The quick start

guide to goal
planning and
tracking

aligntoday.com
2 aligntoday.com

Table of Contents

The Company North Star – 7

The Right System for Planning – 10

The SMART or FAST Way to Set Goals – 14

The Planning Theme – 24

The Planning Session – 25

Powering Goal Planning and Tracking with Technology – 27

Additional Resources – 33
 aligntoday.com 3

Introduction

“ The best-laid plans o’ mice

an’ men Gang aft agley
(The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry) – Robert Burns

”


What does your business look rendering requires knowing which direction
you’re headed and continuously reassessing
like at the end of 2020? At the
as you go along.
end of 2021? 2025? 2030?
In their quest to plot a path to the Pacific Ocean,
For most leaders this question may elicit a Lewis and Clark began with a tremendous goal
vague response or overwhelming confusion. but constantly evaluated the best way forward
With the emergence of new technologies and in the short term, never losing sight of how
increasingly competitive market dynamics, their short-term progress contributed to their
projecting business trajectory during the larger goal.
coming decade is more difficult than ever.
In 2012 Align was born out of the need to
simplify the execution of strategic plans and
goal tracking. Since then, we have been the
tool of choice for executives and business
coaches to develop, implement, and execute
strategic plans. Along the way we’ve learned
a lot about what connects business planning
with success.
Navigating the future of your business a
decade out is like plotting a path through Over eight years of working with thousands
uncharted territory. It may be possible to of executives, the top question we hear is,
predict what that place looks like based on “Alright, so how do I roll out goal management
your current terrain, but creating an accurate to my teams?”
4 aligntoday.com

The best practices we’ve seen represent This guide helps you jump start a culture
a radical shift from the classic image of of transparency and accountability for your
executives setting strategy three to five years business through the use of goal planning and
out and revisiting plans annually or less to tracking. As you develop this culture around
those who plan and track progress on a more execution planning, you align your entire
systematic regular basis. organization. With everyone moving in the
same direction, the strategic thinking needed
Like science, creating a culture of goal to plan the long-term future of your business
planning and tracking necessitates iteration, is much more effective.
accurate data, persistence, and measurement.

What’s a plan without action?

Too many plans remain only plans and never get put into action. The missing step is breaking up a
plan or the big picture into smaller goals.

Planning Around a Quarter

The Sweet Spot of Goal Planning
Why a quarter? Just like in Goldilocks – finding something that is just right is essential. The fiscal
quarter is not too small to measure, track, and get things done, but it is also not so big that you
lose the ability to better make adjustments to take advantage of market opportunities.

Choosing the Right Goals

Selecting goals that don’t make sense or are too easy to reach will ultimately hurt your chances
of success. In fact, in a study conducted by Fierce, Inc. showed 97% of employees and managers
believe that misalignment within teams directly impacted the results of a given project and a
larger goal.
 aligntoday.com 5

Assessing your organizational structure

Start by considering how rallied behind your strategy your team might be based on the following:

• Does the team know the purpose of the company?

• Does every person at the company have a clear understanding of what they
are accountable for?
• Do they feel a sense of responsibility to see it to completion?
• Are the people who need to work together to achieve success able to do so?

In our alignment checklist, the first habits center on executive and full team alignment. They start by
surveying your team. Do they participate in ongoing executive education? The executive team is the
foundational piece in improving strategy-first alignment. Does the executive team understand each
other’s needs and processes? Do they meet for weekly strategic brainstorms? Do they participate in
ongoing executive education? The executive team is responsible for a better, up-to-date organizational
structure and goal setting.

The next important predictor of success is the alignment of the whole team behind the company’s
most critical strategic priority. As we mentioned earlier, when organizations scale they often get
more complex, and team goals begin to splinter. Make sure that everyone is aligned behind a #1
priority: The one thing that needs to happen and what their part is in that conquest.

What gets measured gets managed

Peter Drucker, Management Expert

Continuously tracking progress towards these for our company alignment. It helps us see how
goals with accurate data is necessary to confirm we progressed last quarter and identify areas
you have structured the team for success. we should focus on or address for the coming
quarter. This is an excellent tool for everyone
Ahead of every quarterly strategic planning on the team – not just upper management –
and goal setting session, our team uses the to gauge how aligned they feel the company
alignment checklist linked below, popularized is. It highlights potential areas of concern and
by Verne Harnish’s book Rockefeller Habits and recognized things we are doing particularly
updated in the book Scaling Up, as a diagnostic well. We average the scores of each person in
6 aligntoday.com

the company to get data points around our scale of 1-10 to determine areas of strength
alignment – it takes the anecdotal nature of and those that need improvement when it
alignment out of the picture. comes to key functions of the business –
Communication, Execution, and Planning.
As you go through the assessment, read You can also print out the checklist and share
each statement and rate your company on a it with your team here.
 aligntoday.com 7

The Company North Star

Choosing a Big Hairy Audacious Goal
What’s a BHAG? BHAG refers to a Big Hairy Why should this matter to you? Company
Audacious Goal, a term coined by business leaders across the world claim that choosing
consultant Jim Collins and organizational the right BHAG, a goal your company
theorist Jerry Porras in their 1994 book should strive for 10-25 years in the future,
Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That is immensely important. If you identify your
Matters. BHAG early on in your planning process, you
can set your company up for lasting success
When Jim Collins first discussed what to call a down-the-line.
company’s ambitious long-term goal with his
coauthor Jerry Porras, Porras recommended Scaling Up author Verne Harnish suggests
naming it something professional-sounding that the BHAG may be your company’s
like “corporate mission.” most important long-term decision, driving
your day-to-day business and main overall
Collins, on the other hand, wanted a term priorities.
that captured the excitement, ambition, and
motivation that such a vision could create in So how should you go about identifying the
an organization. right BHAG for your company?

He came up with Big Hairy Audacious Goal,

and the term BHAG stuck.
8 aligntoday.com

Align With Your Company’s Purpose

Your BHAG needs to align with your overall company strategy. Consider your core values and
purpose before identifying your BHAG. Your BHAG should serve as a unifying force for your
employees, so it must align with your overall strategy and mission.

Jim Collins often shares the example of Sony to illustrate a BHAG

that directly corresponded to the company’s core purpose. Microsoft’s early BHAG: “a
Sony’s core purpose in the 20th Century was “to experience the computer on every desk,:
joy of advancing and applying technology for the benefit of the and in every home.” In the
public.” Aligned with this purpose, Sony developed the following early 1980s, this goal seemed
BHAG in 1950: to become the company most known for changing extremely ambitious, since few
the worldwide poor-quality image of Japanese products. people even had computers at
their workplaces, let alone at
See how the purpose and BHAG directly correlate? Make sure home. Yet, the BHAG was highly
to identify a BHAG that aligns with your overall vision moving visual. Its specificity helped
forward. the Microsoft team imagine
their desired outcome.

Develop a BHAG You Can Visualize Microsoft didn’t know exactly

how they would accomplish
A BHAG should be lofty but realistic. It’s important that your their goal, but they used it as
team can visualize achieving the goal, even though it’s far in the a driving force, impacting their
future. It should be tangible and highly focused. business decisions.

However, a BHAG that’s too easily in reach won’t inspire your By the end of the 20th Century,
employees. A BHAG needs to be a motivating force, driving nearly all office workers had
engagement, and challenging your team to perform above-and- a computer on their desk and
beyond. most homes in the developed
world did have computers,
A BHAG that’s too easy to accomplish will drive your company demonstrating that a BHAG,
into complacency. Collins recommends a BHAG with a 50- which seems insurmountable,
70% chance of success. Although that might seem like a low can in fact be reached,
percentage, Collins reiterates that the BHAG should act as a
“mountain to climb,” stimulating progress and empowering your
team to strive for the best.
 aligntoday.com 9
As illustrated in the graphic below, a BHAG arises from the intersection of:

• What can your organization be the best in the world at?

• What are you deeply passionate about?

• What drives your economic engine?

What are you deeply

passionate about?

What can BHAG What

you be the drives your
best in the economic
world at? engine?

From there, a BHAG can emerge as a vision of what achieving that purpose looks like.
10 aligntoday.com

At Align, our core purpose is “Aligning achieve their goals, we are deeply
companies and their people on their passionate about succeeding alongside
journey to success.” our users, and we know their success will
drive our business as well.
We measure this with the amount of
business priorities companies using our To cover the overlap of these three areas,
product accomplish. We want to be the we developed our ambitious BHAG: “One
best software for helping companies Billion Strategic Priorities Completed!”

Choosing a Planning Structure

Structure makes implementing processes much easier. Three of the most popular business
methodologies: Rockefeller Habits or Scaling Up, Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) provide frameworks for your goal planning and execution. Here
is a breakdown to help you understand the similiarties and differences.

While all three derive from Peter Drucker’s management by objectives (in turn based on the hugely
influential management theory of Mary Parker Follet), they offer differing levels of complexity that
present advantages and disadvantages depending on the organization implementing them.

A GAZELLES COMPANY

The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up

Origin: The Rockefeller Habits or Scaling Up, as introduced by Verne Harnish, founder of
Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), in his books Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up,
is a holistic strategic planning and business management methodology that guides businesses in
the areas of people, cash, strategic planning, and execution. The principles are based in part on
the historic example of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and have been adopted by over 70,000
scaling firms like AmRest and Rackspace.
 aligntoday.com 11
Summary: The Scaling Up methodology is anchored by the implementation of a daily huddle
to improve communication. Scaling Up also includes tools for the development of a strategic
vision and core values. Scaling Up is best known for execution. The execution framework for
Scaling Up is built around a cycle of quarterly goal planning and tracking using Priorities (Goals)
and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The quarterly cycle allows you to break up your long-term
goals into achievable priorities that build toward your big goals over time. Scaling Up has a strong
emphasis on the high-level strategic plan, central of which is a “One-Page Strategic Plan” using
Harnish’s 7 Strata of Strategy framework. The methodology also includes tools for assessing cash
management and team alignment.

Who’s it for: Businesses of all ages and sizes use Scaling Up. But the system is most valuable for
organizations looking to manage or spur growth through change management. The system can
help leaders fully rethink their organization’s purpose, all the way from the highest-level strategy
to the day-to-day cash management and meeting rhythm. Like any habits, they take time to adopt
but can be rolled out selectively over time. Given the depth of focus on strategy and cash, Scaling
Up is especially effective for fast-growing businesses in the $5 to $100 million in revenue category.

Bottom line: Scaling Up is the most comprehensive of the systems described here. Each chapter
of Scaling Up could be a stand alone book. The components can be rolled out over time, though
implementers benefit most quickly from the methodology’s ability to connect strategy with
execution. The depth and focus of Scaling Up are especially helpful for organizations seeking a
holistic transformation that powers growth.

EOS
Origin: Entrepreneurial Operating System was developed by Gino Wickman in his book Traction:
Get a Grip on Your Business. Gino was a disciple of Verne Harnish and founding member of Detroit’s
EO chapter, an organization created by Harnish. As a result, EOS contains many similarities to
Scaling Up but with some simplification.

Summary: EOS reduces Scaling Up to its people and execution components. Like Scaling Up,
EOS utilizes Stephen Covey’s “Rocks”, a constrained set of goals that must be accomplished in the
quarter. EOS focuses on weekly “Level 10 Meetings” with the leadership team, designed to identify,
discuss, and solve problems.

Who’s it for: While EOS is also used across industries, its simplified tools make it appealing to the
lower end of the SME market. The entire EOS system can be implemented in one quarterly session.
In contrast, adopting all components of the more comprehensive Scaling Up methodology requires
a commitment over a more extended period.
12 aligntoday.com

The Bottom Line: The critical components of EOS are virtually identical to what can be found in
the other systems described. The Level 10 meeting provides a practical and detailed structure
for solving problems as a leadership team. EOS’s most valuable and unique tools can easily be
combined with methodologies like Scaling Up or OKRs to help the leadership team.

OKRs
Origin: Introduced by Andy Grove in High Output Management and recently popularized by John
Doerr in Measure What Matters, OKRs have helped companies like Intel and Google manage goals.

Summary: Objectives are the “What” is to be achieved. Key Results are the “HOW” the objective will
be achieved. Key Results are typically specific and measurable. Key results typically encompass
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), by defining quantitative targets.

Who’s it for: Because OKRs are the simplest and most flexible framework, it is widely adopted and
referenced. It can work for both personal and company goals. OKRs are easily adopted within the
broader frameworks described above.

Bottom Line: OKRs focus exclusively on execution and provide just one tool for leaders. While
this is fine for organizations focused solely on execution, many businesses may desire a more
complete system for connecting objectives to greater vision and day to day operations.

EOS vs. Scaling UP vs. OKRs Glossary

Scaling Up EOS OKRs Description

One Page The Vision/ Central document containing strategic

Strategic Plan Traction Organizer vision for company.

Rocks (Priorities) Rocks Objectives & 3-7 Top things you need to accomplish
Key Results in a quarter to move the business
forward

Critical Numbers Scorecard KPIs Leading indicators for how your

business is executing on key objectives

Daily Huddles, Level 10 Meeting Suggested meeting rhythm and

Weekly Team structure
Meeting, monthly
management
meetings,
quarterly planning

Rockefeller Organizational Self-assessment for how well your

Checklist Check-Up business is operating.
 aligntoday.com 13
Scaling Up EOS OKRs Description

Core Values Core Values 5-10 guiding principles for your

company.

Functional The Accountability Tool to ensure the right people are

Accountability Chart responsible for the right functions
Chart

Process The 3-Step Tool to ensure every process is

Accountability Process assigned to an owner
Chart (PACE) Documenter

DISC Personality KOLBE Preferred personality assessment

Assessment

Scaling Up Traction Tools Associated software

Scoreboard
Software (powered
by Align)

The Final Word on Methodology

As is probably clear from the above chart, all of these frameworks boil down to the same basic
tasks: developing a plan and aligning a team to specific, measurable, and time-bound goals. The
experience of hundreds of thousands of firms all around the world, as well as proprietary Align data,
proves the effectiveness of using a reliable system of goal setting and tracking.

Scaling Up and EOS provide the added benefit of more in-depth tools to help businesses think
through developing strategy and connect it to day-to-day operations. The systems can also easily
be combined, depending on needs. Scaling Up’s Daily Huddles can be used alongside EOS Level
10 weekly leadership meetings, for instance. Ultimately, the decision of which methodology will
work best depends on the level of detail and breadth of scope desired by the leadership team.
Since many teams adopt more complex methodologies as they grow, Align works across all goal-
management frameworks.
14 aligntoday.com

Choose SMART or FAST Goals

For years, major industry players like Microsoft, Google, and Intel have been using SMART Goals and
frameworks like OKRs to disrupt the status quo in their organization and drive significant growth.

SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic,

and Time-Bound. Let’s break down what that means.

Specific:
Well-written goals should answer the main questions of “Who?” “What?” and “How?” This
means the goal explains who is responsible, what needs to be achieved, and how it will be
accomplished.

Measurable:
A good goal should include some measure of success to enable you to track your progress and
know when you’ve achieved it. Defining a quantifiable measure of success provides clarity to
your goal (We’ll discuss how to choose a target for your goal in the next section.)

Achievable:
Setting a goal that other responsibilities will prevent you from accomplishing sets you up
for failure. Be realistic but aggressive when determining what can be accomplished with the
time, energy, and focus you have available for this goal.

Relevant:
Any goal should be relevant to achieving your targets and the bigger vision you have for your
organization and yourself. A goal that isn’t important to overcoming the hurdles between
today and your desired future won’t keep you motivated or move your company forward.

Time-Bound:
All well-written goals have a deadline for achieving them. Whether you’re planning on a
monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, tracking goals against a due date provides a sense of
urgency and allows you to understand whether they are sufficiently aggressive.
 aligntoday.com 15

Choose SMART or FAST Goals

Complimentary to the well-worn concept of SMART goals, we also
recommend creating your goals with FAST, a newer paradigm, in
mind. FAST goals are Frequently discussed, Ambitious, Specific,
and Transparent. While some of this overlaps with SMART, we’ll
break down the differences below and how they work in tandem
to motivate your execution.

Frequently Discussed:
Setting a specific cadence for reviewing progress, prioritizing associated work, and allocating
necessary resources is critical for keeping goals on track. At Align, we give updates on quarterly
goals daily and discuss them with functional teams on a bi-weekly cadence. Specific discussion
rhythm depends on your time frame but should allow for a maximal focus on what matters most
and timely course corrections if goals go off track.

Ambitious:
In addition to being “achievable,” your goals should provide enough difficulty to boost
performance and minimize the risk of teams relaxing if the goal appears easily obtainable.
Setting goals that require extra effort incentivizes innovation and creative thinking as priority
owners figure out how to elevate performance.

Specific:
This is a repeat of the first component of a SMART goal, but when combined with FAST creates
greater emphasis on flexibility. When the goal is written sufficiently specific, it is easier to
identify where progress is falling short and to adjust course quickly.

Transparent:
This is the final and potentially most important component of writing a goal that will push
success. Providing transparency into goal creation and tracking creates motivation through
accountability. Priority owners can understand how their work supports broader company
goals and also understand how efforts are combined. It also allows for easier identification of
duplicate efforts or efforts that don’t contribute to your broader strategy. Transparently tracking
goals also allows for greater collaboration when identifying issues and course correcting.
16 aligntoday.com

How Aggressive Should My Goals Be?

People tend to overestimate what can be

done in one year and to underestimate what
can be done in five or ten years.
Bill Gates

We recommend quarterly planning because this allows relatively confident predictive power.
According to Verne Harnish, anything between one quarter and five years is a wild guess!

The most challenging part of writing a great goal is balancing achievability and ambitiousness.
One great way to do this is by defining the success criteria, but also including a stretch goal. We
categorize these by a color system for instant visibility on progress, but there are many ways to do
so. Our priority color system includes:

Red: This represents an unacceptable failure. This is the minimum level that you would accept
before there would be consequences. If your goal is to 2X some metric, Red could be 1.25X.
This would constitute quarterly performance that puts achieving annual targets out of reach.

Yellow: This represents performance between the ceiling of your red and the floor of your
green. Yellow alerts you that a goal is off target before you hit failure.

Green: This is the color of accomplishing your goal.

Dark Green (Super Green): This represents your stretch goal, what it would mean to go above-
and-beyond what was expected. This should come with added celebration if accomplished.

Creating your measurable result for a green target should be based on the level of success needed
this quarter to help you achieve your annual target. In turn, you should base your annual targets on
what you need to accomplish to meet your desired growth trajectory, while also considering how
companies in similar industries grew their business. Avoid putting yourself in an echo chamber. Use
outside and inside data to ensure you don’t under or overproject.

When you break it down, the concept is based on simple business practices: identify where you
want to be (objectives) and set the plan for how you will get there (key results) – and make the
process continuous. Teams shouldn’t be reviewing progress at the start and end of each period –
performance needs to be managed daily, weekly, and monthly.
 aligntoday.com 17

It’s a continuous approach to goal

management that shifts company culture.

What Kind of ROI Can You Expect from Goal Management?

We break down the performance or ROI of goal management and some action items to
consider when rolling out this type of framework.

SMART or FAST goals equip you with data points, making it simple to evaluate the return on
investment. For example, Sears Holding Company released its performance metrics after they
rolled out OKRs to 20,000 associates. Within 18 months, they saw:

• 8.5% increase in hourly sales

• Teams with consistent use of OKRs were 11.5% more likely to move into a
higher performance bracket.

There was a clear, tangible impact on both individual employee performance and the organization’s
bottom line. Rolling out a new framework at an enterprise organization seems like a significant
undertaking, but they were able to implement the methodology without adding substantial time to
employee’s workflows.

If you knew there was a tool out there that

takes just a few hours each year to use,
and could increase your chances of high
performance by 11.5%, wouldn’t you at least try it?
Chris Mason, Sr Director, Strategic Talent Solutions

The Sears example isn’t necessarily the benchmark for goal management ROI, but it is an indicator of
the positive cultural and financial impact on the organization. Using a goal management system is part
of a larger cultural approach to performance management and a culture based on accountability.
18 aligntoday.com

The benefits of goal setting upon company culture should not be undervalued – these trickle down
and ultimately become needle movers for the business. We evaluated some additional stats around
workplace benefits teams can expect when adopting a goal management framework like Scaling
Up or OKRs:

3.5x increase in productivity – we looked at company data on Align, and after four planning
periods (typically 12 months) of consistent usage of a goal management system, companies
doubled the priorities completed per period. After 15 planning periods of adopting the system,
priority completion increased 3.5 times from the first period.

Number of Total Priorities Over Time

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Period on Platform
based on Align performance data of 1,900 companies from 2014-2018
 aligntoday.com 19

Fred Litwiniuk of Litwiniuk & Company, because it opened up space for the kind
Alberta’s leading personal injury law firm, of people who would thrive in their new
learned early with Align that there is culture.
nothing more important to a company’s
success than people and culture. “We’ve seen time and time again that
great people love a challenge. They
Fred says “If you get culture and want to know what the challenge is, they
people right then you can do anything.” want the freedom to go and tackle that
And he also learned that the two go challenge, and they crave accountability
hand-in-hand. “Align is all about clear while they do it. They want measurables
accountability. But not everyone wants and they want dominos to knock down on
that level of accountability. Some people their way to the larger goal. That’s why
prefer to hide from this kind of clarity, great people love Align.”
not willing to accept the pressure of
responsibility that can come with it. As the employees who were attracted to
They’d rather blend in. But Align makes the kind of culture Litwiniuk & Company
that so much more difficult, and — in wanted thrived, the culture moved
that way — it became a way for us to farther in that direction. And the more the
assess fit.” culture moved toward one of transparent
accountability, the better the team got.
Fred said that if people had the
inclination to “run and hide” from the “It wasn’t long before we found ourselves
increased accountability, then they’d with a team able to execute at a very
often leave the company because the high level,” Fred remembered. “And that’s
culture the firm wanted wasn’t right when we were able to accomplish some
for them. That turned out to be great, pretty amazing things.”

Increased engagement – companies that huddle/meet (daily and/or weekly) have 5% higher
eNPS scores (a metric to measure employee engagement and satisfaction) compared
to those that don’t. While huddling isn’t a key component of the OKR methodology, it does
facilitate communications and focus around the metrics that matter. You’re giving everyone
on your team a voice to share their updates, opportunities, and risks. Engagement is a metric
that affects the company’s bottom line and can signal potential problems for an organization.
A 2018 Gallup study reported employee engagement is at an all-time high, but about 53% of
employees still fall in the “not engaged” category. Gallup also found that increasing employee
engagement can contribute to higher productivity, increased retention rates, and a 21%
increase in profitability.
20 aligntoday.com

Seeing ROI from these systems is not something that happens overnight. And it’s not something
everyone on the team will embrace with open arms right away. These methodologies are proven.
It’s not simply something people feel will work based on anecdotal comments. There is actual data
and metrics supporting the adoption of a more formalized goal management system. To encourage
teams to stick with it, you have to keep the catalyst for adopting goal management at the forefront.
When your team buys in and commits to the change, you’ll begin to see results within the first few
months. The results will compound after a year and so on.

Ultimately, companies should consider the opportunity cost of not implementing this type of
system. The traditional approach to goals and performance management is outdated, costly,
and creates a lot of wasted time. How much more could you be achieving if you had a formalized
system in place?

Gootee Construction was having success For Ben, perhaps the most important
— never short of clients — but CEO Ben piece was that it gave him an eagle-eye
Gootee knew he would have to improve view of his company. He could see where
internally if his company was to continue progress was taking place — as well as
to scale. where progress was being held up — in
a way he had never been able to before.
“Before Align, we were setting goals, but Ben believed the best leaders acted
they just didn’t have any meat to them. as a coach for their company. Now he
No real teeth.” Meaning they weren’t was able to more effectively be that for
specific and measurable. “But having it Gootee.
written down for the entire team to see
and share really invigorated members to “Before Align, people knew generally
action. Then — when you can see that what they needed to be doing,” he said.
progress on a visual display — it kind of “But these accountability tools are what
forces you to do the things you say you’re gave us that extra 20% to really move us
going to do or everyone knows you didn’t forward.”
do it.”
 aligntoday.com 21
To recap, hare are the six essential elements of strategic
goal setting:

1 Start with your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).

For Microsoft, it was a computer on every desk and in every home. It sounded crazy at the
time. But it sets the long-term vision for the organization that decisions and objectives
should be based on. It should be a unifying force for your employees that aligns with
your company’s mission and values. And remember to think long term – where do you
want to be 10+ years from now?

2 Embrace transparency.
Goal setting and company performance are not exclusive to the C-Suite. Every individual
needs to know where the company is heading, how it’s going to get there, and how they
fit. Involve individuals in their own goal setting, monitoring, and management. This
instills a sense of shared ownership in the company’s success.

3 Don’t set goals that can’t be measured.

Don’t set goals that are too safe. If you set goals you know you’ll achieve, you’re
underutilizing your team. Goals should be ambitious, and all goals need a quantifiable
metric assigned to them. Measurement means quantifying the goal with a unit of
measurement as well as making it time-bound. This gives you the data you need to
continuously monitor progress, see what works, what didn’t, rinse and repeat.

4 Identify your leading indicators, or the metrics that

matter most.
What are the 3-5 most important metrics that indicate success for the entire company
for that period? It can be a sales target, revenue, website conversions, etc. You can have
additional target metrics that you monitor, but you need to know the 3-5 most crucial
and keep everyone focused on those.
22 aligntoday.com

5
Cascade goals from the top down.
Going back to the BHAG – use that as a litmus test for defining organizational goals,
consider how this goal will get you closer to that long-term vision. Set departmental
or team goals that ladder up to the organization goals and individual goals that ladder
up to those. There needs to be an evident link between individual, departmental, and
organizational objectives.

6 Keep lines of communication open

Part of evaluating progress involves face-to-face conversations once you have
performance data. Create daily, weekly, and monthly meeting cycles to raise red flags,
identify opportunities, and keep teams focused on the key objectives and metrics
you’ve outlined. It sounds like a lot of meetings, but productive shorter meetings more
often save time and pointless email chains in the long run. One client shared with us
that each member of their management team saves an average of 8 hours a week one
year after implementing daily huddles into their rhythms. While most people strive for
a daily rhythm, one former Boeing executive shared with us that they had refined their
rhythm over time and found that rolling information from the bottom to the top of the
organization twice a day or every 4 hours offered the best level of optimization.

In short, rolling out goal management systems like Scaling Up and OKRs have six key factors for
success – long-term vision, transparency, measurement, more measurement (focus), alignment,
and communication. And remember with each new round of goal-setting and tracking your team
will improve as they gain this experience.
 aligntoday.com 23
The Planning Theme: Fun Ways to Create Focus
Is everyone in your organization on the same page?

What seems like a straight-forward question gets to the heart of a complex and critical challenge
for leaders: creating and maintaining a culture of alignment.

The problem appears to be widespread. Business writer Anne Loeher found, “93% of employees
don’t really understand what their organization is trying to accomplish in order to align with their
own work.”

To bring all these best practices together in a way that excites and motivates employees, executives
should consider implementing a team-wide “Theme” each goal planning period.

The Power of the Quarterly Theme

While planning may produce many company goals, choosing a single theme gets to the heart of
what it actually means to have a “priority.” As Essentialism author Greg McKeown writes, “the word
priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior
thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.”

Themes are not only an effective way to create this kind of singular focus but also a fun and engaging
way to roll out strategic initiatives through an organization. The practice is widely used by sales
teams, but also works well to get entire organizations moving towards accomplishing the quarter’s
top priority.

Business coach Robert Fish recommends five easy steps to develop a quarterly theme:

1. Identify your #1 Thing for the quarter to serve as Theme Topic

2. Decide how to measure success on your #1 Thing
3. Turn your #1 Thing into a fun and engaging Theme (flex that creativity!)
4. Create a reward for accomplishing your goal (doesn’t have to be monetary)
5. Communicate and roll out the theme to the whole company
24 aligntoday.com

Choosing your Theme

To go along with this list of 127 themes, we’ve chosen a few of our favorite themes from the
Scaling Up archive to help leaders brainstorm themes that can get their organizations moving
forward together.

1 FocalPoint Coaching and Rocky Balboa

FocalPoint Coaching was going through their third planning cycle, having only recently
become fanatic about daily huddles. They chose the quarterly theme of “Rocky,” as
the franchise was rebooted in theaters, and leaders identified the movie with the
competitive spirt that drove their organization. One of their goals was to gain public
recognition for great franchise support. With the competitive spirit of “Rocky” driving
them, FocalPoint improved from 11th to 2nd in a ranking of North American franchises.

2 One Harvest and Operation Bonus

In the last quarter of a lackluster financial year, produce suppliers One Harvest were
way behind their sales targets. Their quarterly theme of Operation Bonus tied hitting
their target to a bonus. Employees placed pictures of what they would spend their
bonus on if they achieved the goal on a wall right where they do huddle. People brought
in pictures of vacations, cars, houses, and guitars! While not the most original theme
name, the idea worked, and One Harvest beat their target by 2%.

3 Employment Group: Golden and Still Rockin’ at 50

Employment Group workforce solutions has been around for 50 years. To keep their
employees motivated and aligned, Employment Group huddles daily and chooses an
annual theme. During the quarterly kick-off, they introduce the quarter’s company
priorities and quarterly bonuses if targets are met. In honor of the company’s 50th
anniversary, they chose “Still Rocking,” and the executive lip-sync’d hits from the likes
of Elvis and the Beach Boys.

Quarterly themes may not make sense in every organization. But especially for growing organizations,
themes can be an extraordinarily effective method of keeping employees engaged and focused on
executing the top priority.
 aligntoday.com 25

The Planning Session

Best Practices for a Successful Day of Goal Planning
Planning sessions seem to evoke emotions of excitement and dread equally. The energy around
making big plans and thinking about a prosperous future goes hand in hand with worries about
agreeing on how to accomplish goals and the process to get to that agreement.

It is such a big topic that we brought in a prolific strategic planner, executive coach Jennifer Faught,
for a webinar to help us out.

From her scores of strategic planning sessions as an entrepreneur and as a coach with Petra Coach,
Jennifer has seen common practices of companies whose planning is focused and effective as well
as practices of companies who fail to run efficient planning sessions.

For Jennifer, the process boils down to four key steps:

• Reflect on current performance and positioning

• Understand targets and priorities the company could pursue
• Choose targets and priorities the organization will pursue
• Manage the plan to maintain focus and allow for flexibility

Jennifer presented seven tips for an effective planning session.

1 Choose an Off-Site Location

Jennifer recommends getting out of the regular office and into an energizing space for
planning sessions. This can increase creative thinking and reduce distractions. “When
you’re away from the office, you aren’t going back to your desk and getting pulled into
something,” Jennifer says.

2 Set Ground Rules and Hold Everyone Accountable

Keeping your whole team focused during planning requires establishing and enforcing
some ground rules around communication and process. Jennifer recommends phones
and computers not be allowed in the planning room, save for one to take notes, or enter
information directly into Align. Additionally, “The conversations in the room must be
confidential,” says Jennifer. “You can broadcast the plan and the outcomes, but don’t
disclose the discussion that got you there.”
26 aligntoday.com

3 Keep The Energy Up

Jennifer recommends taking care to maintain energy and focus in the room during
potentially long days of planning. Taking regular breaks for a stretch or breath of fresh
air can keep people alert along with avoiding sugary snacks and drinking water. Keeping
the energy up also means making sure the right people are in the room. “It should be
a privilege to be in the team that is working on the business to make it better,” says
Jennifer. “Any negativity or including people who don’t want to be there, will drag down
the energy of everyone else and impact the output.”

4 Build Trust in the Room

Jennifer recommends starting sessions with ice breaker exercises to get people
emotionally engaged in the day and to create an environment of trust. Vulnerability
creates trust, and high trust teams perform better. “Establishing this trust will ensure
your conversations and strategic planning discussions go better,” says Jennifer. For
more information about building trust and creating a safe environment for honesty and
vulnerability, Jennifer recommends checking out David Horsager’s The Trust Edge or
Dr. Brené Brown’s Netflix Special.

5 Use an Agenda Focused on Outcomes

Jennifer suggests companies set goals around the things they want to achieve during
the session. For instance, this typically is to determine quarterly priorities and enter
them into goal-management software. “When you move into each section of the day,
remind the team what the outcome is for that section,” says Jennifer. “For instance,
for moving into the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, the
goal is to identify the one thing we could do in the next 90 days to move the business.
It means focusing on planning, not solving.” Not getting into the weeds and staying
focused on outcomes is key to keeping planning on focus and moving forward.

6 Make Sure Leadership is Aligned

The most common downfall of planning sessions, according to Jennifer, is when the
executive team comes into the session without a unified vision for how to move the
business forward. Aligning the company team becomes impossible when the executive
team is splintered. Hosting a pre-planning session with a draft of company priorities
creates a united executive team even before planning. While the output of preplanning
can still be a draft, it serves to focus the executive team around what needs to be
planned during the larger group session. Jennifer recommends Partick Lencioni’s The
Five Dysfunctions of a Team for tips on how to build alignment in the executive team.
 aligntoday.com 27

7 Push for Outcomes

Jennifer’s final tip for leaders is to push for specific outcomes during planning sessions.
Avoiding weakly worded strategic priorities that lack alignment and ownership helps
ensure the team owns execution. Jennifer recommends consistently tracking and
assigning ownership of tracking, using a software tool like Align. “If more than one
person owns a priority, then nobody owns it,” says Jennifer.

Power Goal-Planning with Technology

for Tracking Real-Time Visibility
Blast from the Past
Executives set strategy in closed-door meetings. Plans were compiled and shared with management
in large three-ring binders. Employees tracked metrics in Excel spreadsheets and shared them on
floppy disks.

Flash forward to 2020, and for many businesses, not much has changed. The cloud has replaced
floppy disks, but many businesses still rely on spreadsheets to manage their goal tracking. Still too
often, strategic plans remain confined to big binders on the desks of company executives.

The Technological Future of Planning

In a world where technology is changing everything, why has planning remained a top-down activity
largely stuck in the days of paper and spreadsheets?

For organizations looking to scale rapidly in the 2020s, the status-quo of the 1990s simply won’t
do. To achieve ambitious growth goals this decade, company strategy needs to be as dynamic and
adaptable as technology is.

But how will strategic planning and execution change in the coming decade? Let’s break down three
critical ways technology is disrupting strategy and goal planning.

The world is moving faster,

and business planning must adapt
28 aligntoday.com

1 Accelerated Communication
The advent of the Information Age means that both the speed at which we communicate information
and the audience we are able to reach has increased exponentially. This presents a tremendous
opportunity for businesses to improve their organizational alignment and agility by deploying the
right technologies.

In his 2014 book, Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster,
and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it), author and Silicon Valley thought-leader Salim
Ismail presents a theory for what enables today’s fastest-growing companies to scale so rapidly and
disrupt existing industries.

As Salim describes, social technology, starting with email, dramatically enhanced the ability to
communicate information across an organization. This technology can help businesses develop a
culture of transparency and accountability that was impossible with the compartmentalized and
static methods of yesterday’s spreadsheets and binders.

Ismail quotes social business expert Theo Priestly who said, “Transparency is the new currency. Trust
is the bill we’ll just be paying for.” Based on this new paradigm of better communication and visibility,
Ismail cites Priestly’s equation for social businesses, which applies equally well to the cultures of
high performing companies in the future: “Connection + Engagement + Trust + Transparency.”

Employees who understand how their work connects to their organization’s goals will be
better engaged and more responsive to changes. The trust and transparency provided by new
communication technologies enables a business to scale processes and build alignment in ways
that were impossible when plans lived in binders or confidential PowerPoints.

As Venture Capitalist Marc Andressen puts it, “Communication is the basis for civilization and will
be a catalyst and platform in the future for more innovations in many industries.”

The strategic planning technology of the future will make strategy a more agile process. Leaders
will be able to more effectively communicate strategy to employees and increase engagement in its
execution.

A future where organizations communicate openly about their goals is already here. And the
technology driving this transparency is also driving greater success.
 aligntoday.com 29

2 Goal Tracking and Visibility

The right technology can improve strategic execution by changing the goal setting and tracking
process from static to dynamic. Instead of executives setting goals once and checking back
in with monthly or quarterly reports, technology can enable continuous tracking on a more
immediate basis.

The result is better execution. Align internal data based on over 235,000 priorities demonstrates
that using technology to track your goals overtime leads to 3.5X more goals obtained.

Goal tracking technology outperforms spreadsheets because it speeds up feedback loops and
motivates accountability. If a quarterly goal is lagging behind pacing, relying on spreadsheets may
delay a team’s ability to react and adjust course. The transparency of a goal-tracking tool, however,
allows teams to quickly asses how they are progressing on key tasks and to adjust course accordingly.

Scientific results in neuroscience, gamification,

and behavioral economics have shown the
importance of both specificity and frequent
feedback in driving behavioral change and,
ultimately, having an impact. Specificity and rapid
feedback cycles energize, motivate, and drive
company morale and culture.
Salim Ismail

Dynamic goals require dynamic technology. In today’s fast-moving world, confining goal tracking to
spreadsheets severely hinders a team’s ability to move FAST and achieve strategic goals.
30 aligntoday.com

3 Customizable Dashboards
In addition to improving communication and goal tracking, the right technology can improve a
business’s ability to monitor key metrics and leading indicators for their business. Similarly to the
agility provided by continuous goal tracking, real-time company dashboards provide insights into
company performance on the most important metrics for a business’s success.

In his description of the Exponential Organization, Salim Ismail describes this critical tool: “A real-
time, adaptable dashboard with all essential company and employee metrics, accessible to
everyone in the organization.”

This dashboard provides a level of transparency into company performance. That’s simply
impossible when metrics are tracked in spreadsheets. The visibility into performance ensures that
what matters to the business is not only being measured but that measurement stays top-of-mind
for all employees.

This dashboard, according to Ismail, means “insights and improvements are easier to see and
implement.”

While spreadsheets might still be useful for tracking all the different metrics a business monitors,
only a real-time dashboard can create the focus and transparency needed to create an engaged and
agile team. To cut through the clutter of every company metric, Doblin Group Founder Larry Keeley
recommends, “You need to pick the right half dozen contextually for whatever it is you’re trying to
achieve strategically.”

Keeping these key strategic metrics visible and updated requires new technology. While the shift
to transparent and real-time monitoring is a drastic change from the world of spreadsheets and
confidential presentations, these dashboards have already become a critical tool for fast-growing
organizations.
 aligntoday.com 31

The Future of Workplace Technology

Technology has already led to significant changes in the structure of our economy and society.
It’s leading to significant shifts in the way we work as well. A move toward remote work and agile
processes has taken place at many innovative companies. A transformation of how businesses set
strategy and scale up is growing more evident every day.

Spreadsheets and printouts don’t just represent an outdated way of communicating and tracking
performance; they represent a failure to adjust to a world where employee engagement and input
are essential to achieving long-term goals.

New technologies are driving a transition away from waterfall-style leadership in matrix organizations
to an organizational structure that prizes individual accountability and radical transparency.

This new workplace culture is key for high performing teams. Align’s data shows that employees
more likely to recommend their workplace to friends or family, also achieve more priorities.
Employee engagement is not just about retention; it’s critical to driving execution.

In the end, spreadsheets will likely remain

integral in parts of business tracking for a long
time. But the communication, goal tracking,
and dashboarding tools available with new
technology mean relying on spreadsheets alone
for executing strategy will not be agile enough to
remain competitive in the next decade.

As new tools and technologies emerge, the

organizations that will grow in the 2020s
will utilize new technology to build cultures
of accountability and achievement. The
world changes quickly, and so must the tools
companies use to adapt to it.
32 aligntoday.com

Conclusion
Whether your organization chooses to practice Scaling Up, EOS, OKRs, or some creation of your
own, our experience and the results of our clients show that the only successful plans are those that
adjust quickly to take advantage of opportunities and pivot swiftly to respond to threats.

This change in strategic thinking mirrors Bayesian modeling, the emerging paradigm for the way
statisticians develop models, and the ways many experts now believe we come to form opinions of
the world.

As Nate Silver explains, “Under Bayes Theorem, no theory is perfect. Rather it is a work in progress,
always subject to further refinement and testing.” This boils down to the simple formula, Initial
Beliefs + Recent Data = New and Improved Belief.

This runs against the widely held belief in science and in business that knowledge requires objectivity
and precision. Instead, Bayesian reasoning suggests that we can learn from partial data and even
our own ignorance.

Like agile software development, this new type of problem-solving requires fast feedback loops to
bring in new data. This produces solutions that evolve and improve as they advance, nearing, but
never claiming to reach perfection.

The methodology outlined here prioritizes flexibility and reactivity over perfection of the plan. The
result is an organization that is able to react quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities
and address emerging threats.

Just as developing a full strategic plan takes time and improves over each planning period, so does
your team’s ability to plan and set the strategy. While the process takes time to master, the first step
is to jump right in with goal planning and tracking. Use this guide as a starting point to build to your
broader strategic plan.

We wish you and your team the best of luck

in all your planning efforts!
 aligntoday.com 33

Learn more about how Align manages

goal planning and tracking.
Additional Resources
Downloads
• Scaling Up Growth Tools (One Page Strategic Plan): https://scalingup.com/growth-tools/
• Align’s Data Behind Strategic Planning and Execution: https://aligntoday.com/new-approach-
to-strategic-planning/
• Motivational Quotes for Strategic Planning by the Align Team
• Alignment Checklist: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/5092641/offers/Align_Goal-Alignment_
Checklist.pdf

Articles
• What You Must Do (and NEVER do) During Strategic Meetings by Verne Harnish
• With Goals, FAST Beats SMART by Donald and Charles Hull
• The Transformative Power of Vulnerability: Lessons from Dr. Brené Brown by the Align Team

Video Webinars
• Verne Harnish Keynote on Strategic Planning for Growth: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=eVNCRJ4L0AY
• “How to Conduct a Successful Strategic Planning Session” with Jennifer Faught: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=EaROsaElz78
• “How to Pick a SMART Quarterly Priority” with Herb Cogliano: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=bNInG5HdfJM&list=PLZTdfS5ZrnBu8aUH24lkQT3OA87pJvwox
• “Defining Your Big Hairy Audacious Goal” with Glen Dall: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=WB0awQrYt8o&list=PLZTdfS5ZrnBu8aUH24lkQT3OA87pJvwox&index=6
34 aligntoday.com

Additional Resources
Books
• Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) by
Verne Harnish
• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing
Firm by Verne Harnish
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Geno Wickman
• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with
OKRs by John Doer
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
• The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney,
Sean Covey, and Jim Huling
• The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P.
Norton
• The Great Game of Business, Expanded and Updated: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company
by Jack Stack
aligntoday.com