To summarize what we learned last time, culture is one of the most important factors driving group performance. And culture is basically the set of rules we make to solve problems and get things done. Let's look at one of the most important types of rules you make on a team, your goals. To make it simple, your goals are what your team is trying to accomplish. Goals answer to the question, why are we working together? It seems obvious, but you would be surprised at how many teams actually fail to really understand this. The problem a lot of leaders run into is they think it's enough to have an inspirational vision, like, we're going to be the best sales team in the company, or, we're going to make the best products for our customers. We do this because big, broad visions are exciting. They're compelling, they're a lot more interesting than a set of metrics or milestones. Having a motivating vision is important because it can create passion in your team. But if you don't connect your vision to reality with good specific goals, that passion is likely to fizzle out. Think of the example of John F Kennedy's vision that the US would be the first country to put a person on the Moon. We tend to focus on how exciting that idea was, without understanding all the hard work his administration had to do of hitting milestones along the way. They spent months working behind the scenes to get political support in Congress for funding the space program. They had to find the right person to serve as head of the Space Agency to fulfill JFK's promise. In other words, fulfilling the big vision of reaching the moon involved a lot of less exciting work to set and execute on the administration's smaller goals. How can you create goals that get results? Just remember these two acronyms. SMART and WITHEM. We'll get to WITHEM next time, for now let's just focus on what it means to set SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Your team is more likely to achieve your goals when they meet these five criteria. To understand each one, let's look at an example from my hometown team, the Golden State Warriors. In 2014, this basketball squad brought in a new coach named Steve Kerr, with the hopes of winning their first NBA championship in 40 years. Kerr shocked the players when, in their first practice, he had them doing simple passing drills that they hadn't seen since high school. His explanation was simple. He believed the Warriors were talented, but were underperforming, because they were making mistakes on the basic principles of good basketball skills. He told the team, if we just turn the ball over a few less times per game, we're going to win a championship. Now, notice that Kerr didn't only start with a big vision of winning a championship. That vision's important, but it's also a little too broad. Every team wants to win a championship, and there are a lot of different ways to do it. He focused instead on a simpler, more concrete goal, have fewer turnovers per game. If we look at the SMART criteria, we can see why this goal was so powerful. First, it was incredibly specific. This helped to focus the team on what really mattered, instead of overwhelming them with lots of different priorities. Kerr's himself said, it's better to do a few things well than a lot of things poorly. His goal was also measurable. He was aiming for a specific number of turnovers. When goals are measurable there is no confusion about whether your team has achieved them or not. This helps to keep everyone aligned on their progress. The goal was also achievable. That's just four or five plays per game, where the team would need to make a better pass, or maybe be a little bit more careful with the ball. It was also relevant. The Warriors were widely seen as a team with elite individual players who were losing too many games because of sloppy play. Turnovers are an important measure of how well a team controls the ball and makes good decisions. Lastly, the goal was timely. The team knew exactly when they would have to execute this goal, in games during the NBA season. At first the warriors were skeptical of this first-time coach coming in and having them practice skills that they thought they'd already mastered. But they gave Kerr the benefit of the doubt, and it paid off. They became known as one of the elite passing teams in the league. They lowered their turnovers and they ended up winning their first title in decades. As with the Warriors, teams that create SMART goals are better able to fulfill their big, ambitious visions. As you set goals on your own team, use the SMART criteria as a checklist and ask if your goals meet each one. Next, we'll talk about how to connect these collective team objectives to each person's individual objectives, by asking the WITHEM question.
