asking everyone to print their goals out on a colored sheet of paper and hang them near their desk. This will provide everyone with a constant reminder of what they need to accomplish, and as importantly, it will expose their goals to others.
Here are my top five Q1 goals:
1. Eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner, at least once, with every employee
2. Call every customer that gives us a bad score on our customer loyalty survey
3. Review every employee that reports directly to me
4. Attend at least one out of state tradeshow or networking event
5. I can’t tell you about the last one yet, but if I get it done, it will be something I will talk a lot about later. If I fail to get it done, I will let you know that, too.
I really like the idea of a quarterly goal system. Everyone needs to have longer-term goals as well, but breaking goals down by quarter really puts the pressure on to get things done… and I love to get things done. Read more blog posts
