The Art of Goal setting: reactive goals, proactive goals, and inspirational goals

“Hi Tommy, you listed fifteen projects on your document, but what are your goals - the objectives you want to achieve?” I asked a SDM in a planning meeting.

This is the season of planning and goal setting in AWS. We plan what will happen in the next 12-18 months and what resources we need to make them happen.

“Oh, I thought the projects are the goals. Aren’t goals supposed to be SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time bounded?” Tommy was lost, “I listed the concrete projects because they are SMART goals.”

“Yeah, they are SMART but they are too detailed as the goals for the 12-18 months plan. They are more about ‘how’ to get something done, the mechanisms. In the goal setting excercise for longer time frame in 12-18 months, we care more about the ‘what’, not so much about the ‘how’.”

“Hmm, so where do I get the ‘what’?” Tommy contemplated on the idea.

“There are two kinds of goals: reactive and proactive.” I answered, “Reactive goals are the ones you are told what to do, or the things you have to do. For examples, many goals from production management are responding to market demand. To engineering teams, they are reactive goals. Compliance goals are also reactive most of the time, unless your team charter is dedicated to compliance.

Proactive goals are the ones initiated from engineering team - you. You want to do it, because either it is addressing a customer pain, or meeting a customer need. The customer here can be external ones, but can also be internal ones or your engineers. You have to convince yourself your goals truly delight at least one concrete ‘customer’ on earth.

Proactive goals are where SDMs and team leads show originality and creativity. Think big. Make it inspirational. For example, can you make a 10x difference on a customer experience?”

“Reactive and proactive, inspirational goals.” Tommy thought hard, “but how do I turn my 15 projects into inspirational goals.”

“By asking what problems you are really fixing, why they need to be fixed, and for whom!” I said, “In the OKR model, Objective and Key Result - most of your projects belong to key result side. What you need is to identify the objectives that give the key results direction and meaning. Can you summarize the actual objectives they are trying to achieve for customers?”

“I guess I can label them into three objectives: 1. Raise the security and operational bar by making xyz self driving, 2. make API ‘abc’ 10x more scalable for customers who are constrained by its current quota, 3. reduce operational cost of of ‘efg’ by 85%.” Tommy said.

“There you go: these are your objectives, aka goals - customer obsessed, result driven, actionable and very importantly, inspirational!”

https://youtu.be/L4N1q4RNi9I