Creating Shared Goals

When managers don’t have shared goals, they tend to optimize their own functions, often at the expense of the department’s overall goals.The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable [Len02] Managers who don’t have shared goals fight for turf and work at cross-purposes. Creating shared goals forces the group to act as a team—or fail.The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization [KS99]

Develop shared management goals as a team.

Creating shared management goals as part of a regular, ongoing management team meeting reinforces that this is a normal team activity—part of how managers work together.

Facilitate shared goal development.

Use brainstorming (oral or writtenThe Workshop Book: From Individual Creativity to Group Action (Ica Series) [Sta02]), affinity grouping, or other techniques that use everyone’s input to develop the shared goals. Use techniques that incorporate the diversity of opinions and allow the group to converge on a shared goal.The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making [KLTF96]

Develop an action plan.

Goals without actions are just words. Actions have verbs and are time-bound. Create discrete, achievable steps that one person can accomplish within two weeks or less. Each team member should take responsibility for one or more actions.

Follow up on actions.

Track actions against management team goals in a regular weekly management team meeting. If you don’t follow up, people think the team goals are not important, and you’re back where you started—with a group, not a team.