TSR #12: How to turn big ideas into little action
Translate strategic, high level goals to create tactical, tangible habits
4 minute read
What's in this newsletter:
The downside of the next big thing
How to break down goals
Creating alignment with leadership
Turning alignment into action
One actionable exercise for you and your team
The downside of the next big thing
The end of the year is coming, you have a performance review cycle around the corner, and you are planning for next year…
You’re likely going to be assigned some high level goals to work on with your team for next quarter.
The problem is that breaking down big goals into initiatives, projects, and tasks:
Takes time (and often doesn’t include teams on the ground)
Holds up your team (while they wait for the perfect plan)
Reduces agility (expectations often change as soon as you start anyway)
I’m not going to tell you that you need to change your yearly planning practices (although it’s worth taking a look).
But to buy yourself some planning time, you need to focus on quick wins and impactful work for your team.
How to break down goals
You have two major tasks when breaking down goals
Aligning with leadership
Turning ideas into practice
If you don’t align on the goal you’ll:
Not understand the why behind what you’re working on
Work on the wrong thing
Close yourself off to finding a better way
If you can’t turn ideas into practice you’ll:
Lose autonomy by relying on others to tell you what to do
Lose agency by not steering towards new opportunities
Focus on output over outcome
Creating alignment with leadership
Find the true why.
Most of the time you are assigned vague goals centered around output.
e.g. find new opportunities and offerings
Some of the time you are assigned clearer goals centered around outcome.
e.g. create 3 diverse income streams
Rarely you are assigned a specific goal centered around opportunity.
e.g. diversify our service and create a product to unlock X new audience
Your job is to uncover all three (output, outcome, opportunity), this is the true why.
Defining this will not only allow you to align with leadership but translate the goal to your team.
Stop playing telephone, start playing translator.
Turning alignment into action
Build concentric habits.
If you can translate the goal to your team, you can start building concentric habits.
Concentric habits are small practices that compound over time and contribute to a larger system.
For example if your goal is “find new opportunities and offerings”, your concentric habits could be:
Daily: Find new offerings to explore and add to a backlog
Weekly: Focus on one offering and conduct market research to assess opportunity
Monthly: Validate one idea and create business case
The key is finding the smallest practice that will yield results fast, then build on it.
What you want to answer:
What is the true why behind this goal?
What does this look like in practice for me? For my team?
How often should I be doing this?
With whom?
Concentric habits create impact fast and allow you to recalibrate early and often.
If leadership disagrees with your backlog you can catch it in days, not weeks or months.
One actionable exercise for you and your team
Make sure you know the high level goals or expectations for your team and share them out.
Each team member chooses 1 goal and explains why they feel it’s important to work on.
Encourage diverse perspectives but add the true why from the company’s perspective.
Discuss as a group:
What does this goal look like in practice?
How can we impact this goal on a daily basis?
How can that daily practice turn into a weekly practice? Monthly?
What can we document and try immediately?
Some extra considerations to discuss:
We vs me - What goals can individuals drive forward and which would be more impactful with a team effort?
Complex vs complicated - Which goals do we need clarity on and which do we need to coordinate?
Value alignment - Which goals align with your personal values? Why?
Try it out and let me know what you think.
