In many small companies the goals exist, but only in the owner's head. The team sees a stream of requests, each one urgent, and has no way to tell which ones matter most this quarter. The owner feels that people are busy and still nothing important moves.
A short list of goals, written down and reviewed on a fixed date, fixes most of this. It needs no special software and about two hours per quarter.
Why three
Three is a practical limit, not a magic number. A small team of five to fifteen people has a fixed amount of focused time, and daily work such as customers, orders and support already takes most of it. What is left over is enough for about three bigger things.
If you list six goals, people will pick the ones they like and the rest will be forgotten without anyone deciding so. Three goals force the decision at the start, when it is cheap, instead of in week eleven.
This is different from a one-page quarterly technology plan, which covers tools and systems, and from a quarterly content plan, which covers one channel. Team goals sit above both: they say what the company as a whole wants to be different by the end of the quarter, and the plans for tools or content are among the ways to get there.
How to choose them
Start with a 30-minute conversation with the people who run the main parts of the business, or with the whole team if it is small. Ask four questions:
- What went badly or slowly last quarter, and what did it cost?
- What is one thing that, if solved, would make the next three months easier?
- Is there a deadline or commitment (a customer, a season, a contract) that we must meet?
- What are we doing that we could stop?
From the answers, pick the three with the biggest effect. A useful filter is to cover different areas: for example one for customers or revenue, one for how the work runs inside the company, and one for people or capability. Three goals about sales is usually a sign that other problems are being ignored.
Do not choose goals that are simply the normal job. "Answer customers within a day" is a standard; keep it as a standard. A goal is a change: "Reduce the average answer time from three days to one."
How to write a goal
Each goal has three parts on one line each:
- The result: what will be true at the end of the quarter.
- The measure: one number, with where it is today and where it should be.
- The owner: one named person, who does not have to do all the work but is asked about it.
| Weak goal | Better goal |
|---|---|
| Improve invoicing | Invoices go out within two working days of delivery (today: seven). Owner: Anna |
| Do more marketing | Ten qualified enquiries from the website per month (today: four). Owner: Tomas |
| Better onboarding | New hires work alone on routine tasks by the end of week two (today: week five). Owner: Petra |
The examples are illustrative. Use your own numbers, and if you do not know today's figure, the first task of the quarter is to find it. A goal without a starting point cannot be reviewed.
If a measure is hard to find, choose a simple proxy you can count by hand, such as the number of late invoices in a month. A rough number that is checked beats a perfect number that is not.
Where to show them
Put the three goals on a single page, ideally one that people already see every week: the top of the team's shared document, the wall near the weekly meeting, or the first line of the weekly agenda. Include for each goal the measure, the current value and the owner.
Avoid creating a new tool for this. A goal page that nobody opens is the same as no goal page. The test is simple: ask any team member to name the goals. If they can name two of three, the system works.
Share the goals with the whole team, not only with managers. People make better daily choices when they know what the company is trying to achieve, and they can say "this request does not fit our goals this quarter" with the page to point to.
How to follow up during the quarter
Spend five minutes in the weekly meeting. For each goal the owner says the current value and one of three things: on track, at risk, or stuck and needs a decision. Nothing more. If a goal is stuck, the owner and the person who can unblock it agree a time to talk afterwards, outside the meeting.
Update the number on the goal page the same day. If you only update it at the end of the quarter, the page is a report, not a tool.
Be willing to change a goal in the middle of the quarter if reality changes: a key customer leaves, a supplier fails, a person is ill. Write the change on the page with the date and a reason. Silently dropping a goal teaches the team that the page does not matter.
The quarterly review
At the end of the quarter, book 45 minutes and go through this order:
- Results (15 minutes). For each goal: the starting number, the end number and whether the result was reached, partly reached or not reached.
- Reasons (15 minutes). For each goal that was not reached, ask what got in the way. Was the goal too big, were there other priorities, did the owner lack time or information? Write down one sentence per goal.
- Next quarter (15 minutes). Decide which goals continue, which end and what new ones are needed. Start the next page the same day, so there is no gap.
Do not use the review to blame. If people expect criticism they will choose easy goals and report generous numbers. A missed goal with a clear reason is useful; a hidden miss is not.
Common mistakes
- Too many goals. Four or five goals are a to-do list in disguise.
- Activities instead of results. "Run a campaign" can be done and change nothing; "ten enquiries per month" cannot be faked.
- No owner. A goal owned by "the team" is owned by nobody.
- Setting and forgetting. Goals written in January and read again in April are decoration.
- Using goals to judge individuals. Goals describe what the company needs. How people perform is a separate conversation.
Where AI can help, and where it should not
An AI assistant can help you prepare the review: turn rough notes from the weekly meetings into a one-page summary, point out goals that were mentioned as at risk several weeks in a row, or draft a first version of the next quarter's page for you to edit. It can also help you find a countable proxy for a measure you struggle to define.
It should not choose the goals for you. Which three things matter depends on customers, money and people that only you know. Check every number it summarises against the source, and do not paste confidential financial or personal data into a tool your company has not approved.
What to do this month
- Block 30 minutes for the goal conversation and ask the four questions above.
- Choose three goals, each with a result, a measure with today's value and a named owner.
- Put the page where the team looks every week and ask two people to name the goals.
- Add a five-minute goal check to the weekly meeting.
- Book the 45-minute review for the last week of the quarter now, before anything else fills the calendar.
Sources
- Google re:Work, Set goals with OKRs: a widely used guide to setting a small number of measurable goals and reviewing them regularly.
- GOV.UK, Business Support Helpline: free guidance for small businesses on planning and running the business.