Implementing the Thematic Goal Process

The Thematic Goal process is, as we discussed here, a process for creating a rallying cry to give everyone focus on the single most important thing in your business, right now. It's executed by using Supporting Objectives with Lead measures that we discussed in our last post, here. Once you have your lead measures then, it's time to get into action.

This means that every person in the organisation is crystal clear about what the objectives are, more importantly WHY they are the objectives and WHAT they need to do. Now the organisation knows Why and What, we need to add the HOW. (This structure again is important, if you haven't read Simon Sinek's Start with Why I urge you to do so!)

Getting the Why & the What 

 Your Thematic Goal, your WHY, is developed generally by the Exec team or if you are doing this at a Department level by the top 4 or 5 team members, no more. Getting the goal can be messing, should be messy, you need to go back & forth around the table passionately arguing the about what will make the biggest improvement in the business right now, what's the 1 thing if you fixed it now would boost the company? That boost may not be financial, it may be cultural so don't get tied into looking for instant dollar signs. The process is similar for the What, the Supporting Objectives and here you just need to focus on the top level area's to hit, don't do detail, we need everyone else involved there, we covered the supporting objective pretty well in the last post so I won't go too much further.

It can be good to have a facilitator run this session to really pull out the thinking and mine for conflict to get the final result.

The How is 100% interactive

The HOW is the really exciting bit because every single person in the organisation becomes involved

1. Assign people to teams to focus on each of the Supporting objectives with a goal of really understanding what the LEAD Measures for these areas are.
   
2. Fill the teams with a range of people at all levels of the organisation from a range of disciplines, this sets up the ability to avoid group think.
   
3. Then give the teams the encouragement, the permission and the expectation that they need to challenge each other's idea's.
   

From each team you need a progress chart on how they are moving towards the goal, don't make it a flash power point or excel graph, have them get a big bit of A1 paper and draw something that is important to them. The teams will be responsible for keeping it up to date each week, it doesn't matter if it's a guy climbing a mountain, a bus driving a hill or a bar chart made of crème buns, they will own it. Each week the team gets together to review their progress, make commitments to each other on what they are going to do next to improve the lead measure performance, document it and update the chart.

On a regular basis, maybe every 3 or 4 weeks have the teams present their progress & plans to all other teams & the exec team. Make it a fun event, shout pizza's or cakes and celebrate every win!

Concentration of Power

Once again, think about the clarity & alignment that this process can offer your organisation, when you bring the entire might of your company onto solving one problem, how can you not succeed! 

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You can also call John on 0211649739 to set up a meeting