Why, What, and How: Creating effective goals

There are 3 parts to defining the context of a goal. I call them Why, What, and How:

• Why: The reason why achieving the goal is valuable
• What: The goal itself, the precise difference between not achieving and achieving it
• How: Which tasks we believe need to be completed to achieve the goal

"Why, What, and How" come in order of importance and difficulty.

When creating goals for you or your team, you'll be tempted to spend the most time on the "How," the tasks to complete, because you want to get going; you want everyone to know what tasks need to be done so they can get started.

But you must do the precise opposite.

Most of your time should be spent on the "Why," the reasons for the goal, and much time should be spent on the "What," clearly defining the goal.

Defining the "How" is relatively easy and reassuring: a list of tasks to assign or tick off, a set of deadlines to hold yourself or others accountable to. That's why we gravitate to it.

Articulating the "Why" and clarifying the "What," though, is really hard.

"I know! We'll build a helicopter!"

It was one of those dreaded "set OKRs for the engineering team" meetings.

Engineering OKRs looked like a list of projects with deadlines, not like Objectives. Nobody knew why, but many of us felt frustrated.

At one point, there was a lull in the conversation. Alice, one of our top-performing engineers, hesitantly started talking:

Right now, the goals sound like "climb the mountain," sometimes even with "and use this equipment" or "use this technique" and "use this route."

They should be more like, "Get to the top of the mountain so we can scout the area." That way, I can say, "I know! We'll build a helicopter!"

The room lit up. Suddenly, we all knew what she meant and that she was right. We needed to articulate what needed to be done and be clear about why that was so the team could figure out how to do it.

Right then, it hit us though. The "What," reaching the top of the mountain, and "Why," scouting the area, are much harder to articulate precisely than the "How" – a myriad of tasks.

It's easy to tell others how to do something: Here's the plan. This is your project. Complete these tasks. Climb the mountain.

But where exactly is the top of the mountain? How do we know we got there?

And what does it mean to "scout the area?" When do we know we spotted something? How do we know that we're done scouting? What are we scouting for?!

Inverting the information and decision flow

We commonly see a manager's job as gathering information and using it to make big decisions. Management requires that, and it is an essential part of leadership.

But in the book High Output Management, Andy Grove also talks about the opposite, the importance of sharing information so our team can make the decisions:

It’s obvious that your decision-making depends finally on how well you comprehend the facts and issues facing your business. This is why information-gathering is so important in a manager’s life. Other activities—conveying information, making decisions, and being a role model for your subordinates — are all governed by the base of information that you, the manager, have about the tasks, the issues, the needs, and the problems facing your organization. In short, information-gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it. [..]

As can be seen from my schedule, a manager not only gathers information but is also a source of it. He must convey his knowledge to members of his own organization and to other groups he influences. Beyond relaying facts, a manager must also communicate his objectives, priorities, and preferences as they bear on the way certain tasks are approached. This is extremely important, because only if the manager imparts these will his subordinates know how to make decisions themselves that will be acceptable to the manager, their supervisor.

Grove, Andrew S.. High Output Management (p. 51). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Sharing information on goals is not only extremely important so others can make good decisions, but it's also necessary for them to feel inspired by the direction and have ownership of their goal.

In the book 4 Disciplines of Execution, Sean Covey and others discuss the importance of ensuring teams define how they will achieve higher-level goals, which creates understanding and ownership.

Rule #3: Senior leaders can veto, but not dictate. The highest levels of execution are never reached when the strategy is devised solely by the top leaders of the organization and simply handed down to the leaders and teams below. Without involvement, you cannot create the high levels of commitment that execution requires. While the senior leaders will undoubtedly determine the top-level WIG, they must allow the leaders at each level below to define the WIGs for their teams. This not only leverages the knowledge of these leaders, but also creates a greater sense of ownership and involvement. Simply put, they become more engaged in a goal that they choose themselves and that supports a worthy organizational goal. Senior leaders then exercise their right to veto if the battles chosen are not going to win the war.

Implementing Discipline 1 enables an organization to quickly turn a broad strategy into clearly defined WIGs at every level. It is not solely a top-down process, but neither is it exclusively bottom-up. Through this process, the senior leader’s choice of the overall WIG [Wildly Ambitious Goal] brings clarity (top down), and allowing the leaders and teams below to choose their WIGs (bottom up) brings engagement. In the process, the entire organization mobilizes around the focus that matters most and takes ownership for driving the result.

4 Disciplines of Execution, Sean Covey et al. (p. 35)

I call this "Inverting the information and decision flow." – instead of gathering information to make decisions, you share information for the team to make decisions.

In the context of decisions around goal setting, you must communicate context and priorities by conveying an inspiring and rich "Why" and a clear and precise "What," and then let the team figure out the best "How."

Clarify the 3 parts of your current goals

While "Why," "What," and "How" come in order of priority and difficulty, we erroneously spend most of the time on the "How" when setting goals.

Instead, we should spend most of our time on the "Why," the reason our goal is important to achieve, and "What," precisely defining when the goal is achieved.

Once the "Why" and "What" are clarified, they should be clearly communicated. This allows you to invert the information and decision flow, sharing information for others to make decisions, creating inspiration and ownership of the goal.

So the next step is simple, but not easy. Pick a goal you're working on right now. Any goal. Now ask yourself:

1) Why: Is the reason why this goal is valuable to achieve clearly articulated, ideally in writing, in an easy-to-find way for everybody working on it? If I ask every person working on this goal why this is important, will they all have the exact same answer as that articulation?

2) What: Is the difference between achieving and not achieving this goal crystal clear? Would everybody, no matter the circumstances, be able to assuredly say "yes this has been achieved." or "not achieved" at any point in time in the future?

3) How: Does your team have the right information to define how to achieve the goal? Are they empowered to determine the best way to achieve the goal?

Your answer is probably "No" for some of these questions. These are high standards, and they're hard to pursue. In that case, work on articulating your "Why," clarifying your "What," and empowering your team to work on the "How."

If you answered "Yes" to all the questions, then good job! The next step is to ensure your perception is aligned with reality – a self-awareness test.

4) Ask your team: Survey your team on your goal, asking them what the Why and What are for the goals, and whether they believe the Why is clear, the What is precise, and whether they are empowered to pursue them to the best of their abilities. Then share the survey answers with them.

You can justify surveying your team by saying you want to create more precise and inspiring goals and give them more control over achieving them. I'm confident they'll support you.

Goal setting by spending most of your time on the "Why" and "What" requires a discipline that's hard to create, but it is necessary if you and your team want to perform at the highest level.