{"html_title":"Case Study: Valiant Technology transforms culture with EOS® and Strety","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

Valiant Technology is a New York-based managed service provider that helps creative firms bolster their technology operations with innovation and security at the top of mind. Specializing in mixed Mac and PC environments, the award-winning Valiant team takes pride in empowering NYC’s creative powerhouses.

\n","post_body":"

Valiant Technology is a New York-based managed service provider that helps creative firms bolster their technology operations with innovation and security at the top of mind. Specializing in mixed Mac and PC environments, the award-winning Valiant team takes pride in empowering NYC’s creative powerhouses.

\n

We spoke with Georg Dauterman, president of Valiant, about his team’s journey from accidental entrepreneurship to implementing EOS® as their business operating system. He shared with us how Strety wove their framework into their every day, transforming their culture for the better.

\n

When you first started with EOS®, what tools did you use for implementation?

\n

When we first started, we used Ninety.io and we only did it at the leadership team level. The challenge with Ninety.io was that it was so standalone away from our other tools. Every tool we have that doesn't integrate to our other tools becomes another place we have to go do double entry. So we're constantly spending time cutting and pasting from one to the other. 

\n

Every time we can avoid having to manually enter something, we're getting back seconds and minutes. MSPs, like most businesses, especially service businesses, are games of inches. You're not hitting home runs every day. On your best days, you're hitting singles constantly. It’s hard to focus on the small wins sometimes — with a very entrepreneurial mindset you want to do big things. But the best businesses really focus on the little things, too, like 10 minutes back here and 7 minutes back there. When the small daily wins are compounded over the year, you're making some massive changes in the business. 

\n

How did you come across Strety and why did you decide to make the switch?

\n

What drove our decision to check out Strety was that we were wanting to extend the EOS® platform and methodology to our entire organization. I was about to pull the trigger on buying seats for everyone on Ninety.io when Larry Garcia, one of Strety’s cofounders, reached out to ask me to check out the improvements they’d made to Strety since I had last seen it. 

\n

What I found was that: A, Strety is a cool-looking product. I think it looks better than Ninety.io. B, it integrates into Microsoft Teams. C, it integrates into AutoTask, which is our primary hub. Any MSP that doesn't live in its PSA is probably not a really good MSP. 

\n

Another thing I liked about Strety was I feel that there's a lot more connection to the Strety team as the MSP/small business owner. They lived in our world a lot longer. Ninety.io is more of a classic venture-backed company with an enterprise mindset. 

\n

\n

You can see the way Strety’s built that it was built for business owners by people who got what we did, and that is really powerful. 

\n

\n

 

\n

How was the rollout of Strety to your team?

\n

When we moved onto Strety, it was the first time we introduced the team at large to using the EOS® framework. Prior to that, it had just been the leadership team.

\n

Moving the whole team from a less structured environment to EOS® was definitely a change, with a bit of pushback from some people who didn’t understand why each of the pieces of the framework were important. But that was more of an EOS® challenge.

\n

\n

Strety helped a lot by making our framework front and center to everyone on the team. You can’t ignore it, because you can't ignore your scorecard. You can't ignore your review. That was a big change. 

\n

\n

 

\n

I think we’ve all had the experience, especially earlier in our careers, where you’re more of a passive observer in a meeting, sitting there thinking, “Man, I don't know why we're even having this meeting.” Now we're driving the engagement in Strety. And if there's no need for the meeting, we end it early. Our goal is to try to finish, and if we don't use the full meeting time, we're like, “Cool, we get back 10 minutes” — again, getting those small wins that add up. The idea is to be efficient and have enough structure to do it repeatedly. 

\n

What tools within Strety are the most helpful for your team?

\n

The scorecard is a big one — having those metrics out in the open that anyone can view is really powerful. From a leadership perspective, having some of our scorecards be so public has helped us be more accountable. And you know, you have to face the music every week if you didn't do your work. If you properly set the accountability up, I think that people tend to just do their work better and then the expectations are clearer. 

\n

I read a lot about employee engagement, and one of the problems that I see quite a bit is that people just don't know what to do. 

\n

We've gotten to a point where we're clear what we want to do. It’s the first step in improving the culture around accountability. With Strety, we're better than we've ever been with accountability.

\n

Now that we’ve rolled out Strety to our entire company we're using it as the core of our sort of business, sort of our human resources and culture hub. We're doing reviews in Strety now. We're doing L10 meetings every week with our leadership, account management, sales and service teams. We are also in the process of creating and publishing scorecard data for everyone on the team, so everyone knows where they are at all times.

\n

We also really like the org chart functionality. We think that's been very helpful. We use another product around payroll and PEO, and it has an org chart, but it doesn't really reflect the organization's and roles responsibilities really as neatly as the Strety one does.

\n

We’ve been making a point of being better about doing our 1:1s, and having them in one place and keeping to a schedule really gives them a lot of power and consistency. Something else we really liked was the 360 review component, where the people can come, come back around and give you some feedback. 

\n

Overall, it's a massive change in terms of the way we work. In the past, everything was the mystery meat of: “Did I do my job well or not?” Using the idea of setting the bar and doing all the EOS® methodology and making it very open to everyone in Strety has been a huge change. 

\n

\n

When we look back at this year, I can say our best accomplishment was implementing Strety as a tool in our business to deliver a better experience for our customers, employees, and management team. It's taken our business framework to the next level.

\n

\n

 

\n

How do you use Strety in your day-to-day?

\n

As a business owner, my day is always persistently changing. I use Strety to keep up to date with all my scorecard items. I look at it to remind myself of my rocks that I have to do. I find myself, at times, hyper focused on the wrong things, and looking at my rocks in Strety brings me back into what I have to do. I check my To Dos, and I check the other team scorecards to see how everything is going. 

\n

I also use it to get a bird’s eye view of the business that allows me to see specific things. As I said, we use it really heavily for keeping track of our incentive programs. A good example — our account managers have a requirement to touch every customer every month with a phone call. They have a QBR goal that they have to hit for every customer, or they don't qualify for their incentive pay. In Strety, I can see someone falling behind and help them course-correct. Let's say I ask an account manager about why they’re not hitting their goals, and they say, “Well, I can't get in touch with so and so.” Then I can text the owner of the other business, and ask, “Hey, can you give my account manager the time of day?” And that gives the account manager the help they need to hit that goal. 

\n

What makes it easy for you and your team to use Strety and engage with your framework every day?

\n

Strety is integrated with our tools, and it's also in Microsoft Teams, so it can do alerts, and it allows you to not have to stop what you're doing to open the web page. The other big piece of it is the Microsoft SSO (single sign-on) integration, allowing your credentials to flow. I can't tell you how different it is to get people to track time in the PSA since we've integrated the SSO.

\n

\n

Instead of having to run our passwords and MFA, and stop what we’re doing, Strety makes everything go much quicker and easier, just as-is out of the box. 

\n

\n

 

\n

The other piece that I think is so important is the reaffirmation of our goals every week in the L10 meeting. That really is one of the most important things, because it's so easy to get off track and start working on other stuff. Like a lot of entrepreneurs I know, I have horrible ADHD, I've had it my whole life. It's a blessing and a curse. One one hand, I’m more comfortable taking risks and trying new things that end up really helping our business. On the other hand, I can be a pretty degenerate shiny object guy, and it’s harder to maintain the focus I need to accomplish my bigger goals.

\n

Using Strety and EOS® is really great for someone like myself. It reminds me: you really need to work on this rock this week. I block time just to work on my rocks because I know it's so important. So as I said, we use it daily. 

\n

How has using EOS® as your business operating system transformed your business?

\n

I come from the very typical accidental entrepreneur background. Like the vast majority of MSP owners, I knew nothing about running a business. I was a really good engineer, but I ended up running a business, and did it poorly for many years, which I think is a common thread in our industry. For a long time, we were not very profitable.

\n

We had a very different culture prior to EOS® — not performance driven. Putting in place metrics, KPIs, and standards really made us into a better company. We were able to really build the company into a more profitable organization. We have a lot more strategic focus than we ever had. The idea of the one, three and five year plan, better defined roles responsibilities have overall made the company much better. 

\n

It's a delicate balance, because you're trying to drive success and results, and you also want people to be really happy and engaged. You want them to be feeling that they're moving forward in their career, in their life, as opposed to just like a job. We’re working to create a good culture where people are able to have impact, and learn a lot. And thanks to EOS® and Strety, our people know how they’re doing, and where they can go from here.

\n

What advice do you have for other business owners who are considering running a business operating system?

\n

I would 100% recommend making the investment of hiring an implementer for your business. You need that objectivity, and you need to be able to create the space for your staff to be critical and give you feedback that you may not want to hear. Many business owners wrap our identity into our businesses, and that's a very dangerous thing, because we take it way too personally. Having that outside voice can help mediate a lot of the pain.

\n

We work with the awesome Paul Cissel, who helps a lot of other MSPs. Paul is an industry expert who has started and operated three technology service providers. In his last venture, he used EOS® to build a great company that delivered best in class metrics. Bringing Paul’s body of experience to our EOS® implementation really helps us drive meaningful results

\n

Also, if you're going to do it, be committed to the process. It could be more than a year or two years before it really starts making big impacts. It's so easy to say at three months or six months, or even a year, “This is not working.” But then when you stick to it and have that minute to celebrate the win, you look back and realize, “Hey, our EBITDA increased by x, or our revenue increased by y.” You just have to commit the time to doing it.

\n

Think about it like a diet and exercise program. It doesn't matter what diet or exercise program you do, as long as you do one and you’re consistent with it. There are a lot of other business operating systems out there besides EOS®, and maybe they could work just as well. Fundamentally speaking, what matters is the consistency, and being course corrected on a regular basis. Consistency is really what I think most businesses need, and it's one of the hardest things to both learn and to continually improve.

\n

Thanks, Georg! To learn more about Valiant and their services, check out the Valiant Technology website. It's a beauty!

\n

If you want to see how operating your business in Strety can bring a new level of accountability to your team, start your free trial here. If you want to learn more about how Strety can bring your B.O.S. to life, book time with our team so we can answer your questions and give you a VIP tour of Strety!

","rss_summary":"

Valiant Technology is a New York-based managed service provider that helps creative firms bolster their technology operations with innovation and security at the top of mind. Specializing in mixed Mac and PC environments, the award-winning Valiant team takes pride in empowering NYC’s creative powerhouses.

\n","rss_body":"

Valiant Technology is a New York-based managed service provider that helps creative firms bolster their technology operations with innovation and security at the top of mind. Specializing in mixed Mac and PC environments, the award-winning Valiant team takes pride in empowering NYC’s creative powerhouses.

\n

We spoke with Georg Dauterman, president of Valiant, about his team’s journey from accidental entrepreneurship to implementing EOS® as their business operating system. He shared with us how Strety wove their framework into their every day, transforming their culture for the better.

\n

When you first started with EOS®, what tools did you use for implementation?

\n

When we first started, we used Ninety.io and we only did it at the leadership team level. The challenge with Ninety.io was that it was so standalone away from our other tools. Every tool we have that doesn't integrate to our other tools becomes another place we have to go do double entry. So we're constantly spending time cutting and pasting from one to the other. 

\n

Every time we can avoid having to manually enter something, we're getting back seconds and minutes. MSPs, like most businesses, especially service businesses, are games of inches. You're not hitting home runs every day. On your best days, you're hitting singles constantly. It’s hard to focus on the small wins sometimes — with a very entrepreneurial mindset you want to do big things. But the best businesses really focus on the little things, too, like 10 minutes back here and 7 minutes back there. When the small daily wins are compounded over the year, you're making some massive changes in the business. 

\n

How did you come across Strety and why did you decide to make the switch?

\n

What drove our decision to check out Strety was that we were wanting to extend the EOS® platform and methodology to our entire organization. I was about to pull the trigger on buying seats for everyone on Ninety.io when Larry Garcia, one of Strety’s cofounders, reached out to ask me to check out the improvements they’d made to Strety since I had last seen it. 

\n

What I found was that: A, Strety is a cool-looking product. I think it looks better than Ninety.io. B, it integrates into Microsoft Teams. C, it integrates into AutoTask, which is our primary hub. Any MSP that doesn't live in its PSA is probably not a really good MSP. 

\n

Another thing I liked about Strety was I feel that there's a lot more connection to the Strety team as the MSP/small business owner. They lived in our world a lot longer. Ninety.io is more of a classic venture-backed company with an enterprise mindset. 

\n

\n

You can see the way Strety’s built that it was built for business owners by people who got what we did, and that is really powerful. 

\n

\n

 

\n

How was the rollout of Strety to your team?

\n

When we moved onto Strety, it was the first time we introduced the team at large to using the EOS® framework. Prior to that, it had just been the leadership team.

\n

Moving the whole team from a less structured environment to EOS® was definitely a change, with a bit of pushback from some people who didn’t understand why each of the pieces of the framework were important. But that was more of an EOS® challenge.

\n

\n

Strety helped a lot by making our framework front and center to everyone on the team. You can’t ignore it, because you can't ignore your scorecard. You can't ignore your review. That was a big change. 

\n

\n

 

\n

I think we’ve all had the experience, especially earlier in our careers, where you’re more of a passive observer in a meeting, sitting there thinking, “Man, I don't know why we're even having this meeting.” Now we're driving the engagement in Strety. And if there's no need for the meeting, we end it early. Our goal is to try to finish, and if we don't use the full meeting time, we're like, “Cool, we get back 10 minutes” — again, getting those small wins that add up. The idea is to be efficient and have enough structure to do it repeatedly. 

\n

What tools within Strety are the most helpful for your team?

\n

The scorecard is a big one — having those metrics out in the open that anyone can view is really powerful. From a leadership perspective, having some of our scorecards be so public has helped us be more accountable. And you know, you have to face the music every week if you didn't do your work. If you properly set the accountability up, I think that people tend to just do their work better and then the expectations are clearer. 

\n

I read a lot about employee engagement, and one of the problems that I see quite a bit is that people just don't know what to do. 

\n

We've gotten to a point where we're clear what we want to do. It’s the first step in improving the culture around accountability. With Strety, we're better than we've ever been with accountability.

\n

Now that we’ve rolled out Strety to our entire company we're using it as the core of our sort of business, sort of our human resources and culture hub. We're doing reviews in Strety now. We're doing L10 meetings every week with our leadership, account management, sales and service teams. We are also in the process of creating and publishing scorecard data for everyone on the team, so everyone knows where they are at all times.

\n

We also really like the org chart functionality. We think that's been very helpful. We use another product around payroll and PEO, and it has an org chart, but it doesn't really reflect the organization's and roles responsibilities really as neatly as the Strety one does.

\n

We’ve been making a point of being better about doing our 1:1s, and having them in one place and keeping to a schedule really gives them a lot of power and consistency. Something else we really liked was the 360 review component, where the people can come, come back around and give you some feedback. 

\n

Overall, it's a massive change in terms of the way we work. In the past, everything was the mystery meat of: “Did I do my job well or not?” Using the idea of setting the bar and doing all the EOS® methodology and making it very open to everyone in Strety has been a huge change. 

\n

\n

When we look back at this year, I can say our best accomplishment was implementing Strety as a tool in our business to deliver a better experience for our customers, employees, and management team. It's taken our business framework to the next level.

\n

\n

 

\n

How do you use Strety in your day-to-day?

\n

As a business owner, my day is always persistently changing. I use Strety to keep up to date with all my scorecard items. I look at it to remind myself of my rocks that I have to do. I find myself, at times, hyper focused on the wrong things, and looking at my rocks in Strety brings me back into what I have to do. I check my To Dos, and I check the other team scorecards to see how everything is going. 

\n

I also use it to get a bird’s eye view of the business that allows me to see specific things. As I said, we use it really heavily for keeping track of our incentive programs. A good example — our account managers have a requirement to touch every customer every month with a phone call. They have a QBR goal that they have to hit for every customer, or they don't qualify for their incentive pay. In Strety, I can see someone falling behind and help them course-correct. Let's say I ask an account manager about why they’re not hitting their goals, and they say, “Well, I can't get in touch with so and so.” Then I can text the owner of the other business, and ask, “Hey, can you give my account manager the time of day?” And that gives the account manager the help they need to hit that goal. 

\n

What makes it easy for you and your team to use Strety and engage with your framework every day?

\n

Strety is integrated with our tools, and it's also in Microsoft Teams, so it can do alerts, and it allows you to not have to stop what you're doing to open the web page. The other big piece of it is the Microsoft SSO (single sign-on) integration, allowing your credentials to flow. I can't tell you how different it is to get people to track time in the PSA since we've integrated the SSO.

\n

\n

Instead of having to run our passwords and MFA, and stop what we’re doing, Strety makes everything go much quicker and easier, just as-is out of the box. 

\n

\n

 

\n

The other piece that I think is so important is the reaffirmation of our goals every week in the L10 meeting. That really is one of the most important things, because it's so easy to get off track and start working on other stuff. Like a lot of entrepreneurs I know, I have horrible ADHD, I've had it my whole life. It's a blessing and a curse. One one hand, I’m more comfortable taking risks and trying new things that end up really helping our business. On the other hand, I can be a pretty degenerate shiny object guy, and it’s harder to maintain the focus I need to accomplish my bigger goals.

\n

Using Strety and EOS® is really great for someone like myself. It reminds me: you really need to work on this rock this week. I block time just to work on my rocks because I know it's so important. So as I said, we use it daily. 

\n

How has using EOS® as your business operating system transformed your business?

\n

I come from the very typical accidental entrepreneur background. Like the vast majority of MSP owners, I knew nothing about running a business. I was a really good engineer, but I ended up running a business, and did it poorly for many years, which I think is a common thread in our industry. For a long time, we were not very profitable.

\n

We had a very different culture prior to EOS® — not performance driven. Putting in place metrics, KPIs, and standards really made us into a better company. We were able to really build the company into a more profitable organization. We have a lot more strategic focus than we ever had. The idea of the one, three and five year plan, better defined roles responsibilities have overall made the company much better. 

\n

It's a delicate balance, because you're trying to drive success and results, and you also want people to be really happy and engaged. You want them to be feeling that they're moving forward in their career, in their life, as opposed to just like a job. We’re working to create a good culture where people are able to have impact, and learn a lot. And thanks to EOS® and Strety, our people know how they’re doing, and where they can go from here.

\n

What advice do you have for other business owners who are considering running a business operating system?

\n

I would 100% recommend making the investment of hiring an implementer for your business. You need that objectivity, and you need to be able to create the space for your staff to be critical and give you feedback that you may not want to hear. Many business owners wrap our identity into our businesses, and that's a very dangerous thing, because we take it way too personally. Having that outside voice can help mediate a lot of the pain.

\n

We work with the awesome Paul Cissel, who helps a lot of other MSPs. Paul is an industry expert who has started and operated three technology service providers. In his last venture, he used EOS® to build a great company that delivered best in class metrics. Bringing Paul’s body of experience to our EOS® implementation really helps us drive meaningful results

\n

Also, if you're going to do it, be committed to the process. It could be more than a year or two years before it really starts making big impacts. It's so easy to say at three months or six months, or even a year, “This is not working.” But then when you stick to it and have that minute to celebrate the win, you look back and realize, “Hey, our EBITDA increased by x, or our revenue increased by y.” You just have to commit the time to doing it.

\n

Think about it like a diet and exercise program. It doesn't matter what diet or exercise program you do, as long as you do one and you’re consistent with it. There are a lot of other business operating systems out there besides EOS®, and maybe they could work just as well. Fundamentally speaking, what matters is the consistency, and being course corrected on a regular basis. Consistency is really what I think most businesses need, and it's one of the hardest things to both learn and to continually improve.

\n

Thanks, Georg! To learn more about Valiant and their services, check out the Valiant Technology website. It's a beauty!

\n

If you want to see how operating your business in Strety can bring a new level of accountability to your team, start your free trial here. If you want to learn more about how Strety can bring your B.O.S. to life, book time with our team so we can answer your questions and give you a VIP tour of Strety!

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{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"How to build a business operating system (B.O.S.)","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours. 

\n","post_body":"

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours. 

\n\n

But the main question you’re probably asking about building a business operating system — is it really worth it?

\n

Why you should implement a B.O.S.

\n

You may be considering a B.O.S. implementation for a variety of reasons — to reclaim time in your day, to cut down on chaos at work, or to optimize your operations for better growth. We’ve seen that whatever your starting point, the business impact of implementing a B.O.S. framework is huge. 

\n

Our founding partners give a lot of credit to the framework they implemented at BrightGauge, their previous company. After implementing a framework, BrightGauge operations got a lot smoother, and they were able to sell the company for a nice price when they were ready to exit.

\n

And it’s not just the Strety team! Our customers have found that B.O.S. implementation has huge business impacts. Ian Groves at Start Tech had this to say about implementing a B.O.S.:

\n

\n

The impact has been enormous. We've tripled our revenue and doubled the size of our team in the past five years — astronomical growth compared to the first nineteen years of the business. And that’s mainly because of the framework we’ve implemented. 

\n

\n

If you’re thinking about implementing a business operating system, you probably already know it can help. We’re here to tell you that for us and for many other business operators like us, it has helped immeasurably!

\n

How to implement a business operating system

\n

Once you decide to implement, the biggest hurdle is getting started. It can feel overwhelming and like you’ll have to turn your whole business upside down at once. Not so! You can (and should) chip away at your implementation in a way that works for you and your team.  We recommend getting one piece or tool locked in, then moving on to the others.

\n

A note: a lot of people really benefit from having a coach or guide help them implement their new framework. It can be invaluable to have an objective, outside perspective on how your business is really doing, and the things you should prioritize to move the needle.

\n

Whether your business is investing in a coach or not, read on to get an overview of the steps involved in implementing a new business framework. The more information you have, the better decision you’ll make about what’s best for your team!

\n

1. Start with meetings

\n

Pretty much every business operating system out there, including EOS® and Pinnacle, have meetings as a front-and-center tool of their business operating system. If you’ve ever been a part of a company with a mediocre or bad meeting culture, it’s easy to see why. Bad meetings are time-consuming, demoralizing, and prone to confusion. Plus, they take you away from what you consider your “real work.”

\n

We like to suggest starting with meetings as a jumping-in point for implementing a business operating system because it gives you a quick win (better meetings) and leads naturally to your other tools, setting you up for long-term success.

\n

Every good business operating system has a meeting agenda that will help you keep on track and integrate your other B.O.S. tools into your workflow. Here’s an example of a meeting agenda in Strety:

\n

\n

Let’s break this down!

\n

Segue: where we check in attendees and answer a quick question. Usually, we talk about how our week was personally and professionally. This helps everyone drop in to the meeting and connect with each other.

\n

Scorecards: where each of us checks in about any metrics we’re tracking. If any metrics merit discussion, we create an Issue to discuss it in that section of the meeting.

\n

Rocks: where we check in about our bigger goals. For our team, this is often either a large project or a numerical goal for the quarter, like signing X many new customers this quarter. Again, if any of the rocks need further discussion, we create an Issue of it.

\n

Headlines: where we check in about company news. This is where we usually share things like upcoming time off, quick updates about how a conference went, or any other news that our team needs to share.

\n

To Dos: where we check in about tasks that the team has on deck, making sure everything’s on track.

\n

Issues: the “meat and potatoes” of our meetings! This is where we do our best problem-solving. We talk about what exactly the issue is, uncover the root cause of the issue, discuss how we can solve it, and create a resolution and next steps, usually in the form of To Dos to guide us exactly where to go next.

\n

Conclusion: We wrap up the meeting, confirm our next steps and To Dos, and rate the meeting. We rate and leave feedback on our meetings so we can hold each other accountable and aim for ever-better meetings!

\n

When you first start out and don’t have the whole suite of B.O.S. tools implemented, you could use the headlines section to share the news you’d normally share in a weekly meeting, and the issues section to discuss any blockers. Just getting into the rhythm of a consistent meeting with time limits and priorities on each section will help you move faster. Plus, once you start using a meeting agenda like this, it’ll naturally encourage the development of your other B.O.S. tools, starting with issues.

\n

2. Issues

\n

Issues, topics, blockers… whatever you want to call them — these are the heart of your business operating system’s problem-solving capabilities. Sometimes an issue is created from one of your other tools. For example, creating an issue out of a missed goal. Sometimes the issue has a different source, like a customer request.

\n

Wherever the issue comes from (and whatever you call it), your business operating system will call for you to clarify the issue and its root cause, then solve it. 

\n

It might take a little practice, but once you get into the swing of resolving issues, we’re sure you and your team will love it. Instead of problems festering in the dark, or getting pushed off to another time, they get faced head-on. It’s exhilarating! 

\n

3. Then layer in other tools

\n

Once you have your meetings and issues rolling, we recommend adding in two other tools — scorecards (aka metrics, KPIs, or scoreboards) and rocks (aka goals, OKRs, projects). These can be similar, so let’s break down the differences.

\n

Scorecards are the numbers you use for a weekly check-in. For example, an outbound salesperson could have a scorecard with the number of dials they made that week. This number should serve as a baseline for asking yourself (and each other) whether you accomplished what you needed to last week.

\n

Rocks can be a couple different things. 

\n

Numerical rocks are big quarterly numbers that tie into a team’s larger goals. For example, the same outbound sales rep may have a larger goal of booking 100 demos in a quarter. This is elevated to a rock versus being laid out as a weekly scorecard because it ties into other team or company goals and is part of a larger plan.

\n

Project or status-based rocks are a way to track big projects that will take more than a few weeks, and involve multiple stakeholders. Maybe you want to grow your sales team, and you want your best outbound sales rep to help, so you assign them a rock of documenting their processes, which they then break up into milestones and To Dos to accomplish over the course of the quarter.

\n

For getting started with scorecards and rocks, we recommend starting small! It’s going to be easier to add than subtract here. Think about the metrics you’re already tracking, and how to make them as simple as possible for a weekly check-in. Think about your big goals in progress, and add them as rocks. Be intentional about how you set better goals for your team.

\n

Don’t try to add a comprehensive list on your first go; just get one or two of the most important scorecard metrics and rocks incorporated, and see how they add to your meeting and work flows once you have a more systematic way of being accountable for them. Once you get into the habit, add more. By the time you hit your next (or first) quarterly meeting, you’ll already have some experience which will help you set better goals for the next quarter.

\n

Circle back to your business vision

\n

Different business operating systems will have different nomenclature for business vision, but there are a few main components to a business vision in almost every B.O.S.

\n

Mission: this can include how your business serves people, how you want to be positioned in the marketplace, and who you’ll help.

\n

Goals: this is the place for your biggest and most audacious long term goals — where you see your company 3 and 5 years from now. Defining your long-term goals helps you work backward to build your yearly and quarterly goals.

\n

People: your people are usually one of your biggest investments and your foundation. Your business vision helps you define core values for your company culture and the seats you need in an org chart. This will help you get organized and confident in your team.

\n

While many people are tempted to start building their business operating system with their business vision, we caution against it. You’ll be surprised by how time-consuming (and sometimes confusing) defining your business vision can be. Even if you’ve been a mission-oriented company for a long time, defining your business vision within an operating framework requires that you organize it in a way that lends itself to the rest of your tools in your operating system. It’s harder than it looks, trust us!

\n

If you start with your meetings and other B.O.S. tools first, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how a B.O.S. works. This will help make sure your business vision is as specific and actionable as it needs to be to truly act as a helpful North star for your business.

\n

The other thing to keep in mind — defining your business vision will take more than an hour, and probably more than a day. Rolling your business vision into a larger planning meeting, like a quarterly meeting, is a good way to get started. If you’re running 2-day quarterly meeting agendas, put some time on both days for your business vision. Brainstorm on the first day, give yourselves a break, and come back on the second day to agree on your vision moving forward. If you need more time, take it! The team at Heritage Advises gave us insight into building their business vision:

\n

\n

“Don't rush through anything. At the moment, it feels like you have 10,000 other things to work on, which we always do as small business owners. But it's going to set you up for success in the long term. We fire and hire today based on what we did two years ago, based on our core values. That one exercise of really focusing on the vision is still very much with us today. So don't breeze through anything, and take it all seriously.”

\n

\n

 

\n

5. Be patient and make adjustments as needed.

\n

Once you’ve got the basics of all your tools in place, remember that they should be a living part of your company’s daily work — emphasis on living! 

\n

If you find that a scorecard metric is consistently unreachable, change it. If a rock is off-track this quarter, make a note as to whether you should pursue that goal next quarter. Whenever you notice the same issue coming up over and over again, find a way to solve it with your business operating system. 

\n

Most of all, be patient with yourself and your team. Depending on how long you’ve been in business, implementing a business operating system could be a huge change and a shock to those of us who don’t adapt to change as quickly. However, when the dust settles, your business operating system will be able to guide you on whether you need to make adjustments to your team moving forward. Stay true to your core values, and the rest should fall into place.

\n

6. Support your B.O.S. with a purpose-built platform

\n

\n

“If you're already investing in the operating system, my advice is to invest in a platform that will support it. Why try to build from scratch what Strety’s team has already built for you! It will make your job so much easier, especially when you’ve got hard work to get done.”

\n

— Dana Wockenfuss, Director of Development & Advocacy at The Well

\n

\n

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! As creators of a business operating system platform, we can’t tell you how many horror stories we’ve heard about people trying to implement business frameworks with spreadsheets and email chains. If you make your business operating system difficult to engage with, it will fail. Simple as that.

\n

Of course, we hope you’d choose Strety as the platform of choice for implementing a business operating system. We’ve connected B.O.S. tools into an integrated platform that will make it easy for your team to engage with and benefit from your B.O.S. From our own experience running business operating systems at prior companies, to our current experience building the best B.O.S. platform available, guided by B.O.S. experts and enthusiasts, we know how important this stuff is — and how much it benefits the teams who get it right.

\n

Learn more about Strety’s B.O.S. tools here.

\n

If you’re ready to Strety, get your free trial started here, or book time with one of our experts here.

","rss_summary":"

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours. 

\n","rss_body":"

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours. 

\n\n

But the main question you’re probably asking about building a business operating system — is it really worth it?

\n

Why you should implement a B.O.S.

\n

You may be considering a B.O.S. implementation for a variety of reasons — to reclaim time in your day, to cut down on chaos at work, or to optimize your operations for better growth. We’ve seen that whatever your starting point, the business impact of implementing a B.O.S. framework is huge. 

\n

Our founding partners give a lot of credit to the framework they implemented at BrightGauge, their previous company. After implementing a framework, BrightGauge operations got a lot smoother, and they were able to sell the company for a nice price when they were ready to exit.

\n

And it’s not just the Strety team! Our customers have found that B.O.S. implementation has huge business impacts. Ian Groves at Start Tech had this to say about implementing a B.O.S.:

\n

\n

The impact has been enormous. We've tripled our revenue and doubled the size of our team in the past five years — astronomical growth compared to the first nineteen years of the business. And that’s mainly because of the framework we’ve implemented. 

\n

\n

If you’re thinking about implementing a business operating system, you probably already know it can help. We’re here to tell you that for us and for many other business operators like us, it has helped immeasurably!

\n

How to implement a business operating system

\n

Once you decide to implement, the biggest hurdle is getting started. It can feel overwhelming and like you’ll have to turn your whole business upside down at once. Not so! You can (and should) chip away at your implementation in a way that works for you and your team.  We recommend getting one piece or tool locked in, then moving on to the others.

\n

A note: a lot of people really benefit from having a coach or guide help them implement their new framework. It can be invaluable to have an objective, outside perspective on how your business is really doing, and the things you should prioritize to move the needle.

\n

Whether your business is investing in a coach or not, read on to get an overview of the steps involved in implementing a new business framework. The more information you have, the better decision you’ll make about what’s best for your team!

\n

1. Start with meetings

\n

Pretty much every business operating system out there, including EOS® and Pinnacle, have meetings as a front-and-center tool of their business operating system. If you’ve ever been a part of a company with a mediocre or bad meeting culture, it’s easy to see why. Bad meetings are time-consuming, demoralizing, and prone to confusion. Plus, they take you away from what you consider your “real work.”

\n

We like to suggest starting with meetings as a jumping-in point for implementing a business operating system because it gives you a quick win (better meetings) and leads naturally to your other tools, setting you up for long-term success.

\n

Every good business operating system has a meeting agenda that will help you keep on track and integrate your other B.O.S. tools into your workflow. Here’s an example of a meeting agenda in Strety:

\n

\n

Let’s break this down!

\n

Segue: where we check in attendees and answer a quick question. Usually, we talk about how our week was personally and professionally. This helps everyone drop in to the meeting and connect with each other.

\n

Scorecards: where each of us checks in about any metrics we’re tracking. If any metrics merit discussion, we create an Issue to discuss it in that section of the meeting.

\n

Rocks: where we check in about our bigger goals. For our team, this is often either a large project or a numerical goal for the quarter, like signing X many new customers this quarter. Again, if any of the rocks need further discussion, we create an Issue of it.

\n

Headlines: where we check in about company news. This is where we usually share things like upcoming time off, quick updates about how a conference went, or any other news that our team needs to share.

\n

To Dos: where we check in about tasks that the team has on deck, making sure everything’s on track.

\n

Issues: the “meat and potatoes” of our meetings! This is where we do our best problem-solving. We talk about what exactly the issue is, uncover the root cause of the issue, discuss how we can solve it, and create a resolution and next steps, usually in the form of To Dos to guide us exactly where to go next.

\n

Conclusion: We wrap up the meeting, confirm our next steps and To Dos, and rate the meeting. We rate and leave feedback on our meetings so we can hold each other accountable and aim for ever-better meetings!

\n

When you first start out and don’t have the whole suite of B.O.S. tools implemented, you could use the headlines section to share the news you’d normally share in a weekly meeting, and the issues section to discuss any blockers. Just getting into the rhythm of a consistent meeting with time limits and priorities on each section will help you move faster. Plus, once you start using a meeting agenda like this, it’ll naturally encourage the development of your other B.O.S. tools, starting with issues.

\n

2. Issues

\n

Issues, topics, blockers… whatever you want to call them — these are the heart of your business operating system’s problem-solving capabilities. Sometimes an issue is created from one of your other tools. For example, creating an issue out of a missed goal. Sometimes the issue has a different source, like a customer request.

\n

Wherever the issue comes from (and whatever you call it), your business operating system will call for you to clarify the issue and its root cause, then solve it. 

\n

It might take a little practice, but once you get into the swing of resolving issues, we’re sure you and your team will love it. Instead of problems festering in the dark, or getting pushed off to another time, they get faced head-on. It’s exhilarating! 

\n

3. Then layer in other tools

\n

Once you have your meetings and issues rolling, we recommend adding in two other tools — scorecards (aka metrics, KPIs, or scoreboards) and rocks (aka goals, OKRs, projects). These can be similar, so let’s break down the differences.

\n

Scorecards are the numbers you use for a weekly check-in. For example, an outbound salesperson could have a scorecard with the number of dials they made that week. This number should serve as a baseline for asking yourself (and each other) whether you accomplished what you needed to last week.

\n

Rocks can be a couple different things. 

\n

Numerical rocks are big quarterly numbers that tie into a team’s larger goals. For example, the same outbound sales rep may have a larger goal of booking 100 demos in a quarter. This is elevated to a rock versus being laid out as a weekly scorecard because it ties into other team or company goals and is part of a larger plan.

\n

Project or status-based rocks are a way to track big projects that will take more than a few weeks, and involve multiple stakeholders. Maybe you want to grow your sales team, and you want your best outbound sales rep to help, so you assign them a rock of documenting their processes, which they then break up into milestones and To Dos to accomplish over the course of the quarter.

\n

For getting started with scorecards and rocks, we recommend starting small! It’s going to be easier to add than subtract here. Think about the metrics you’re already tracking, and how to make them as simple as possible for a weekly check-in. Think about your big goals in progress, and add them as rocks. Be intentional about how you set better goals for your team.

\n

Don’t try to add a comprehensive list on your first go; just get one or two of the most important scorecard metrics and rocks incorporated, and see how they add to your meeting and work flows once you have a more systematic way of being accountable for them. Once you get into the habit, add more. By the time you hit your next (or first) quarterly meeting, you’ll already have some experience which will help you set better goals for the next quarter.

\n

Circle back to your business vision

\n

Different business operating systems will have different nomenclature for business vision, but there are a few main components to a business vision in almost every B.O.S.

\n

Mission: this can include how your business serves people, how you want to be positioned in the marketplace, and who you’ll help.

\n

Goals: this is the place for your biggest and most audacious long term goals — where you see your company 3 and 5 years from now. Defining your long-term goals helps you work backward to build your yearly and quarterly goals.

\n

People: your people are usually one of your biggest investments and your foundation. Your business vision helps you define core values for your company culture and the seats you need in an org chart. This will help you get organized and confident in your team.

\n

While many people are tempted to start building their business operating system with their business vision, we caution against it. You’ll be surprised by how time-consuming (and sometimes confusing) defining your business vision can be. Even if you’ve been a mission-oriented company for a long time, defining your business vision within an operating framework requires that you organize it in a way that lends itself to the rest of your tools in your operating system. It’s harder than it looks, trust us!

\n

If you start with your meetings and other B.O.S. tools first, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how a B.O.S. works. This will help make sure your business vision is as specific and actionable as it needs to be to truly act as a helpful North star for your business.

\n

The other thing to keep in mind — defining your business vision will take more than an hour, and probably more than a day. Rolling your business vision into a larger planning meeting, like a quarterly meeting, is a good way to get started. If you’re running 2-day quarterly meeting agendas, put some time on both days for your business vision. Brainstorm on the first day, give yourselves a break, and come back on the second day to agree on your vision moving forward. If you need more time, take it! The team at Heritage Advises gave us insight into building their business vision:

\n

\n

“Don't rush through anything. At the moment, it feels like you have 10,000 other things to work on, which we always do as small business owners. But it's going to set you up for success in the long term. We fire and hire today based on what we did two years ago, based on our core values. That one exercise of really focusing on the vision is still very much with us today. So don't breeze through anything, and take it all seriously.”

\n

\n

 

\n

5. Be patient and make adjustments as needed.

\n

Once you’ve got the basics of all your tools in place, remember that they should be a living part of your company’s daily work — emphasis on living! 

\n

If you find that a scorecard metric is consistently unreachable, change it. If a rock is off-track this quarter, make a note as to whether you should pursue that goal next quarter. Whenever you notice the same issue coming up over and over again, find a way to solve it with your business operating system. 

\n

Most of all, be patient with yourself and your team. Depending on how long you’ve been in business, implementing a business operating system could be a huge change and a shock to those of us who don’t adapt to change as quickly. However, when the dust settles, your business operating system will be able to guide you on whether you need to make adjustments to your team moving forward. Stay true to your core values, and the rest should fall into place.

\n

6. Support your B.O.S. with a purpose-built platform

\n

\n

“If you're already investing in the operating system, my advice is to invest in a platform that will support it. Why try to build from scratch what Strety’s team has already built for you! It will make your job so much easier, especially when you’ve got hard work to get done.”

\n

— Dana Wockenfuss, Director of Development & Advocacy at The Well

\n

\n

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! As creators of a business operating system platform, we can’t tell you how many horror stories we’ve heard about people trying to implement business frameworks with spreadsheets and email chains. If you make your business operating system difficult to engage with, it will fail. Simple as that.

\n

Of course, we hope you’d choose Strety as the platform of choice for implementing a business operating system. We’ve connected B.O.S. tools into an integrated platform that will make it easy for your team to engage with and benefit from your B.O.S. From our own experience running business operating systems at prior companies, to our current experience building the best B.O.S. platform available, guided by B.O.S. experts and enthusiasts, we know how important this stuff is — and how much it benefits the teams who get it right.

\n

Learn more about Strety’s B.O.S. tools here.

\n

If you’re ready to Strety, get your free trial started here, or book time with one of our experts here.

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{"html_title":"Tinder for Jobs: How to have a great discussion about job happiness with direct reports","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

In this new age of information overload, passive job searching has been made so easy that it’s only a matter of time before it reaches parity with today’s dating apps. \"Job looks decent enough, sure, swipe right. Oh, I matched! Gotta go text my boss and let them know today is my last day.”  

\n","post_body":"

In this new age of information overload, passive job searching has been made so easy that it’s only a matter of time before it reaches parity with today’s dating apps. \"Job looks decent enough, sure, swipe right. Oh, I matched! Gotta go text my boss and let them know today is my last day.”  

\n\n

To put that into context versus the past, job searching involved high effort exercises like actually preparing for and attending job fairs or searching through help wanted ads in newspapers. This provided so much friction, it made job searching a herculean effort. That’s all changed. I don’t know where to start getting milk delivered from the dairy directly nowadays. So face the facts. Most of your employees have visited a job search website in the past 24 hours. Probably from the company internet. Probably nothing serious, but it’s so easy, why wouldn’t they? 

\n

This brings me to the point of this post. You need to be transparent about job searching. You should be acting as a steward of your employee’s career and not just a passive participant. Embrace it. Encourage it.

\n

This leads me to one of the favorite types of 1:1 meetings I would have when I was managing the sales team at BrightGauge. I’d ask the participants to bring me the job that they wanted to work towards from outside the company. I essentially asked them to job search. 

\n

In our meeting, we would review what they brought back and have an honest discussion of how likely they would qualify for the job, try to find the compensation numbers, see if there were any cons... basically job search as a team for them.  From there we would map out the skills they needed, what they had to work on, and where they truly stood now based on how they were compensated currently.

\n

This provided a great forum for open and honest communication about everything from job roles to compensation,  without keeping either party guessing about the status of our working relationship. 

\n

I can honestly say that everyone who participated in this process has said it’s one of the best meetings the company would run. Think it through. Try it out with someone you’ve been meaning to get more clarity from. You might surprise them, and yourself.

\n

One of our goals with Strety is to provide an employee engagement platform that effectively communicates and documents performance and engagement issues -- and that you and your team will actually enjoy using.

\n

To make it easier for you to manage your team, alongside business operating system essentials like meeting agendas, company vision, goal management, and metric tracking, we've added the following features:

\n

Automated 1x1s

\n

Use customizable templates available in-app or create your own 1x1 agendas. Either way, you'll see greatly improved consistency and engagement with 1x1s when they're built into the system your team uses every day.

\n

Performance reviews

\n

You get to see the metrics every week, but it's important to also take the time to take a step back and address larger trends in employee performance. What's going right or wrong? How can they get on track towards the career of your dreams, while driving business growth? This is your chance to talk it out.

\n

360 Reviews

\n

Turn the tables on reviews! Just like providing employee feedback is critical to their growth, getting feedback from your employees is crucial to helping you create a better business. These reviews have the power to transform your organization.

\n

Your people are the foundation of your business: help them rise to the occasion. Otherwise, you could be getting blindsided when their next tempting offer comes along.

","rss_summary":"

In this new age of information overload, passive job searching has been made so easy that it’s only a matter of time before it reaches parity with today’s dating apps. \"Job looks decent enough, sure, swipe right. Oh, I matched! Gotta go text my boss and let them know today is my last day.”  

\n","tag_ids":[23182286584,23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"topic_ids":[23182286584,23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"5256430-38700227669-1607979715684","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

In this new age of information overload, passive job searching has been made so easy that it’s only a matter of time before it reaches parity with today’s dating apps. \"Job looks decent enough, sure, swipe right. Oh, I matched! Gotta go text my boss and let them know today is my last day.”  

\n\n

To put that into context versus the past, job searching involved high effort exercises like actually preparing for and attending job fairs or searching through help wanted ads in newspapers. This provided so much friction, it made job searching a herculean effort. That’s all changed. I don’t know where to start getting milk delivered from the dairy directly nowadays. So face the facts. Most of your employees have visited a job search website in the past 24 hours. Probably from the company internet. Probably nothing serious, but it’s so easy, why wouldn’t they? 

\n

This brings me to the point of this post. You need to be transparent about job searching. You should be acting as a steward of your employee’s career and not just a passive participant. Embrace it. Encourage it.

\n

This leads me to one of the favorite types of 1:1 meetings I would have when I was managing the sales team at BrightGauge. I’d ask the participants to bring me the job that they wanted to work towards from outside the company. I essentially asked them to job search. 

\n

In our meeting, we would review what they brought back and have an honest discussion of how likely they would qualify for the job, try to find the compensation numbers, see if there were any cons... basically job search as a team for them.  From there we would map out the skills they needed, what they had to work on, and where they truly stood now based on how they were compensated currently.

\n

This provided a great forum for open and honest communication about everything from job roles to compensation,  without keeping either party guessing about the status of our working relationship. 

\n

I can honestly say that everyone who participated in this process has said it’s one of the best meetings the company would run. Think it through. Try it out with someone you’ve been meaning to get more clarity from. You might surprise them, and yourself.

\n

One of our goals with Strety is to provide an employee engagement platform that effectively communicates and documents performance and engagement issues -- and that you and your team will actually enjoy using.

\n

To make it easier for you to manage your team, alongside business operating system essentials like meeting agendas, company vision, goal management, and metric tracking, we've added the following features:

\n

Automated 1x1s

\n

Use customizable templates available in-app or create your own 1x1 agendas. Either way, you'll see greatly improved consistency and engagement with 1x1s when they're built into the system your team uses every day.

\n

Performance reviews

\n

You get to see the metrics every week, but it's important to also take the time to take a step back and address larger trends in employee performance. What's going right or wrong? How can they get on track towards the career of your dreams, while driving business growth? This is your chance to talk it out.

\n

360 Reviews

\n

Turn the tables on reviews! Just like providing employee feedback is critical to their growth, getting feedback from your employees is crucial to helping you create a better business. These reviews have the power to transform your organization.

\n

Your people are the foundation of your business: help them rise to the occasion. Otherwise, you could be getting blindsided when their next tempting offer comes along.

","keywords":[],"meta_description":"Step by step directions to help you run a career discussion","meta_keywords":null,"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"deleted_by":null,"featured_image_alt_text":"A group of people looking happy at work, having open conversations about job happiness","enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":null,"campaign_utm":null,"tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":false,"security_state":"NONE","scheduled_update_date":0,"placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":64389572,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"ai_features":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]","link_rel_canonical_url":"","page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by_id":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/5256430/Blog%20Images/16b.png","featured_image_width":0,"featured_image_height":0,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"password":null,"header":null,"published_at":1725037242971,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null,"created_by_agent":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]"}

{"html_title":"How to Make an Org Chart (+ Google Sheet template)","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"use_featured_image":true,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"tag_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"topic_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"post_summary":"

Once your business reaches a certain size, an organizational chart is a must. Even if you have 10 or fewer colleagues, an org chart is essential to documenting your operations and processes.

\n","post_body":"

Once your business reaches a certain size, an organizational chart is a must. Even if you have 10 or fewer colleagues, an org chart is essential to documenting your operations and processes.

\n\n

An organizational chart is crucial for

\n

\n
• Accountability
\n
• Transparency
\n
• Streamlined workflows
\n
• Organized reporting
\n

\n

If your business is new to organizational structure, figuring out how to build an organizational chart for the first time can feel a little overwhelming. When trying to create your company org chart, you may realize you have murky reporting relationships, or people who have more than one manager. Not to worry — through the process of making an organizational chart for your business, not only will you clarify your reporting structure, but you may also find opportunities for efficiency that you hadn’t seen before.

\n

How to make an organizational chart that helps your company’s work flow better

\n

When building your first org chart, it’s a good idea not to rely on preconceived notions based on how your company is currently operating. Oftentimes, companies without a clear organizational chart have inadvertently created ‘unicorn seats’ where one person is responsible for a variety of functions. Other issues could include confusing processes and relationships between departments, and unclear roles in project-focused settings. 

\n

When creating your org chart, start with the following considerations.

\n

Relations between divisions

\n

You should clarify the relations between your different departments and the roles you currently have. Does it make sense for your HR roles to report up into your finance function, or is it headed by a role that should be reporting directly to the CEO? 

\n

Functional-based roles

\n

Begin by taking a step back and looking at the big picture. A good starting place could be major company functions that filer down into individual roles. To avoid recreating unicorn seats, focus primarily on the function of a role, not the person who currently sits in it. Think about the ideal way for your company to run. Would it make sense for one person to lead and report up to the CEO about both sales and marketing, or do you think you need two people and departments to cover all your bases? Your current business needs and areas of stress should help guide you to building out the roles.

\n

Employee workloads

\n

After you’ve built out the chart without the people, it’s time to analyze it. This is the time to see if employee workloads are too light or too heavy. Review the draft you have of your org chart with your leadership team, and see where the gaps are. If you have someone working multiple roles and/or reporting to multiple managers, or someone floating around that doesn’t slot neatly into the roles you’ve created, figure out the best fit. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good — your first go at a company org chart will likely need time, feedback, and revision before you get it perfect.

\n

Career succession and development

\n

One critical component of any organization is employee engagement, and crucial to employee engagement is a sense that an organization offers a possibility of growth. Ambitious employees will want to know that there’s a path to advancement, as the company grows or as people move on. An organizational chart helps visualize for people what their career future could be.

\n

What type of org chart should your company use?

\n

The structure of your org chart depends on factors like your company’s size and the kind of work you usually take on. 

\n

Hierarchical org chart

\n

This is one of the most commonly recognizable org charts. A hierarchical org chart mostly makes sense for larger organizations that have multiple layers of management. It shows a chain of command cascading down from the CEO to individual contributors. 

\n

Flat org chart (aka a horizontal org chart)

\n

A flat org chart makes sense in smaller companies that have fewer departments and fewer layers of management. Horizontal org charts (and the smaller companies that use them) are typically composed of roles that require highly experienced employees who can serve as an entire ‘department’ that reports up to the CEO, with one or two individual contributors or contractors below them.

\n

Matrix org chart

\n

Matrix org charts are good for companies that have a need for multiple project managers. For example, consider a marketing agency that serves SMB clients. Other than business development, which the CEO heads, most of the work is client and project-based. Each project would have a project manager, and individual contributors from a variety of departments, like account managers from the sales department, writers from the branding department, and video editors and graphic designers from the creative department. The individual contributors would report up to their head of department, and also to the project manager spearheading their project. 

\n

Matrix org charts can be balanced, where individual contributors report equally to their department head and their project manager, or a strong matrix chart, where the project managers are the primary drivers.

\n

How to use an org chart

\n

Once you have your org chart, get it into circulation with your organization and solicit feedback. An org chart shouldn’t feel set in stone, but like a living document that evolves with your company and your people. It is a vital part of your ongoing business operating system.

\n

Once your org chart is complete, you can put it to use right away.

\n

You can use it to manage:

\n

\n
• Employee onboarding: a good org chart will help you create accurate job descriptions, qualify candidates, and get new employees up to speed on their responsibilities and team structure.
\n
• Company evolution: when business grows or contracts, an accurate org chart will help you quickly identify the gaps you should prioritize filling, or the places where you can streamline for efficiency.
\n
• Communication and collaboration: an org chart gives each person on your team clarity on their go-to person for issues and ideas.
\n

\n

Build an org chart that grows with your business

\n

Ready to build an org chart that streamlines your business operations? We have a free google sheet template for organizational charts. 

\n

It includes a:

\n

\n
• Hierarchical org chart template
\n
• Flat org chart template (aka horizontal org chart template)
\n
• Matrix org chart template
\n

\n

Enter your email below to grab the free template!

\n","rss_summary":"

Once your business reaches a certain size, an organizational chart is a must. Even if you have 10 or fewer colleagues, an org chart is essential to documenting your operations and processes.

\n","rss_body":"

Once your business reaches a certain size, an organizational chart is a must. Even if you have 10 or fewer colleagues, an org chart is essential to documenting your operations and processes.

\n\n

An organizational chart is crucial for

\n

\n
• Accountability
\n
• Transparency
\n
• Streamlined workflows
\n
• Organized reporting
\n

\n

If your business is new to organizational structure, figuring out how to build an organizational chart for the first time can feel a little overwhelming. When trying to create your company org chart, you may realize you have murky reporting relationships, or people who have more than one manager. Not to worry — through the process of making an organizational chart for your business, not only will you clarify your reporting structure, but you may also find opportunities for efficiency that you hadn’t seen before.

\n

How to make an organizational chart that helps your company’s work flow better

\n

When building your first org chart, it’s a good idea not to rely on preconceived notions based on how your company is currently operating. Oftentimes, companies without a clear organizational chart have inadvertently created ‘unicorn seats’ where one person is responsible for a variety of functions. Other issues could include confusing processes and relationships between departments, and unclear roles in project-focused settings. 

\n

When creating your org chart, start with the following considerations.

\n

Relations between divisions

\n

You should clarify the relations between your different departments and the roles you currently have. Does it make sense for your HR roles to report up into your finance function, or is it headed by a role that should be reporting directly to the CEO? 

\n

Functional-based roles

\n

Begin by taking a step back and looking at the big picture. A good starting place could be major company functions that filer down into individual roles. To avoid recreating unicorn seats, focus primarily on the function of a role, not the person who currently sits in it. Think about the ideal way for your company to run. Would it make sense for one person to lead and report up to the CEO about both sales and marketing, or do you think you need two people and departments to cover all your bases? Your current business needs and areas of stress should help guide you to building out the roles.

\n

Employee workloads

\n

After you’ve built out the chart without the people, it’s time to analyze it. This is the time to see if employee workloads are too light or too heavy. Review the draft you have of your org chart with your leadership team, and see where the gaps are. If you have someone working multiple roles and/or reporting to multiple managers, or someone floating around that doesn’t slot neatly into the roles you’ve created, figure out the best fit. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good — your first go at a company org chart will likely need time, feedback, and revision before you get it perfect.

\n

Career succession and development

\n

One critical component of any organization is employee engagement, and crucial to employee engagement is a sense that an organization offers a possibility of growth. Ambitious employees will want to know that there’s a path to advancement, as the company grows or as people move on. An organizational chart helps visualize for people what their career future could be.

\n

What type of org chart should your company use?

\n

The structure of your org chart depends on factors like your company’s size and the kind of work you usually take on. 

\n

Hierarchical org chart

\n

This is one of the most commonly recognizable org charts. A hierarchical org chart mostly makes sense for larger organizations that have multiple layers of management. It shows a chain of command cascading down from the CEO to individual contributors. 

\n

Flat org chart (aka a horizontal org chart)

\n

A flat org chart makes sense in smaller companies that have fewer departments and fewer layers of management. Horizontal org charts (and the smaller companies that use them) are typically composed of roles that require highly experienced employees who can serve as an entire ‘department’ that reports up to the CEO, with one or two individual contributors or contractors below them.

\n

Matrix org chart

\n

Matrix org charts are good for companies that have a need for multiple project managers. For example, consider a marketing agency that serves SMB clients. Other than business development, which the CEO heads, most of the work is client and project-based. Each project would have a project manager, and individual contributors from a variety of departments, like account managers from the sales department, writers from the branding department, and video editors and graphic designers from the creative department. The individual contributors would report up to their head of department, and also to the project manager spearheading their project. 

\n

Matrix org charts can be balanced, where individual contributors report equally to their department head and their project manager, or a strong matrix chart, where the project managers are the primary drivers.

\n

How to use an org chart

\n

Once you have your org chart, get it into circulation with your organization and solicit feedback. An org chart shouldn’t feel set in stone, but like a living document that evolves with your company and your people. It is a vital part of your ongoing business operating system.

\n

Once your org chart is complete, you can put it to use right away.

\n

You can use it to manage:

\n

\n
• Employee onboarding: a good org chart will help you create accurate job descriptions, qualify candidates, and get new employees up to speed on their responsibilities and team structure.
\n
• Company evolution: when business grows or contracts, an accurate org chart will help you quickly identify the gaps you should prioritize filling, or the places where you can streamline for efficiency.
\n
• Communication and collaboration: an org chart gives each person on your team clarity on their go-to person for issues and ideas.
\n

\n

Build an org chart that grows with your business

\n

Ready to build an org chart that streamlines your business operations? We have a free google sheet template for organizational charts. 

\n

It includes a:

\n

\n
• Hierarchical org chart template
\n
• Flat org chart template (aka horizontal org chart template)
\n
• Matrix org chart template
\n

\n

Enter your email below to grab the free template!

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE_NOT_SENT","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"keywords":[],"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"password":null,"header":null,"meta_description":"Build an org chart with instructions and free Google Sheet templates, including a hierarchical org chart, a flat org chart, and a matrix org chart.","meta_keywords":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"deleted_by":null,"featured_image_alt_text":"A graphic of a team working together to build an org chart","enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":null,"campaign_utm":null,"tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":true,"security_state":"NONE","scheduled_update_date":0,"placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":64389572,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"ai_features":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]","link_rel_canonical_url":"","page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by_id":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://5256430.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5256430/How%20to%20Make%20An%20org%20chart.png","featured_image_width":1600,"featured_image_height":1100,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"published_at":1724260884532,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null,"created_by_agent":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]"}

{"html_title":"Authentic Leadership: Fostering a Positive Work Culture","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"use_featured_image":true,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"tag_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"topic_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356],"post_summary":"

As a manager, it's important to remember that you are not just a leader of a team, but a leader of individuals. Each person on your team has their own unique personality, strengths, and weaknesses, and it's your job as a manager to not only recognize but also utilize these qualities to drive the success of your business. This is key to a well-working business operating system.

\n","post_body":"

As a manager, it's important to remember that you are not just a leader of a team, but a leader of individuals. Each person on your team has their own unique personality, strengths, and weaknesses, and it's your job as a manager to not only recognize but also utilize these qualities to drive the success of your business. This is key to a well-working business operating system.

\n

Authentic leadership is a management style that emphasizes being true to one's self and leading in a way that reflects their individual values and beliefs. This type of leadership is not just about being yourself, but also about creating an environment where your team feels comfortable being themselves and bringing their own unique qualities to the table.

\n

Why strive towards authenticity in your management style?

\n

In the Gallup 2024 State of the Workplace survey, it was found that managers directly impact 70% of the variance in engagement among employees. Basically, your leadership really matters in terms of employee engagement and retention. Replacing an employee is costly — both to your bottom line and your organization’s stability. 

\n

Building a work environment that starts with authentic leadership is shown to improve employee engagement. The Gallup report shows that the best organizations integrate employee engagement into their business strategy and work culture. 

\n

Authentic leadership is the best way (in our humble opinion) to improve your relationships with your employees and reap the benefits of an engaged, high-performing team. 

\n

Creating a positive work culture

\n

One of the biggest benefits of having an authentic leadership style is that it fosters a positive work culture. When team members feel like they can be their true selves, they are more likely to be engaged and invested in their work. This leads to higher levels of creativity and productivity, as well as a more cohesive team dynamic.

\n

Trust-building with your team

\n

Authentic leadership also helps to build trust between you and your team. When you lead by example and show your team that you are willing to be transparent and open about your own beliefs and values, they are more likely to trust you and feel comfortable sharing their own thoughts and opinions. This, in turn, can lead to more effective collaboration and problem-solving.

\n

Knowing your team better

\n

Another benefit of having an authentic leadership style is that it can help you to better understand your team and their needs. When you get to know your team members on a personal level and understand what drives them, you are better equipped to make decisions that will support their growth and development. This, in turn, can help to retain top talent and ensure that your team continues to perform at a high level.

\n

How to build trust in the workplace as a more authentic leader

\n

If you haven’t given much deliberate thought to being an authentic leader at work, it may seem a little out of sync with traditional leadership styles in management. We’ve all seen or heard of leaders who present themselves as somewhat unknowable and de-personalized paragons of corporate virtue… or ‘leaders’ who use fear as a management tactic. You might also be familiar with the stories of leaders who overshare and act inappropriately with their employees in an attempt to achieve ‘radical candor.’

\n

Being authentic has nothing to do with being the TMI person at work, or being the biggest bully. You can channel authenticity and improve your relationship with your employees by focusing on a few key attributes.

\n

Know Yourself

\n

To present your best authentic self at work, you need to first be honest with yourself about… yourself. What are the factors in your personality and life outside of work that impact how you show up each day? Take inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Play to your strengths, and work to overcome your weaknesses, and be honest with yourself and your employees when you don’t perform or behave as you wished you had.

\n

Know Your Employees

\n

Different employees will feel differently about how much of themselves they’re willing to share at work. One general rule: however much they share, show that you care. A big part of employee engagement is people feeling like they don’t have to hide who they are at work. As long as people aren’t teetering into HR violations, encourage them to be themselves. When you’re open about your strengths and weaknesses and how you’re working to constantly improve, your employees may be inspired to do the same.

\n

Create a Feedback Loop

\n

You should be giving your employees regular feedback, both in 1:1 meetings and quarterly performance reviews. Make sure you acknowledge and encourage strengths and accomplishments, and coach on how to improve weaknesses. But giving your employees feedback is only one part of the equation: make sure you’re getting regular — and more importantly, honest — feedback from them as well. 

\n

Make feedback a part of your organizational culture, and do whatever’s necessary to make sure you’re getting honest insights from your employees. It’s only when you know a problem exists that you’re able to fix it, and by soliciting regular feedback, you can hopefully suss out small problems before they snowball.

\n

Get authentic for a better work environment

\n

Letting your personality shine through your management style is not just about being yourself, but about creating a work environment where everyone feels comfortable being themselves. By embracing an authentic leadership style, you can foster a positive work culture, build trust with your team, better understand your team's needs, and develop a strong personal brand. So go ahead, let your personality shine and lead with authenticity!

","rss_summary":"

As a manager, it's important to remember that you are not just a leader of a team, but a leader of individuals. Each person on your team has their own unique personality, strengths, and weaknesses, and it's your job as a manager to not only recognize but also utilize these qualities to drive the success of your business. This is key to a well-working business operating system.

\n","rss_body":"

As a manager, it's important to remember that you are not just a leader of a team, but a leader of individuals. Each person on your team has their own unique personality, strengths, and weaknesses, and it's your job as a manager to not only recognize but also utilize these qualities to drive the success of your business. This is key to a well-working business operating system.

\n

Authentic leadership is a management style that emphasizes being true to one's self and leading in a way that reflects their individual values and beliefs. This type of leadership is not just about being yourself, but also about creating an environment where your team feels comfortable being themselves and bringing their own unique qualities to the table.

\n

Why strive towards authenticity in your management style?

\n

In the Gallup 2024 State of the Workplace survey, it was found that managers directly impact 70% of the variance in engagement among employees. Basically, your leadership really matters in terms of employee engagement and retention. Replacing an employee is costly — both to your bottom line and your organization’s stability. 

\n

Building a work environment that starts with authentic leadership is shown to improve employee engagement. The Gallup report shows that the best organizations integrate employee engagement into their business strategy and work culture. 

\n

Authentic leadership is the best way (in our humble opinion) to improve your relationships with your employees and reap the benefits of an engaged, high-performing team. 

\n

Creating a positive work culture

\n

One of the biggest benefits of having an authentic leadership style is that it fosters a positive work culture. When team members feel like they can be their true selves, they are more likely to be engaged and invested in their work. This leads to higher levels of creativity and productivity, as well as a more cohesive team dynamic.

\n

Trust-building with your team

\n

Authentic leadership also helps to build trust between you and your team. When you lead by example and show your team that you are willing to be transparent and open about your own beliefs and values, they are more likely to trust you and feel comfortable sharing their own thoughts and opinions. This, in turn, can lead to more effective collaboration and problem-solving.

\n

Knowing your team better

\n

Another benefit of having an authentic leadership style is that it can help you to better understand your team and their needs. When you get to know your team members on a personal level and understand what drives them, you are better equipped to make decisions that will support their growth and development. This, in turn, can help to retain top talent and ensure that your team continues to perform at a high level.

\n

How to build trust in the workplace as a more authentic leader

\n

If you haven’t given much deliberate thought to being an authentic leader at work, it may seem a little out of sync with traditional leadership styles in management. We’ve all seen or heard of leaders who present themselves as somewhat unknowable and de-personalized paragons of corporate virtue… or ‘leaders’ who use fear as a management tactic. You might also be familiar with the stories of leaders who overshare and act inappropriately with their employees in an attempt to achieve ‘radical candor.’

\n

Being authentic has nothing to do with being the TMI person at work, or being the biggest bully. You can channel authenticity and improve your relationship with your employees by focusing on a few key attributes.

\n

Know Yourself

\n

To present your best authentic self at work, you need to first be honest with yourself about… yourself. What are the factors in your personality and life outside of work that impact how you show up each day? Take inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Play to your strengths, and work to overcome your weaknesses, and be honest with yourself and your employees when you don’t perform or behave as you wished you had.

\n

Know Your Employees

\n

Different employees will feel differently about how much of themselves they’re willing to share at work. One general rule: however much they share, show that you care. A big part of employee engagement is people feeling like they don’t have to hide who they are at work. As long as people aren’t teetering into HR violations, encourage them to be themselves. When you’re open about your strengths and weaknesses and how you’re working to constantly improve, your employees may be inspired to do the same.

\n

Create a Feedback Loop

\n

You should be giving your employees regular feedback, both in 1:1 meetings and quarterly performance reviews. Make sure you acknowledge and encourage strengths and accomplishments, and coach on how to improve weaknesses. But giving your employees feedback is only one part of the equation: make sure you’re getting regular — and more importantly, honest — feedback from them as well. 

\n

Make feedback a part of your organizational culture, and do whatever’s necessary to make sure you’re getting honest insights from your employees. It’s only when you know a problem exists that you’re able to fix it, and by soliciting regular feedback, you can hopefully suss out small problems before they snowball.

\n

Get authentic for a better work environment

\n

Letting your personality shine through your management style is not just about being yourself, but about creating a work environment where everyone feels comfortable being themselves. By embracing an authentic leadership style, you can foster a positive work culture, build trust with your team, better understand your team's needs, and develop a strong personal brand. So go ahead, let your personality shine and lead with authenticity!

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{"html_title":"Tips to keep your team engaged","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"use_featured_image":true,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"tag_ids":[23182286584,23667170488,23934667295,27416492430,28407422581,168761834356],"topic_ids":[23182286584,23667170488,23934667295,27416492430,28407422581,168761834356],"post_summary":"

Even in a market that’s tougher on job seekers than headhunters, nobody wants to lose their best people. Not only does turnover cause chaos, it’s expensive! Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 100%-200% of their salary — and the financial costs are compounded by organizational upheaval.

\n","post_body":"

Even in a market that’s tougher on job seekers than headhunters, nobody wants to lose their best people. Not only does turnover cause chaos, it’s expensive! Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 100%-200% of their salary — and the financial costs are compounded by organizational upheaval.

\n

The best way to prevent turnover is not a hail mary counteroffer after they give their notice: it’s to create an environment where high performers want to stay, rather than stray.

\n

When you make employee engagement a priority in your business, you can look forward to higher morale, better performance, and more innovation. Basically, your business will be running on all cylinders. Sounds nice, right? Let’s get into it!

\n

Warning signs an employee is disengaged

\n

If you’re not already super invested in employee engagement as a business, odds are you have some disengaged people on your team. Gartner research found that only 31% of employees report being engaged at work. 

\n

Disengaged employees are at higher risk of quitting, not to mention how they can bring down the morale of the people around them. Here are some warning signs:

\n

\n
• Participating less in meetings
\n
• Lower productivity
\n
• A change in attitude
\n
• Increased LinkedIn activity
\n
• Change in attitude
\n
• Less helpful
\n

\n

If someone exhibits all of these signs, and seems to be unavailable more than usual, it might indicate that they’re so dissatisfied that they’re actively seeking a new job. Of course, one or two of these signs could just mean that your person could have something going on in their personal life that’s drawing their attention away from work. Regardless of the reason, when someone’s performance and attitude starts going downhill, it’s time for an intervention.

\n

How to reverse employee disengagement (and keep your employee from leaving)

\n

When you notice that an employee is disengaging, it’s better to act sooner rather than later — this is not the type of problem that goes away with hoping and wishing! So what do you do when a good employee seems disengaged?

\n

Communicate, communicate, communicate

\n

Communication is a common theme for us. Without the transparency of effective communication, you won’t know exactly what’s going on with a disengaged employee, nor how to fix it. 

\n

Refresh your expectations (in both directions)

\n

An important component of your communication is navigating the expectations you have of your employee and vice versa. Have they taken on more duties without formal discussion? Has the company’s direction or processes changed? Get on the same page about whether you can get on the same page moving forward, and how to do so.

\n

Take a look at the bigger picture

\n

When an employee becomes disengaged, it’s rarely just one factor at play. Their dissatisfaction could stem from a team member, their pay, their role, their manager, their schedule, and/or or myriad other things. To reverse disengagement — or even better, stop it before it starts — you need to take stock of your company culture.

\n

How to build an engaging culture at work

\n

To build an engaging culture at your company, keep the following components of company culture in mind.

\n

Company vision

\n

Is your company vision transparent and available to all employees? Are they able to see how their work fits into the larger people? Unless the answer to both of these questions is a resounding “yes,” you have some work to do!

\n

To put your company vision to work for employee engagement, consider doing some of the following:

\n

\n
• Make your vision accessible to every employee
\n
• Use meetings as a reminder of the vision
\n
• Explain clearly how roles/projects fit into the larger vision
\n

\n

Clear accountability

\n

Having an undefined role and responsibilities that creep in scope can drive even the hardest workers toward disengagement. While it’s tempting to create “unicorn” roles tailored around overachievers who can do it all, it benefits your business and your employees to have clarity and specificity around the work everyone is expected to do.

\n

Boost accountability in your organization with the following tips.

\n

\n
• Create an org chart — and stick to it!
\n
• Keep a person’s workflow aligned to their role
\n
• If something needs to change, explain the why and make sure you’re on the same page as far ahead of time as possible
\n

\n

Create opportunities for connection

\n

Whether your team is in the office, hybrid, remote, or distributed, it’s important to prioritize opportunities for teams to connect with each other outside of the day to day. Even better, create opportunities for people to connect with people outside of their departments, so they can get a sense of how everyone’s working toward the same goals in different ways.

\n

If your team is all-virtual and it’s hard to gather everyone together in-person, think about implementing optional virtual coffee meetups or trivia hours a couple times a month.

\n

If you’re a distributed team and have the means to gather everyone together, try to figure out a cadence to do so. Even if it’s once a year, an in-person meetup can transform the way your team interacts with each other and connects with the company vision as a whole.

\n

Even those teams that are in-office connecting every day should have some dedicated time to connect with each other outside of daily workflows. Try a special outing or fun in-office activity like a board game tournament. Make sure whatever you plan is on company time and the company dime, so your team knows that you’re investing in their happiness.

\n

Nurture bi-directional feedback 

\n

Employees tend to be more engaged when they know where they stand. People who don’t know how they’re doing at work could be under an irrational fear of being suddenly fired, or think they’re doing great when their performance is low. In either case, there’s a disconnect that can lead to trouble.

\n

We recommend using quarterly performance reviews as an opportunity to help your employees grow where they aren’t as strong, and of course to give them positive feedback about what you like about their work. You should also solicit feedback about how you’re doing as a leader and an organization. Feedback can help you and your employees continuously buy into your relationship, and commit to nurturing it.

\n

Give your employees room to grow

\n

Don’t let your employees feel like they’re wasting away in dead-end jobs. Investment in employee development can pay back dividends when you have loyal people growing into new roles at your company, saving you time and effort in recruiting.

\n

Quarterly performance reviews are a great opportunity to check in on your employee’s goals for their role and their career. Talk to them honestly about what they need to learn and experience to grow toward roles they’re looking toward. 

\n

Use a platform that promotes employee engagement

\n

Nurturing employee engagement is a critical part of creating a high-performance company culture. But as we all know, the most important stuff is hardly ever the easiest. It takes a real effort to create an engagement culture in your business.

\n

You embed a great culture in your organization more easily when you find a business operating system and stick to it. And the easiest way to create and commit to a business operating system is to use a dedicated tool that your employees love to use.

\n

Strety has the tools you need for automated meeting agendas, performance reviews, organizational charts, and transparency in your company vision, all of which add to a great company culture. Integrations with Microsoft Teams and project management tools like Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner make it easy for your employees to weave your company culture into their everyday workflows.

\n

If you’re interested in a home base for your business operating system, get ready to Strety! Start a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) or book a demo with our team to learn how you can tailor Strety to your business for an outstanding employee experience.

","rss_summary":"

Even in a market that’s tougher on job seekers than headhunters, nobody wants to lose their best people. Not only does turnover cause chaos, it’s expensive! Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 100%-200% of their salary — and the financial costs are compounded by organizational upheaval.

\n","rss_body":"

Even in a market that’s tougher on job seekers than headhunters, nobody wants to lose their best people. Not only does turnover cause chaos, it’s expensive! Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 100%-200% of their salary — and the financial costs are compounded by organizational upheaval.

\n

The best way to prevent turnover is not a hail mary counteroffer after they give their notice: it’s to create an environment where high performers want to stay, rather than stray.

\n

When you make employee engagement a priority in your business, you can look forward to higher morale, better performance, and more innovation. Basically, your business will be running on all cylinders. Sounds nice, right? Let’s get into it!

\n

Warning signs an employee is disengaged

\n

If you’re not already super invested in employee engagement as a business, odds are you have some disengaged people on your team. Gartner research found that only 31% of employees report being engaged at work. 

\n

Disengaged employees are at higher risk of quitting, not to mention how they can bring down the morale of the people around them. Here are some warning signs:

\n

\n
• Participating less in meetings
\n
• Lower productivity
\n
• A change in attitude
\n
• Increased LinkedIn activity
\n
• Change in attitude
\n
• Less helpful
\n

\n

If someone exhibits all of these signs, and seems to be unavailable more than usual, it might indicate that they’re so dissatisfied that they’re actively seeking a new job. Of course, one or two of these signs could just mean that your person could have something going on in their personal life that’s drawing their attention away from work. Regardless of the reason, when someone’s performance and attitude starts going downhill, it’s time for an intervention.

\n

How to reverse employee disengagement (and keep your employee from leaving)

\n

When you notice that an employee is disengaging, it’s better to act sooner rather than later — this is not the type of problem that goes away with hoping and wishing! So what do you do when a good employee seems disengaged?

\n

Communicate, communicate, communicate

\n

Communication is a common theme for us. Without the transparency of effective communication, you won’t know exactly what’s going on with a disengaged employee, nor how to fix it. 

\n

Refresh your expectations (in both directions)

\n

An important component of your communication is navigating the expectations you have of your employee and vice versa. Have they taken on more duties without formal discussion? Has the company’s direction or processes changed? Get on the same page about whether you can get on the same page moving forward, and how to do so.

\n

Take a look at the bigger picture

\n

When an employee becomes disengaged, it’s rarely just one factor at play. Their dissatisfaction could stem from a team member, their pay, their role, their manager, their schedule, and/or or myriad other things. To reverse disengagement — or even better, stop it before it starts — you need to take stock of your company culture.

\n

How to build an engaging culture at work

\n

To build an engaging culture at your company, keep the following components of company culture in mind.

\n

Company vision

\n

Is your company vision transparent and available to all employees? Are they able to see how their work fits into the larger people? Unless the answer to both of these questions is a resounding “yes,” you have some work to do!

\n

To put your company vision to work for employee engagement, consider doing some of the following:

\n

\n
• Make your vision accessible to every employee
\n
• Use meetings as a reminder of the vision
\n
• Explain clearly how roles/projects fit into the larger vision
\n

\n

Clear accountability

\n

Having an undefined role and responsibilities that creep in scope can drive even the hardest workers toward disengagement. While it’s tempting to create “unicorn” roles tailored around overachievers who can do it all, it benefits your business and your employees to have clarity and specificity around the work everyone is expected to do.

\n

Boost accountability in your organization with the following tips.

\n

\n
• Create an org chart — and stick to it!
\n
• Keep a person’s workflow aligned to their role
\n
• If something needs to change, explain the why and make sure you’re on the same page as far ahead of time as possible
\n

\n

Create opportunities for connection

\n

Whether your team is in the office, hybrid, remote, or distributed, it’s important to prioritize opportunities for teams to connect with each other outside of the day to day. Even better, create opportunities for people to connect with people outside of their departments, so they can get a sense of how everyone’s working toward the same goals in different ways.

\n

If your team is all-virtual and it’s hard to gather everyone together in-person, think about implementing optional virtual coffee meetups or trivia hours a couple times a month.

\n

If you’re a distributed team and have the means to gather everyone together, try to figure out a cadence to do so. Even if it’s once a year, an in-person meetup can transform the way your team interacts with each other and connects with the company vision as a whole.

\n

Even those teams that are in-office connecting every day should have some dedicated time to connect with each other outside of daily workflows. Try a special outing or fun in-office activity like a board game tournament. Make sure whatever you plan is on company time and the company dime, so your team knows that you’re investing in their happiness.

\n

Nurture bi-directional feedback 

\n

Employees tend to be more engaged when they know where they stand. People who don’t know how they’re doing at work could be under an irrational fear of being suddenly fired, or think they’re doing great when their performance is low. In either case, there’s a disconnect that can lead to trouble.

\n

We recommend using quarterly performance reviews as an opportunity to help your employees grow where they aren’t as strong, and of course to give them positive feedback about what you like about their work. You should also solicit feedback about how you’re doing as a leader and an organization. Feedback can help you and your employees continuously buy into your relationship, and commit to nurturing it.

\n

Give your employees room to grow

\n

Don’t let your employees feel like they’re wasting away in dead-end jobs. Investment in employee development can pay back dividends when you have loyal people growing into new roles at your company, saving you time and effort in recruiting.

\n

Quarterly performance reviews are a great opportunity to check in on your employee’s goals for their role and their career. Talk to them honestly about what they need to learn and experience to grow toward roles they’re looking toward. 

\n

Use a platform that promotes employee engagement

\n

Nurturing employee engagement is a critical part of creating a high-performance company culture. But as we all know, the most important stuff is hardly ever the easiest. It takes a real effort to create an engagement culture in your business.

\n

You embed a great culture in your organization more easily when you find a business operating system and stick to it. And the easiest way to create and commit to a business operating system is to use a dedicated tool that your employees love to use.

\n

Strety has the tools you need for automated meeting agendas, performance reviews, organizational charts, and transparency in your company vision, all of which add to a great company culture. Integrations with Microsoft Teams and project management tools like Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner make it easy for your employees to weave your company culture into their everyday workflows.

\n

If you’re interested in a home base for your business operating system, get ready to Strety! Start a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) or book a demo with our team to learn how you can tailor Strety to your business for an outstanding employee experience.

","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE_NOT_SENT","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"keywords":[],"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"password":null,"header":null,"meta_description":"When you make employee engagement a priority in your business, you can look forward to higher morale, better performance, and more innovation. ","meta_keywords":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"deleted_by":null,"featured_image_alt_text":"An engaged team is a happy team!","enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":null,"campaign_utm":null,"tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":false,"security_state":"NONE","scheduled_update_date":0,"placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":64389572,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"ai_features":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]","link_rel_canonical_url":"","page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by_id":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://5256430.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5256430/Tips%20to%20keep%20your%20employees%20engaged%20-%20blog%20hero%20%281%29.png","featured_image_width":1600,"featured_image_height":1100,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"published_at":1721898060424,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null,"created_by_agent":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]"}

{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"How to Set Better Goals to Motivate Your Team","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

When done correctly, goal setting can put your employees on track to achieve their greatest potential as individuals and align themselves better with company goals 😌. But, if you set unrealistic, vague, or irrelevant performance goals for your employees, it can actually end up doing way more harm than good 😔.

\n","post_body":"

When done correctly, goal setting can put your employees on track to achieve their greatest potential as individuals and align themselves better with company goals 😌. But, if you set unrealistic, vague, or irrelevant performance goals for your employees, it can actually end up doing way more harm than good 😔.

\n\n

So, how can you set better performance goals in order to keep your teams highly motivated, engaged, and productive?

\n\n

What are Performance Goals?

\n

Employee performance goals are, well, pretty much exactly what they sound like! They address specific aspects of an employee's job performance, enabling them to plan and organize their work so they can achieve the desired goals or outcomes.

\n\n

The Importance of Goal Setting for Your Employees

\n

It can be difficult for your employees to know if their job performance is measuring up to your expectations as their manager. At the same time, it can be difficult for you to know how to best motivate your employees so they can continue working towards the goals of the entire organization, as well as grow personally and professionally.

\n

Setting job performance goals for your employees is one way to take the mystery out of how they can improve their performance in the workplace 👏. By setting effective performance goals, your employees will be better equipped to:

\n

\n
• Develop new job skills that help them level up in their career
\n
• Take on additional responsibilities
\n
• Think longer-term and more strategically
\n
• Pursue their career aspirations
\n
• Support the organization's vision, mission, and values
\n
• Collaborate with their coworkers
\n
• Communicate with leadership
\n
• Plan and implement successful projects and initiatives
\n
• Remain resilient and optimistic when roadblocks arise, learn from setbacks, and make changes or improvements to get back on track and meet their goals
\n

\n\n

The Importance of Goal Setting for Managers

\n

Goal setting can also make things much easier on you as a manager. When you set clear employee goals and track their progress, it means you can conduct more effective and accurate employee performance reviews 🙌.

\n

It also makes day-to-day employee management a much less stressful process. When you know exactly what your employees are working towards and where they currently stand, you can then step in to help them along their path towards achieving them. How? By giving regular feedback, being a support system, and helping them find ways to improve and develop new skills!

\n\n

How to Create Performance Goals

\n

There are many different approaches you can take when it comes to writing performance goals for your employees ✍️. Three of common goal frameworks are:

\n

\n
1. Outcome and process goals
\n
2. SMART goals
\n
3. Objective Key Results (OKRs)
\n

\n\n

What are Outcome & Process Goals?

\n

This goal framework originated from the world of athletics 🏃‍♂️ but is just as applicable when setting organizational goals or performance goals for employees! Let’s explore each type further:

\n

Outcome Goals

\n

An outcome goal is the main singular goal that you are working towards. While outcome goals can be very motivating, oftentimes, they are not under your control because they are affected by how others perform, too.

\n

Process Goals

\n

Process goals support performance goals by giving you something to focus on as you work towards your performance goals. They are the small things that are totally under your control that you should focus on or do to eventually achieve your performance goals.

\n\n

What are SMART Goals?

\n

SMART goals are another goal framework that can be used to set employee performance goals. SMART goals are goals that are:

\n

Specific 🙋‍♂️

\n

A performance goal should be explained with enough detail that it can be clearly understood, and includes the who, what, when, where, and how. This is essential because it will be incredibly difficult for your employees to achieve a goal that is incredibly generic or too vague.

\n

Measurable 📏

\n

A performance goal also needs to be measurable in some numeric or descriptive way. After all, how will your employee know when they’ve completed the goal, or how much more progress needs to be made before they do, if there is no way to measure success?

\n

Achievable 💪

\n

It’s important that your employee goals are realistic. Each employee needs to have the resources and control necessary to actually complete the goals you’ve set for them. If they don’t, you’re just setting your team up for failure.

\n

Relevant 📈

\n

Any good performance goal should be aligned with the mission of the team, department, or overall organization. Otherwise, there is no point in pursuing it!

\n

Timely 📅

\n

It’s important that the performance goals you’re setting for your employees have a target completion date that is actually realistic. For example, setting a 10 year goal is not very motivating and expecting an employee to reach a huge goal overnight will only make them feel enormous amounts of pressure that can actually have a negative affect their performance.

\n\n

What are Objective Key Results?

\n

Objective Key Results, or OKRs, are yet another popular goal framework. OKRs are designed to connect company, team, and personal employee performance goals to measurable results.

\n

A large component of this goal framework is making sure everyone is clear about what is expected of them. For this reason, OKRs are supposed to be public. This way, all team members and leaders are aware of what others are working on, and can work together in one unified direction 👉 towards the same high-level organizational goals.

\n

Structure of OKRs

\n

The structure of OKRs are broken into two main components:

\n

\n
• Objectives 📋 OKRs consist of a list of 3-5 high level objectives on company, team, or personal levels.
  
  
\n
• Results 📈 Under each objective, you should define 3-5 measurable results. Each Key Result can be measured on a score of 0-100% or 0 to 1.
\n

\n

Implementing OKRs

\n

OKRs are typically part of the quarterly planning process, but some companies will also set annual or monthly OKRs. A major advantage of OKRs is that they are simple to use and do not take much time to implement. Oftentimes, it takes just a few hours each quarter to review OKRs for each employee in their performance review—although it’s a good idea to check in on them a little more regularly so you can keep up with each employee’s progress.

\n

Once defined, it’s important to communicate the OKRs you’ve set for each employee to the rest of the team, as well as leadership within the organization. Then, as your employees start working towards their objectives, they will update their result indicators regularly, preferably weekly. Remember to be flexible! 🧘 If the goals of your company, team, or employees change, then OKRs can be changed as well!

\n\n

Examples of Performance Goals

\n

Here are some examples of performance goals that may get your creative juices flowing as you’re working on goal setting for your own team.

\n

3 Examples of Performance Goals for Employees

\n

\n
1. Deliver five completed project designs to each client in March.
   
   
\n
2. Get together for a coffee date with a coworker from a different department each month to better understand how they contribute to the overall goals of the organization and brainstorm ideas to improve cross-departmental efficiency.
   
   
\n
3. Reduce negative customer satisfaction rate by 50%.
\n

\n

3 Examples of Performance Goals for Managers

\n

\n
1. Dedicate time to once a month to recognize the work of a top performer on your team by taking them to get a coffee or sending them an encouraging email.
   
   
\n
2. Create a document that outlines all the communication tools used across your team and distribute it to each member by the end of the month to ensure a strong understanding of them before the next quarter rolls around.
   
   
\n
3. Keep attrition on your team under 10% year-over-year.
\n

\n\n

Set—and Track—Better Performance Goals with Strety! 😍

\n

Setting better goals is just the first step. To hit your goals, you need the right systems in place to keep track of progress, celebrate high performers, and give helpful feedback.

\n

It's tough to see real progress if you're tracking goals in a spreadsheet. That's not designed for meaningful collaboration, which you need to keep people motivated.

\n

Strety's designed to help you ditch the chaos and uncertainty of managing people and setting employee goals. Strety has all the features you need to become a better manager together in one convenient place: Microsoft Teams.

\n

If you're already spending your workday inside Teams, shouldn't your goals live there, too?

\n

With Strety, you can set and track individual employee performance goals as well as overall business goals: right within Teams. You'll always know where each employee and your business as a whole stands. Whether you use Traction/EOS, OKRs, F.A.S.T Rocks in Pinnacle, or SMART goals, we can help you monitor them with ease, all on a system built to be intuitive and easy to use.

\n

Ready to gain access to the tools you need to set and track employee performance goals in a faster, simpler way? Contact us today! 📞

","rss_summary":"

When done correctly, goal setting can put your employees on track to achieve their greatest potential as individuals and align themselves better with company goals 😌. But, if you set unrealistic, vague, or irrelevant performance goals for your employees, it can actually end up doing way more harm than good 😔.

\n","rss_body":"

When done correctly, goal setting can put your employees on track to achieve their greatest potential as individuals and align themselves better with company goals 😌. But, if you set unrealistic, vague, or irrelevant performance goals for your employees, it can actually end up doing way more harm than good 😔.

\n\n

So, how can you set better performance goals in order to keep your teams highly motivated, engaged, and productive?

\n\n

What are Performance Goals?

\n

Employee performance goals are, well, pretty much exactly what they sound like! They address specific aspects of an employee's job performance, enabling them to plan and organize their work so they can achieve the desired goals or outcomes.

\n\n

The Importance of Goal Setting for Your Employees

\n

It can be difficult for your employees to know if their job performance is measuring up to your expectations as their manager. At the same time, it can be difficult for you to know how to best motivate your employees so they can continue working towards the goals of the entire organization, as well as grow personally and professionally.

\n

Setting job performance goals for your employees is one way to take the mystery out of how they can improve their performance in the workplace 👏. By setting effective performance goals, your employees will be better equipped to:

\n

\n
• Develop new job skills that help them level up in their career
\n
• Take on additional responsibilities
\n
• Think longer-term and more strategically
\n
• Pursue their career aspirations
\n
• Support the organization's vision, mission, and values
\n
• Collaborate with their coworkers
\n
• Communicate with leadership
\n
• Plan and implement successful projects and initiatives
\n
• Remain resilient and optimistic when roadblocks arise, learn from setbacks, and make changes or improvements to get back on track and meet their goals
\n

\n\n

The Importance of Goal Setting for Managers

\n

Goal setting can also make things much easier on you as a manager. When you set clear employee goals and track their progress, it means you can conduct more effective and accurate employee performance reviews 🙌.

\n

It also makes day-to-day employee management a much less stressful process. When you know exactly what your employees are working towards and where they currently stand, you can then step in to help them along their path towards achieving them. How? By giving regular feedback, being a support system, and helping them find ways to improve and develop new skills!

\n\n

How to Create Performance Goals

\n

There are many different approaches you can take when it comes to writing performance goals for your employees ✍️. Three of common goal frameworks are:

\n

\n
1. Outcome and process goals
\n
2. SMART goals
\n
3. Objective Key Results (OKRs)
\n

\n\n

What are Outcome & Process Goals?

\n

This goal framework originated from the world of athletics 🏃‍♂️ but is just as applicable when setting organizational goals or performance goals for employees! Let’s explore each type further:

\n

Outcome Goals

\n

An outcome goal is the main singular goal that you are working towards. While outcome goals can be very motivating, oftentimes, they are not under your control because they are affected by how others perform, too.

\n

Process Goals

\n

Process goals support performance goals by giving you something to focus on as you work towards your performance goals. They are the small things that are totally under your control that you should focus on or do to eventually achieve your performance goals.

\n\n

What are SMART Goals?

\n

SMART goals are another goal framework that can be used to set employee performance goals. SMART goals are goals that are:

\n

Specific 🙋‍♂️

\n

A performance goal should be explained with enough detail that it can be clearly understood, and includes the who, what, when, where, and how. This is essential because it will be incredibly difficult for your employees to achieve a goal that is incredibly generic or too vague.

\n

Measurable 📏

\n

A performance goal also needs to be measurable in some numeric or descriptive way. After all, how will your employee know when they’ve completed the goal, or how much more progress needs to be made before they do, if there is no way to measure success?

\n

Achievable 💪

\n

It’s important that your employee goals are realistic. Each employee needs to have the resources and control necessary to actually complete the goals you’ve set for them. If they don’t, you’re just setting your team up for failure.

\n

Relevant 📈

\n

Any good performance goal should be aligned with the mission of the team, department, or overall organization. Otherwise, there is no point in pursuing it!

\n

Timely 📅

\n

It’s important that the performance goals you’re setting for your employees have a target completion date that is actually realistic. For example, setting a 10 year goal is not very motivating and expecting an employee to reach a huge goal overnight will only make them feel enormous amounts of pressure that can actually have a negative affect their performance.

\n\n

What are Objective Key Results?

\n

Objective Key Results, or OKRs, are yet another popular goal framework. OKRs are designed to connect company, team, and personal employee performance goals to measurable results.

\n

A large component of this goal framework is making sure everyone is clear about what is expected of them. For this reason, OKRs are supposed to be public. This way, all team members and leaders are aware of what others are working on, and can work together in one unified direction 👉 towards the same high-level organizational goals.

\n

Structure of OKRs

\n

The structure of OKRs are broken into two main components:

\n

\n
• Objectives 📋 OKRs consist of a list of 3-5 high level objectives on company, team, or personal levels.
  
  
\n
• Results 📈 Under each objective, you should define 3-5 measurable results. Each Key Result can be measured on a score of 0-100% or 0 to 1.
\n

\n

Implementing OKRs

\n

OKRs are typically part of the quarterly planning process, but some companies will also set annual or monthly OKRs. A major advantage of OKRs is that they are simple to use and do not take much time to implement. Oftentimes, it takes just a few hours each quarter to review OKRs for each employee in their performance review—although it’s a good idea to check in on them a little more regularly so you can keep up with each employee’s progress.

\n

Once defined, it’s important to communicate the OKRs you’ve set for each employee to the rest of the team, as well as leadership within the organization. Then, as your employees start working towards their objectives, they will update their result indicators regularly, preferably weekly. Remember to be flexible! 🧘 If the goals of your company, team, or employees change, then OKRs can be changed as well!

\n\n

Examples of Performance Goals

\n

Here are some examples of performance goals that may get your creative juices flowing as you’re working on goal setting for your own team.

\n

3 Examples of Performance Goals for Employees

\n

\n
1. Deliver five completed project designs to each client in March.
   
   
\n
2. Get together for a coffee date with a coworker from a different department each month to better understand how they contribute to the overall goals of the organization and brainstorm ideas to improve cross-departmental efficiency.
   
   
\n
3. Reduce negative customer satisfaction rate by 50%.
\n

\n

3 Examples of Performance Goals for Managers

\n

\n
1. Dedicate time to once a month to recognize the work of a top performer on your team by taking them to get a coffee or sending them an encouraging email.
   
   
\n
2. Create a document that outlines all the communication tools used across your team and distribute it to each member by the end of the month to ensure a strong understanding of them before the next quarter rolls around.
   
   
\n
3. Keep attrition on your team under 10% year-over-year.
\n

\n\n

Set—and Track—Better Performance Goals with Strety! 😍

\n

Setting better goals is just the first step. To hit your goals, you need the right systems in place to keep track of progress, celebrate high performers, and give helpful feedback.

\n

It's tough to see real progress if you're tracking goals in a spreadsheet. That's not designed for meaningful collaboration, which you need to keep people motivated.

\n

Strety's designed to help you ditch the chaos and uncertainty of managing people and setting employee goals. Strety has all the features you need to become a better manager together in one convenient place: Microsoft Teams.

\n

If you're already spending your workday inside Teams, shouldn't your goals live there, too?

\n

With Strety, you can set and track individual employee performance goals as well as overall business goals: right within Teams. You'll always know where each employee and your business as a whole stands. Whether you use Traction/EOS, OKRs, F.A.S.T Rocks in Pinnacle, or SMART goals, we can help you monitor them with ease, all on a system built to be intuitive and easy to use.

\n

Ready to gain access to the tools you need to set and track employee performance goals in a faster, simpler way? Contact us today! 📞

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