We've already looked at Why Goal Setting is So Hard and Our Approach to Goal Setting, but we haven't revealed a trick that we use to wildly improve the quality and utility of our goals.

We call this trick Goal Lenses, and it is based on the intersection of concepts from empathy and innovation. The idea is, while developing goals and while executing on them, we are explicit about the lens we use. That lens is focused around the key benefactor of the goal and ensures that our goals are well aligned and impactful.

Our Lenses

In Peachy we support three distinct lenses:

• Professional - Focused on the growth and achievement of the individual above all else. When successful, the goal should resonate with peers in that they are privileged to work with such an impressive individual. We like to say this goal lives heavily on an individual's resume.
• Client - Focused on the needs of the client, usually in a way that the client will be amazed with the result and likely wouldn't have known to ask for it themselves. When successful, this goal brings the "wow" factor to the client and would show frequently in client satisfaction meetings or polls.
• Organization - Focused on the improvement of the entire organization. These goals are loved because their benefit multiplies across all team members. The idea is to deliver something that makes everybody's work easier, faster or more rewarding. The net benefit is that all members are constantly trying to raise the bar for each other in a very generative and authentic way.

Each Goal Cycle, we ideate and ultimately select a goal from each of these lenses. The net result is that we naturally end up with a refreshing breadth to our goals that are specifically focused to benefit the key areas of all small businesses (if you are a public company with a board of directors you are likely in the wrong place).

" common sense can be very uncommon when dealing with a small organization trying to balance many things "

The Benefit

The lenses themselves aren't revolutionary, they are actually just common sense. However, common sense can be very uncommon when dealing with a small organization trying to balance many things. This is why Peachy puts the entire process on autopilot, so that the diversity of goals is a side effect of goal automation rather than a manually managed (and forgotten) aspect of an already complex process.

What lenses are you using to ensure you have a full breadth of goals? We'd love to hear about them! And if you are ready to supercharge your organization's goal setting process then reach out and give Peachy a try.

Have thoughts of your own about this article? We'd love to hear from you! Drop us a line.

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