Business goals development is a first step to establish the growth direction. These goals are often described in broad terms. Vague goals such as embrace innovation and improve customer service are seemingly easy to grasp but hard for middle managers and teams to delineate how they would contribute in an impactful way. Without specifics on which teams or areas the business desires to focus on, you leave much latitude for taking on initiatives that seem logical.
As a result, priorities are not clear and resources are spread thin over way too many “strategic” initiatives. Results might be mediocre, even undesirable, when teams focus on non-impactful causes. To avoid this expensive guesswork, there are two areas to work on.
Clear and specific objectives with measurable results
To turn vague goals into concrete objectives with measurable results, you need to articulate clearly what defines success. Engage key leaders to identify areas and initiatives that would move the needle for the desired outcomes.
For a customer service improvement goal, articulate what defines success. Think about what triggers the need for the improvement. Which aspect(s) of customer service do you want to focus on? Is after-sales support the area that requires most attention?
By working through these questions, you identify concrete focus and hence, clear results to aim for. This sets clear direction for specific team(s) on where to invest their time and energy.
Alignment across the business
When teams work in divergent paths, conflicts arise. These conflicts include competing priorities, inadequate resource allocation, and confusion arising from disparate directions.
Alignment across the business is critical to amplify results.
To build alignment, you need to be crystal clear about the results. Clear results help teams understand fully what they aim for.
If after-sales support was the desired customer service improvement for the example above, identify specific problem(s) you want to solve. A breakdown in communication between the repair technicians across teams might be a culprit.
In this case, an initiative to improve how the business assigns service calls, manages follow-ups and assignment of service calls across teams would be helpful. The customer support team and the service teams need to collaborate and refine the after-sales support approach.
This means the managers of both teams would work together and get alignment on what changes to implement. For example, logging adequate details on a service call in a system that support easy information access for addressing customer questions. At the same time, the service team manager could refine the scheduling strategy so incomplete service calls are assigned to the same crew where possible.
In the end, the improvements equip the customer support rep with proper information to address customer questions. Technicians are held accountable for completing each assignment fully. Most importantly, the customer would not need to repeat his problem multiple times when different technicians show up. The business achieves better service continuity and customer satisfaction.
By spending extra time upfront to articulate specific and measurable results in proper context, your teams are clear whether the goals are relevant to them. They can then determine whether they need to take action and how much effort they need to invest. For the business, this helps to drive the right focus and avoids teams running off to work on non-impactful initiatives.
If you find this helpful, you might be interested in How to Position Your Business to Excel.
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