Go ahead and write that memo. Make that deck. Put together an ambitious plan, with lots of specific goals, and multiple ways to measure success.
But don’t lose sight of the ultimate mission. So many big plans get derailed because teams don’t know what they’re actually trying to achieve. Your organization may exist to inform or serve your community, or to better connect groups of people, or to make life simpler for your users. Think about your office for a moment: What’s your larger purpose? It sounds cheesy, but every organization should have a mission statement, and everything you do should be in service of that mission.
Now, individual teams are going to to have their own objectives, and will be using several different metrics to measure up against those goals. (At a news organization, like where I work, the editorial, sales, and HR teams all have very different goals, and we’re setting new goals a few times per year.) But where organizations get in trouble is when their teams lose sight of that overarching mission. Teams often make decisions — taking on a new opportunity to make a bit more money, or to add a few more users, or to partner with a third party — that ultimately compromises their ability to serve that larger mission.
Just remember: The plan can be complicated, the way you measure it may complex, and the goals of individual teams may be ambitious. But everything you do needs to be service of that ultimate mission.
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