Two Types Of Goals Important To Succeed As A Leader

There are two types of goals that you need to set if you hope to get any level of success.

They both work together.

If you don't have one, you won't get the other.

What are these two types of goals, and how can we utilize them to get to the highest levels of achievement as Leaders?

The Two Types Of Goals

In order to get the highest levels of success, you need both of these types of goals:

➼ Outcome Based

First, you need to have an end goal that you are aiming toward.

If you don't know "where" you want to get to, there are an infinite amount of places you can end up that are nowhere near where you want to be.

Imagine you are a sailor, but have no idea where you are sailing to.

You simply take off.

If you aren't sure where you are headed, you are just as likely to end up in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle with no food, as on a desert island with only a coconut tree, as you are to end up somewhere with civilization.

If you want to achieve success, you need to define what that means in a way that you can point out and say, "That is where I'm headed!"

Having this Outcome Based Goal allows you to utilize the Goal as a North Star, define the path, and adjust as needed.

➼ Process Based

The other type of goal you will need is one that is defined by a process.

The goal needs to be something achievable, often and frequently.

Ideally, it needs to at LEAST be daily, if not multiple times per day.

These goals require work that is done, again and again, which leads "toward" the Outcome Based Goal.

For instance, if your Outcome Goal is to make $X in sales, then your Process Goal may be to make Y number of calls per day.

Whether the call succeeds or not is not the point, but if you make enough sales calls (to the right category of individuals), eventually it will lead to sales, which eventually leads to $X.

The process needs to be highlighted and celebrated as equally (if not MORE) important than the Outcome.

This is because the Outcome will never be achieved if the Process is never followed.

Basically, the Outcome without the Process is simply a Wish, one that will never come true.

How To Best Utilize Them As A Leader

Now, individually it makes sense why you need the two types of goals together.

An Outcome with no Process is a Wish.

A Process without an Outcome is Busy Work at best, and a lot of energy toward terrible things at worst.

However, as a Leader, you can take things further to drive higher Levels of Success.

You can tier these types of goals, and build processes within processes, outcomes within outcomes, that work cohesively which you can coordinate AS the Leader.

For Instance, say that your organization has a goal to achieve $X in this quarter.

You may need the following Process Goals from different departments:

• Sales = At Least $Y Sold
• AR = At Least $Z Collected
• AP = Under $A Spent
• Marketing = B Individuals Reached Through Channels
• Production = C Units Created
• Warehouse = D Units Moved

Now that you know those, the Overarching "Process Goals" become the "Outcome Goals" of each department, and each individual within these departments has their own, smaller "Process Goals".

You could grow or shrink this as needed to fit your organization.

However, in doing this, you do something else really powerful for your organization.

By clarifying how each process ties into another process, which ties into the organization's goal combined, you show people "why" their work is important!

If one team "misses" their Goal, it impacts every other team and what they need to do in order to achieve the End Goal.

It helps to create Buy In, as well as Accountability.

Doing this also allows you to find Bottlenecks within your organization that you can work on fixing by seeing how teams are, or are not, able to get to their individual Goals.

For instance - say Sales is CRUSHING their Goal!

However, customers end up waiting a long time to receive their purchase because Production can't seem to keep up with the high levels of sales!

This bottleneck may indicate to you that you need a new line in your production, or perhaps there are parts of the production process that can be streamlined better.

Or perhaps this becomes an indication that the Sales price is too low, and so you need Sales to increase the prices which will slow down overall orders while increasing total profit!

However, you wouldn't necessarily know this unless you saw how Sales Goals were directly impacting Productions Goals.

This is why it is so crucial to have both Outcome and Process Goals within organizations.