Working toward common goals helps create an overall sense of purpose and meaning within a team. Furthermore, it ensures everyone is on the same page.
A company's synergy is crucial to its growth and ability to collaborate. In the long run, internal synergy supports an organization run smoothly and sustaining itself. The best way to create synergy is to get the entire team on the same page. Essentially, all team members should have a clear understanding of the company's mission, vision, and values.
It is important to set common goals and align the team members to the goals to instill a sense of unity and keep them motivated towards the overall organizational objectives.
Setting common goals for success
Organizations are made up of teams of employees who have both personal and professional goals. For a smooth workflow, all employees should understand their role in the team, their responsibilities, and why they are required to do specific tasks. As a result, they'll understand where they fit into the big picture. Each employee should be aware of the roles of the remaining team members and how the different roles contribute to the success of the project.
Managers have to work with each employee to identify their specific goals on personal and professional levels. They should devise tasks and incentives in such a way that the overall organizational goal is completely aligned with the goals of each employee. As a result of this personal identification with the organizational goal, the employees will strive to make it happen. They must gain a clear picture of the business nature, the overall targets, their individual contribution towards the target, and how it translates to personal gain.
For example, if a company aims to achieve 30% growth every year, every employee should identify with the goal as their own. From top to bottom everyone must strongly desire to achieve the goal. Rather than consider it solely the responsibility of the management, they should feel a personal gain from working towards the goal.
Aligning shared goals at the organizational, team, and individual levels is critical for companies to remain successful. At the organizational level, there should be clear guidelines on the overall goals or targets and the high-level strategies to accomplish them. The teams of various departments need to be aligned with these organizational goals so as to achieve overall synergy to accomplish the objectives. When teams are not aligned, they may fail because they do not know how to prioritize such as a lack of a clear definition of what is important to the organization and what can be overlooked.
Coming to the individual alignment, it is imperative that each employee aligns with the company's goals so that they can perform at their best. As a result, the employees will be aware of how their actions affect business performance and also have a vision on how to channelize their efforts in the right manner.
How to define shared goals and align the employees?
A goal is a concise and clear statement of what you want to achieve. In order to align with the goals, your employees should have clarity about the company's goals and how they can contribute to achieving them. For any organization to be successful, each employee must identify his or her own gains with the common goal. Employees who are aligned with the company's objectives will be motivated to do their best, and meeting even the most difficult goals will be easier than expected.
It is imperative that managers actively engage in goal-setting practices on a regular basis. In addition, review and feedback should be collected on an ongoing basis and make amendments in accordance with the evolving business needs and employee performance.
You can set common goals for your organization by following the below best practices:
- Understand your desired business outcome - The first step is to clearly define your desired business outcome. You must take all aspects into account when defining the business outcome, such as projected growth, timelines, and strategies.
- Set specific goals that you want to achieve- The key thing to remember is that you should be able to clearly define your goal. What are the specific steps you wish to take?
- Find stakeholders who will assist you in reaching your goal - Stakeholders includes the company, the client, organizations, or any other entity that is involved in the process of accomplishing a goal.
- Establish accountability for all stakeholders -Organizations can improve their performance by applying the concept of accountability. To achieve the desired results, it is imperative that each stakeholder be held accountable. To do this, clearly define what is expected of each stakeholder. We also need to understand the stakeholders and their roles in the project.
- Implement a clear, concise, and measurable strategy to align these goals - Measurable strategies are essential if you want to reach your goals. By aligning these common goals with your measurable strategy, you will be more likely to achieve your objectives.
Final thoughts
If an employee doesn't understand where they fit in the organization or what their role is, it's easy for them to feel lost and disengaged. This can hamper their performance. Employees feel valued when they have a clear understanding of their role in the organization. When their goals are clearly aligned with the organizational goals, they can understand the impact of their actions and work to improve their performance.
Defining what success looks like for each individual and the team is a great start to creating a sense of shared purpose. By aligning the individual, team, and organizational goals, we can easily achieve even the toughest goals.