Cascading Your Objectives: 6 Tips to Align Your Team

Each manager, from the “big boss” down to the production foreman or the chief clerk, needs clearly spelled-out objectives.  Otherwise confusion can be guaranteed.  These objectives should lay out what performance the man’s own managerial unit is supposed to achieve.  They should lay out what contribution he and his unit are expected to make to help other units obtain their objectives.  Finally, they should spell out what contribution the manager can expect from other units toward the attainment of his own objectives.  Right from the start, in other words, emphasis should be on teamwork and team results.¹

Peter Drucker

Introduction

In my last article, we focused on one part of Drucker’s advice – the process of defining your objectives using the SMART method, aligning your objectives with the overall strategic goals of your company and with your boss, and identifying your unique contribution.  Today, I want to talk about how you communicate your objectives to your team and help them create their own objectives that are in alignment with yours. By cascading your objectives, you give your team a clearer understanding of the company’s goals and your organizational goals.  You also provide them with a framework for creating their own objectives.

In some companies, objectives are cascaded from the top down, starting with the CEO and the executive leadership.  If your organization does not do that, you can still start the process with your own team.  In either case, here are six tips to help make the process work for you. 

Tip #1 – Communicate the strategic goals. 

You’ll want to talk with your team about the overall strategic goals of the organization and illustrate the through-line, or connection, from those objectives to your boss, to you and to them. Doing this helps reinforce the idea that the work your team is doing directly impacts the overall goals of the company.  Continuing the thought from above, Peter Drucker put it this way:

These objectives should always derive from the goals of the business enterprise.  A statement of his own objectives based on those of the company and of the manufacturing department should be demanded even of the foreman on the assembly line.  The company may be so large as to make the distance between the individual foreman’s production and the company’s total output all but astronomical.  Yet the foreman must focus on the objectives and goals of the company and needs to define his results in terms of his unit’s contribution to the whole of which it is a part.²

Drucker used a manufacturing example to illustrate his point, but the idea is the same in any industry – no matter where you are in the organization, your objectives should support those of the company.

So have a discussion. Entertain questions. Help your team make the connections.  

Tip #2 – Cascade your objectives in a targeted manner 

Cascading your objectives doesn’t mean simply emailing your team a list of your objectives.  (I did that once. Big mistake!) It’s important to provide your team with a clear picture of your goals, but you need to describe them in context with your employees’ roles.  Providing them with the details from your work plan will give them an overall view.  This should be done in person, ideally as part of a team discussion with follow up in your individual 1-on-1 meetings.  

Communicating in this way will allow you to answer questions and direct your team members’ attention to items relevant to their individual work.  Your set of objectives will be broader in scope than that of most of your team members.  If you don’t provide some guidance, it’s possible that you’ll confuse people by showing them objectives that are outside their scope.   (That was the mistake I made.)

An exception would be cases where you want a team member to take on a “stretch goal” to gain new skills or experience.  In that scenario, you will be encouraging the person to expand their scope.

And, of course, there will be some items on your work plan that you will want to keep confidential – things related to helping people improve performance or dealing with other people issues.  

Tip #3 – Describe the target, not the path 

By making the connection from the overall objectives of the organization to your individual team member’s work, you give your people a clear idea of where you expect them to go as part of the organization. But don’t try to tell them how to get there.  It’s time for you to step back and allow each team member to create their own detailed objectives.  

Your responsibility is to make certain that they understand how to write SMART objectives.  You will also want to review their objectives and provide feedback in 1-on-1 meetings.

Tip #4 – Suggest, don’t mandate 

There will be times when you have to say to your team, “Here is the thing you need to do and the exact way you have to do it”.  But most people, me included, don’t like to be told what to do in absolute terms.  We like to have a sense of autonomy about our work.  I have found it helpful, whenever possible, to state directions as a suggestion for the team members to build on.  

This doesn’t mean that the work is optional.  You’re giving the individual the opportunity to “own” the objective, to make it theirs.  If they can take the suggestion, run with it, and build their own objective around it, they’ll have a much stronger sense of ownership and accountability for the desired results. 

This is true even if you are discussing serious performance improvement objectives. You can spell out the consequences for failure to change behavior, but it’s up to the individual to make a commitment to do it.  

Tip #5 – Consider shared objectives 

This is an approach that I used multiple times with teams I managed. It’s a case where you ask two or more people to have the same objective. There are several scenarios where this can be useful.

One is when there is an overall improvement goal for the team.  In this case, all team members may have the same objective in their work plan.  An example I used with a team several years ago was

Improve your awareness of information security and take specific actions to improve the security of applications in your area.

I left it with each individual to determine the specific steps to take.

Another scenario is when you want to encourage collaboration across the team.  This could be because a task is too large or complicated for one person.  You might also want to provide opportunities for people who don’t regularly work together to partner on a project.  

Shared objectives also give you the opportunity to pair people together for developmental purposes.  You might ask an experienced employee to work on a particular objective with a more junior employee, so that they both gain the benefit of their different experiences.  

Tip #6 – Insert some fun!  

Finally, I suggest you encourage your people to put an objective in their plan that’s just for fun. This could be a personal passion project. It could be a developmental effort or a stretch goal that allows them to learn something new.

Many companies have institutionalized these side projects and found that they can result in big benefits. 3M was one of the first. In 1948 they adopted their “15% program” that allowed employees to allocate up to 15% of their time to innovation. The Post-It note was invented during 15% time. Google is well known for allowing employees to devote one day per week, 20% of their time, to side projects. Gmail and Google Earth are two products that resulted from these projects.

Whatever it is, allow your folks to write an objective that carves out some of their time to pursue something that they’re particularly interested in. Hopefully, these will have a direct impact on your organization. But even if they don’t, your people will be more engaged and will be continually learning new skills that will benefit them, and you, in the long run.

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Footnotes

¹ Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York, Harper Colophon, 1985), p. 436.  This book was originally published in 1973. While I believe Drucker’s ideas remain relevant for any manager working today, I also recognize that his use of masculine pronouns – “the man’s own unit” – can seem out of touch with today’s environment. It is tempting to try to rewrite the phrases to make them more inclusive, but I continue to resist that temptation. I ask you to listen to the essential point that Drucker makes, and do whatever transposition you need to do in your own head. Feel free to disagree and call me out in the comments below.

² Ibid.