In a time when work is more complex, global, and distributed than ever, your organization’s ability to clearly define and align teams to strategic initiatives has never been more important. Yet even with the latest cloud tools and technologies, the majority of teams are unclear about whether they’re working on the right projects to support company goals.
In a recent study of distributed workplace trends among over 6,000 knowledge workers, only 26% of employees have a very clear understanding of how their individual work relates to company goals and just 16% say their company is very effective at setting and communicating goals. This misalignment is often a symptom of siloed goal-setting methods—like tracking OKRs in spreadsheets and slides—that are disconnected from everyday work. As a result, teams spend countless hours pursuing well-intentioned projects that don’t move the needle on your company’s mission.
Today, Asana is bridging the gap between daily projects and processes and organizational impact with our new Goals feature. Goals is a flexible goal-tracking system that provides team leaders and executives with a single source of truth for setting, tracking, and managing company goals on the same platform where teams are executing work.
With Goals, aligning your teams around clear objectives and prioritizing the right work is easier than ever. Starting today, Business and Enterprise customers can create two types of Goals in Asana:
Company goals: Longer-term goals tied to the achievement of your organization’s mission.
Team goals: Shorter-term goals that ladder up to your company’s mission-oriented objectives.
In either case, Goals are visible to everyone so that individuals across every level of your organization have clarity on the company’s priorities at any given time. This also ensures that when changes occur, you won’t need to spend countless hours re-aligning and re-communicating priority initiatives. Instead you can revise goals and pivot your business instantly to pursue high-value work.
No matter what goal-setting framework you use, managing your goals and supporting work on the same platform means you can create a clear connection between the two. This allows you to prioritize the right work and see exactly when and where initiatives are at risk, before it’s too late. With Asana, you can link Goals to projects and Portfolios for real-time visibility into progress. Goals are also visible and accessible within the progress tab of individual projects and Portfolios, so you can get a bird’s-eye view of how teams are progressing on strategic initiatives.
Looking for goal-setting best practices and ideas? Download a digital copy of our Asana Playbook to OKRs to start making a bigger impact today.
Research shows that when teams have clarity on how they contribute to company objectives, their engagement at work doubles. With Goals, every team member on every team can see how work contributes to top-level goals, why certain work is being prioritized, and ultimately what impact that work has on your company’s mission. Team leaders can also recognize the work of individual contributors more easily and help them meet goals more often by course-correcting work before it falls off track. This creates an empowering sense of purpose for teams, motivating them to do their best work so they can achieve more ambitious goals.
For more tips on using Goals to drive alignment across your business, visit the Asana Guide.
When teams have clarity on their company’s mission, objectives, and how their work contributes to achieving both, there’s no telling what they can accomplish. See for yourself how setting, tracking, and managing Goals with Asana can make a difference for your organization. Request a demo or sign up for a free Business trial to get started today.