Many organizations face some of the toughest business environments to date. As the access to information becomes easier, more and more companies are making intelligent business decisions. As much as everyone knows the importance of goals in an organizational setting, many companies seem to have difficulties with it:

9 out of 10 companies fail to execute strategy 

Only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy

Only 5% of the workforce understands the strategy

85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy

60% of organization doesn’t link budgets to strategy

So why the disconnect? Without a common strategy or set of goals to direct your team, you lose a lot of manpower being directed to unimportant tasks that don’t help further the company’s cause, get the community involved or excited, support your employees or otherwise.

Here’s where organizational goals really shine. Organizational goals can help provide guidance and direction for your team, facilitate planning, motivate and inspire employees, and help organizations evaluate and control performance. Here are some tips for implementing and tracking organizational goals.

Implementation 

Setting goals is an incredibly important part of this whole process. No matter how great your team is at implementing and staying on top of your goals, if the goals are not set properly, you won’t be working towards the right things. Even if they are worthy plans, without smart goal setting, it may be very difficult for your team to work towards them. Check out this video we made to help you learn the science behind setting SMART goals.

One of the greatest factors in implementing organizational goals is teamwork. Without solid communication to first create smart, effective goals, then to implement said goals with high efficacy, it’ll be difficult to create an agreed upon set of goals. Team members should have defined roles, have an idea of what coworkers are working on, having open, regular lines of communication and be able to easily reach one another. To learn more about encouraging teamwork in your organization, check out this blog post.

Organizational vs Individual 

Organizational goals are overarching and provide direction and individual goals really tell how they will be met in a practical manner. These two are not the same and should not be treated as such. A lot of times, when goal-setting fails, there is a large disconnect or no disconnect at all between organizational and individual goals. The more overlap there is in terms of direction and attaining goals, the better; individual goals need to be set in a way where if all employees meet those goals, the organizational goals are met as well.

Goals positively affect individual performance. They can give direction and illustrate to employees that tasks are goal-related, while revealing which are unrelated. They can serve as an energizing catalyst, with challenging goals leading to higher employee effort than easier or simpler ones. They can also affect perseverance, as employees brace themselves for the challenge. Finally, organizational goals can motivate employees to use their existing knowledge to attain a result or to acquire the knowledge needed to do so. Keep these points in mind when building your individual goals.

Smart Dashboard

Whatever your goals are, Smart Dashboard can help you track them. Smart Dashboard is a Xplor Recreation feature that allows you to analyze your whole organization and your team in-depth. With live up-to-date statistics about your organization, this invaluable tool will help you get your business to the next level. Use it to measure the efficacy of your marketing efforts, keep on top of member retention, and customize a high-level performance report. Just as the name suggests, we call it Smart Dashboard for a reason; it’s a one-stop look at all of the factors of your business at a single glance.

Smart Dashboard is part of our industry leading Enterprise software. Our cloud-based management software helps organizations of all sizes to grow their communities, with cities, parks and recreation groups and many others benefiting from stronger digital knowledge, communication and outreach.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced when implementing organizational goals? Let us know on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Google+, to stay up to date with all of your Xplor Recreation news.