While most companies are deep in executing their strategic plans, this often means spending hours combing through spreadsheets, corralling data, and compiling insights to share with the team.
If you've been in that seat before, you know that these insights are often buried, but when found, they can turn clutter into clarity.
Over the past few years, we've helped hundreds of companies sift through the noise by highlighting parts of the plan that, if left unnoticed, can slowly creep up and create chaos. So we thought we'd highlight six "unhealthy" types of Objectives and provide ways to address them.
🍉 Watermelon Objectives! 🍉
Watermelons are "on-track" Objectives that appear green ✅ on the outside, yet underneath the surface, they’re red ❌.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
Watermelon Objectives create a false sense of success around your initiatives. They typically come to light at the end of a quarter when you’re uncovering why an Objective fell short. You know you're experiencing the “watermelon effect” when you're closing in on the quarter and all of the sudden the status of the Objective goes from a healthy green to a strong red and is usually too late to correct.
How to Smash Your Watermelons! 🍉🔨
Uncover your hidden watermelons by requiring a brief sentence explaining why the Objective is "on" or "off" track. If you’re finding a lot of watermelons, it could be stemming from an environment where leaders don’t feel comfortable asking for help. It’s important to convey that a “red” status is not a reflection of the individual or their performance, but a helpful signal for collective assistance.
🌴 Island Objectives! 🌴
Island Objectives are Objectives that exist on your plan but do not align with any of the main Themes.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
When evaluating the weight of your plan, it's crucial to identify areas diverting focus from the main Themes. Often, these Objectives encompass "keep the lights on" tasks or address urgent but not necessarily important work, detracting from your end goals.
How To Address Them:
Identify which Objectives are on an island and initiate an open dialogue about their importance. Consider whether these Objectives are essential to tackle right now or if they are distractions. In light of your year-end goals, determine if these Objectives should be justified as priorities.
👩👧👦 Babysitter Objectives! 👩👧👦
Babysitter Objectives are Objectives that have an overwhelming number of child Objectives.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
Having too many child Objectives (10 or more) makes it difficult to understand how each one is influencing the parent Objective. It complicates the Objective owner's ability to identify and manage risks, and it assumes that all child Objectives are equally weighted, which they are not.
How to Address Them:
First, understand what the true Objective is. Many times these Objectives stem from a lack of clarity about what you’re driving towards. Is the parent Objective actually a larger Theme in disguise?
From there, look into the child Objectives rolling into the parent. Are multiple Objectives owned by the same team or individual? Is the list of Objectives starting to look like a task list? Are there layers of connections missing? Oftentimes, there are many ways to consolidate and focus to ensure your team is driving towards what matters most.
🔢 Dashboard Objectives! 🔢
Dashboard Objectives are Objectives with too many Key Results connected to them, essentially making them a dashboard of metrics.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
When you have too many Outcomes or Key Results (5+) connected to an Objective, it becomes difficult to maintain focus on what’s important, causing a sense of analysis paralysis. It also makes it challenging to truly understand the real status of your Objective.
Having too many Outcomes makes it difficult for others not on your team to understand what the actual goal is and what you’re driving towards.
How to Address Them:
When an Objective has more than five Outcomes, ask yourself, “Is this what’s going to move the needle of the Objective?” By reducing the number to three, you’ll be forced to say what are the most important Outcomes and have better prioritization and focus. Those other metrics and leading indicators should certainly be tracked on a team dashboard, just not on the Objective itself.
Scarcity forces clarity.
👉 Spiderman Objectives! 👈
Spiderman Objectives are Objectives with 3+ owners. You’ve all seen the memes.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. Oftentimes, people want to add many owners to their Objective rather than selecting someone to be accountable for providing updates. When it’s time to give an update, everyone starts pointing fingers or fails to update the status because they think the other person will handle it.
How to Address Them:
Ensure roles and responsibilities are understood across the team. There can and should be many supporting actors helping to push an Objective across the line, but ensure everyone is aligned on the responsible/accountable owner. Identify a quarterback and don’t lose sight of the play.
✅ Output-Only Objectives! ✅
Output-Only Objectives are Objectives that have zero Outcomes and are only measured by Outputs.
Why They’re Unhealthy:
Our main focus is on accomplishing a task, project, or piece of work without being anchored to why it matters in the first place. When this happens, we can focus so much on progress toward the goal that we fail to see that we’re not moving the needle as intended. It looks like a success because we’ve completed 100% of the project, but we missed out on precious time to pivot because we didn’t realize we were missing the goalpost all along.
An example could be an Objective of a sales rep making 100 calls that failed to generate any new leads or business as intended, creating a false sense of success.
How to Address Them:
When creating an Objective that is not revenue-based, our natural instinct tends to focus on the things we want to do and accomplish, driven by the dopamine hit of crossing off that to-do list. We encourage you to ask yourself “why” five times to help get to the business impact you want to make. Once you have that, don’t ditch the Outputs, but rather marry them together to ensure you’re making progress towards, while keeping your eye on the prize.
