A past client asked me recently what’s the one tool I would give a business leader.  The answer was easy, craft good objectives.

If there’s one thing you can learn to do well to help you manage your business, it’s this.  And it’s something every person in your business can learn and benefit from.

My client asked me, “why objectives? I mean isn’t that pretty basic and fundamental?”  Fundamental, yes.  But a well-crafted and conceived objective is far from basic. 

Here’s why this is so fundamental and so important.  

It creates clarity about what needs to be achieved and where you’re headed.  There’s a great quote from Alice in Wonderland that says if we don’t know where we’re headed then anywhere will do.  That’s what a good objective does.  It creates direction and focus. And especially now, as information flows without speed limits, there is incredible noise that requires cut through.  That’s what your objectives do.

A well-crafted objective is also a communication vehicle to empower your teams. As you and your leadership team define an objective, you move through discussion, debate and decision to arrive at shared clarity.  It reflects a shared understanding.  It’s an articulation of what you have in your head, now expressed as a coherent, tangible and actionable statement.  That’s something your teams can work with.  They now have a basis to translate direction into their world.  They can answer the question, what matters and how can my work contribute?

Finally, your objectives help you learn and refine as a business.  It puts a stake in the ground to say, go here and what needs to happen for that to occur?  It’s your reference point to measure behaviour, results and then evaluate if those actions are working. 

Speed and progress only become meaningful when measured against a clear objective.

This is what your objective needs to look like to add this kind of value to how your business grows and operates.  It begins by answering the question, ‘what do I need to achieve to be successful?’ It expresses not what’s happening today, but where you want to be.  Because it describes a future state, it creates movement. 

An objective should be an action-oriented statement, beginning with a verb or a doing word.  For example, revenue growth is static and passive.  While ‘grow revenue’ suggests action and progress. A simple but powerful linguistic shift that strengthens the message once communicated.

A well-crafted objective is not a one liner.  The action-oriented objective statement should be defined to bring it to life and explain nuance.  It should give enough detail so that others can see themselves in it.  

A definition should be targeted by first explaining why this is important and what’s in scope.  It communicates succinctly: this is why we care about this, and this is what’s in and what’s out.  

Your objective’s definition should also do something very important.  It must explain the objective ‘do-wells.’  ‘If I’m doing this well, this is what I’m doing.’  Your do-wells should speak to process, skill, behaviour and key decision points.  This component of the objective naturally goes into ‘on the ground’ practical application that’s meaningful to teams across your business.  It becomes the springboard for the teams that must execute it. 

Creating an objective, let alone a set of objectives that express your strategy, is a process.  My best advice is to iterate.  Let the objective and its definition be long and loose to start.  Then come back to it to sharpen and make it concise.  Let it improve over time through input and feedback as you begin to share and communicate it to others.

My client then reflected. ‘In order to ‘do,’ teams need to know, ‘do what?’  This gives them that.”

This thinking builds on my earlier article, Where Discipline Begins: Clear Priorities

Because execution does not begin with activity. It begins with clarity.