Imagine that you’re in a canoe, but everyone on it is rowing in different directions. Lacking an agreed-upon course, the canoe will inevitably end up spinning in circles, without making any progress forward.
Eric Marden likens the spinning canoe to working at a company where organizational goals are out of touch with employees’ aspirations.
“When everyone on a team is pushing in different directions, no one moves anywhere,” said Marden, who is director of software engineering at FATHOM5. “This is why it is vitally important that not only is the team aligned to the company’s goals but the company is aligned to the goals of its individuals.”
Marden was one of three leaders at Austin-based companies who discussed the importance of ensuring that company and team members’ goals are aligned. Managers emphasized the need to explicitly explain to employees how their daily work contributes to the overall mission and success of the company. They suggested that leaders maintain a clear vision and set aside time to personally connect and map goals with individuals on their teams.
Built In Austin connected with these three leaders to learn more about crafting a culture that nurtures professional growth and personal advancement while fueling organizational success.
At food retailer Whole Foods Market, Technology Services Executive Leader Billy Blackerby says team members are aligned to the company’s purpose to nourish people and the planet. Blackerby strives to show employees how their goals, work and success connect to fulfilling this mission and satisfying customers and stakeholders.
What are the best ways to create and maintain alignment between an individual’s expectations and the broader goals of the company?
At Whole Foods Market, our purpose is to nourish people and the planet, and our team members are deeply committed to this purpose through their contributions to the organization’s goals.
In my experience, the best way to maintain alignment between individuals and the company is to start with a foundation of shared fate. Shared fate starts with understanding what that fate will be. Company goals should connect to demonstrable value for the team. With a clear understanding of our value to customers, stakeholders and fellow team members, individuals can connect the dots from their work to their impact.
This involves the vital and tactical step of mapping broader company goals to individual and personal development goals. This mapping forms the flywheel that attracts and engages team members. Our team members drive profitability through goal completion, thus providing for their own prosperity.
Lastly, our leadership team has created principles that serve as guideposts for accomplishing our goals, as we always look to them for guidance along the way.
How can managers be proactive about preventing misalignment between individual and company goals?
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned working with Amazon is the usage of mechanisms. You start by building a tool that can be a process, a piece of software, a methodology or anything that provides the controls necessary to reach your goals. Then, you drive the adoption of that tool by leveraging our leadership principles. Lastly, you inspect as often as needed to validate that your mechanism is helping you attain your goals, then iterate and improve.
There is no set recurrence for inspection and adapting. In our ever-changing world, you don’t want to be locked in on a path that might impede your ability to reach a goal. I like to think of it as a train. You should lay track just in front of your train and only far enough out for your context.
Through constant vigilance of simple practices like aligning on the problem, agreeing to a way of working, measuring, inspecting and adapting, you won’t stop misalignment — but you can catch it before it gets too harmful. Along the way, you will almost always run into impediments, but by being intentional and driving the conversations through mechanisms, you can reduce the negative impacts.
There may be folks contributing to the same goal as you halfway around the world whom you never met, but you feel their impact as you all work toward the same shared fate.”
Why is it important to ensure individual and company goals remain aligned?
Our team members are empowered to succeed, and our leadership doesn’t micromanage. We focus our team’s progress toward goal completion and achieving desired business outcomes. Through goal adoption, disparate and disconnected business units can move toward the same output without being slowed by logistics. There may be folks contributing to the same goal as you halfway around the world whom you never met, but you feel their impact as you all work toward the same shared fate.
With an eye toward frugality, our leadership has to make choices on where to invest, which tends to focus on areas that achieve company goals. Resourcefulness is necessary in our world, but investment sure does support invention! Deliver for your stakeholders, and you will be given more opportunities to deliver.
Let us not forget the most important aspect of goal alignment — motivation! Standing back after a job well done and seeing the success, pats on the back, handshakes, hugs and satisfied customers make me happy. I like being happy, so I get up again the next day and return to working toward those goals.
Leaders at Optiver, a proprietary trading firm, begin with hiring people whose values align with their company’s mission. From there, Head of Options Trading Technology Andrew Hankins is intentional about conveying to his team members how their work is valuable and integral to the fintech company’s success.
What are the best ways to create and maintain alignment between an individual’s expectations and the broader goals of the company?
It starts with hiring people who have an affinity for the objectives of the firm. If there is a cultural mismatch from the beginning, it is very difficult to ever achieve alignment.
It’s also integral that employees perceive their work as essential to the success of the firm. Whether it be through day-to-day programming or future planning, I work hard to ensure team members understand their value, both at an individual and corporate level. Individuals see that the firm’s success is also their success, which creates alignment that is beneficial to both parties.
How can managers be proactive about preventing misalignment between individual and company goals?
To prevent misalignment from developing, leaders should maintain a vision for the firm and practice explaining and sculpting that vision for each individual. That way, everyone can clearly see how their work contributes to the bigger picture.
Why is it important to ensure individual and company goals remain aligned?
Aligning an individual’s goals with the firm’s goals helps to give that individual’s work real purpose. It is this alignment that provides our people with the drive, passion and clear sense of direction that are so critical for our success.
At FATHOM5, an industrial technology company focused on the maritime sector, Director of Software Engineering Eric Marden emphasized the importance of getting to know your teammates as people, setting aside time for frequent check-ins and following through on managerial promises.
What are the best ways to create and maintain alignment between an individual’s expectations and the broader goals of the company?
In my experience, the best way to learn about your teammates’ individual goals is to sit down and talk with them. Get to know them as people, not just as employees or co-workers. It is important that we keep track of our teammates’ goals, both inside and outside of the company, and do our best to provide the necessary support and resources for our teammates to accomplish their goals.
Objectives and key results are a goal-setting strategy that we use to track goals across the organization. On our team, we encourage new hires to view the OKRs of their project leads and teammates, and then use them as a starting point for setting goals for their first 90 days at the company.
With the help of a peer mentor, new hires set three large objectives and a handful of key results that will aid in the realization of the overarching objectives. This gives new hires a jumping-off point to guide them as they settle into their new role at Fathom5.
OKRs aren’t limited to professional goals. We encourage our staff to include personal goals in their OKRs, as well.
How can managers be proactive about preventing misalignment between individual and company goals?
Do what you say you’re going to do, always circling back to the promises you’ve made. If you promise a teammate that they will be trained on a process they are unfamiliar with, set time aside to sit with that teammate and provide them with the promised resources.
Sometimes, when you’re caught up in a project, it can be easy to forget about the interpersonal promises that you’ve made to your staff. Allowing these unfulfilled promises to stack up can lead to employees losing faith in the company.
Frequent check-ins with your teammates are a great way to get a sense of people’s goals as they change and evolve over time. This also ensures that the team is tightly aligned to its project goals, while helping teammates track progress on their individual trajectories.
Is vitally important that not only is the team aligned to the company’s goals, but that the company is aligned to the goals of its individuals.”
Why is it important to ensure individual and company goals remain aligned?
Picture yourself in a canoe. There are three other people rowing with you, but everyone is rowing in different directions and no one is communicating. All you’re going to do is spin in circles. When everyone on a team is pushing in different directions, no one moves anywhere.
This is why it is vitally important that not only is the team aligned to the company’s goals, but that the company is aligned to the goals of its individuals. People who trust their teammates and love their work are generally happier and more productive when they come into the office, so making employee happiness a priority has huge payoffs in project execution.
Truly caring about your teammates means caring about their success as individuals as much as the success of the team as a whole. It is important for managers to understand that your employees are there by choice. We need to ask ourselves what we are doing to make our employees choose this place every day.
Make sure that the needs of your staff are not just being heard, but also taken care of. This could mean offering on-the-job training, coordinating with HR to provide comprehensive benefits or even just lending a listening ear.
