Goals, why?
hi friend,
If you are reading this you are probably one of my mentees or team members. I talk a lot about goals at work but I don’t always have time to explain why goals have been so pivotal for me, sometimes having a little context helps.
I was introduced to the goal process I will explain when I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up and was new in this career. I was also a little …jaded, bitter, disgusted, insert cultural word of the moment for cynical. In previous jobs, I approached goals like an eager puppy, ready to take on anything my leader wanted and move mountains to achieve it. But at the end of the year, I often found my leadership dismissive of my efforts—or worse, received a negative rating because I didn’t fully accomplish the goal. In fact after the first year, I was encouraged to put generic goals that were easy to accomplish so they don’t count against me. At the time I felt the loss of something but I also couldn’t counter the logic.
In hindsight, the loss was what I struggled with NOT having goals.
My performance was tied to praise. If people said I was doing well, I assumed I was. If not, I worked harder, constantly comparing myself to others and feeling pressured to take on more.
I felt powerless over my performance review. It depended on what my leader remembered. Bringing up accomplishments felt like bragging; disagreeing felt like complaining. I avoided discussing my failures because I was hoping they would conveniently forget them.
Although the goal process provides this now, I find I keep going back to using goals because it helps me reflect and course correct in becoming the person/leader I want to become. It also helps in determining what my path forward looks like. This is what I wish for you as you read this story. The transition from checking a box to a tool that you can leverage.
Storytime
I never thought much about leadership until I came across a great leader. Her name was Jen and she was a short, fiery, woman of discernment with glasses and bluntly cut blonde hair. I met her when I interviewed and when offered the options of teams to join, I chose her team. I had a good feeling about her, it was that simple. She seemed as if she would take care of me and since I came from an environment where the theme was “prove to me why I should hire you”, this approach was intriguing. Little did I know, I joined a team that was underperforming and was on the docket to get cut within 6 months. Jen had just taken over the team and within 9 months under her leadership we went from being the embarrassed team to the team that patented a new effective way for non-security teams to evaluate their security posture. Goals were the first thing she taught me, so that’s where we will start.
During one of our one-on-ones Jen asked, “what are your goals for the year?”. I strongly dislike this question. Every company asks this question yet experience and cooler talk (casual talk around the office) typically confirms that the only goals a company really cares about are the ones tied to the yearly bonus. I sighed and responded, “What goals should I have?”.
Jen’s eyebrows drew together slightly confused, “…well, what kind of work do you want to do this year?”. There was a bit of conversation on this where it was mostly me prattling off what I thought she wanted to hear and her asking variations of the same question, “What else interests you?”. Looking back I should have just been honest with her and saved us both time. FYI, when a leader asks you a question like this, that’s the opportunity to self reflect and figure out what you really want with that leader. I can’t blame a leader for not helping me achieve my dreams if I never told them my dream in the first place.
30m later, I quietly mentioned what I really wanted, to be an offensive engineer, hacker, red teamer, anything to be like my heroines in the movies (AKA Acid Burn in Hackers). The moment it was out of my mouth Jen declared loudly, “that! That’s your goal!!!”. I was confused, goals had to do with company metrics distributed on powerpoint slides, I said as much. She shrugged and smiled, “they do”.
Seeing my confusion she explained, “real goals are a combination of personal goals and company goals. As an employee, we need to know the work we are doing makes a difference for the company, that’s where the company's goals come in. As an individual, I need to know I am growing in the direction I want to grow, which is where the personal goals come in. These should be combined rather than separated.” I sat there stunned. I’ve seen books talk about this, tv shows, movies, but never in real life.
We discussed my goal objectively, I was a software developer on her team yet I wanted to grow into an entirely different role. There were no slots for an offensive engineer on her team, there were no openings on any of the offensive teams at the company, and we both knew it. Telling a leader you didn’t actually want to do the role you were hired for on their team was not my brightest moment but pay attention to how she handled that.
I asked her, “aren’t you mad that I am looking to leave your team? You just hired me and now I’m telling you this is what I don’t want to do.” She nodded solemnly, “no one stays forever. If you are still with the company, it’s still a win. However, it’s not like you can just jump to another team. You do not have the skill sets for that role yet. If becoming an offensive engineer is really your goal, you have to work towards it while being successful on my team. We can tailor the work to help reinforce skills you will need for that role but at the end of the day, I need you to do your job. By doing your job well, you’ll gain a good reputation which will make it easier to move you on to that team in the future.”
Our discussion had an entirely different tone after that. I was invested, involved, and fully engaged. Going forward, the work I would do needed to satisfy one of two needs, build a skill or build my reputation. “Now that I know what you want”, Jen smiled, “lets go over the overall picture of what I need this team to accomplish and figure out where you best fit in…” We had a very vulnerable and transparent conversation after that. We discussed the obstacles we faced as a team, my current abilities, and what I needed to demonstrate as an engineer if I wanted to get promoted. I was a new engineer but we needed to figure out where I could leverage my current skills while developing my new skills. We scoped the options of what I could work on to a subset of tasks. She gave me homework, research the skills I needed for each task and then let her know the task that would be the most interesting and align to my goals.
Later that month, our team held an all day meeting to figure out our overall team goals and map out the coming year. Over the course of the day we agreed on what we wanted to accomplish, worked backwards to breakdown the work, created a timeline for the next 3 and 6 months, added benchmarks, then identified roles and responsibilities. We even balanced who could provide mentorship at different phases for specific work. We were shocked at how easy it was to map out the first 6 months while alinging the project’s goals to our personal goals. Later over lunch that day, I found out Jen had the same one-on-one about goals with each member of the team. She had helped each one of us to identify our true personal goals, coach us on how to blend them in with the project, and then have us research what we needed to learn to complete the task. Looking back it was a lot of orchestration on her part but effective. it resulted in an underdog team becoming the jewel of our departments eyes and accomplished something really special. A non-painful way to implement security in non-security oriented teams.
“What are your goals for this year?” This is not just a question, it’s an invitation.
Getting Started
Get a journal. I have learned to enjoy journaling. It forces my thoughts to slow down to a manageable stream so I can write them. I use a dedicated journal when I’m working through my goals, primarily because trying to find an inventory you wrote four months ago is time consuming.
Treat each blog post like it’s a worksheet.
Block off time. 1 hour per blog post. Turn the phone on DoNotDisturb. Do not plan anything directly before or after the hour.
If I’m leading the session. Have a whiteboard or Document open that we can both write in. We will treat this as our whiteboard as we talk.
If you are doing this on your own. Give yourself 15m grace, we have a lot of errant thoughts when we finally sit and try to think through something. Then answer the questions from the post. Let the words flow. Don’t worry about editing them, just write. You can review and identify patterns at the end.
Goals Process overview
Here is the process that I use for those I lead. I’ll probably ask you to look at these before we meet. This process requires a lot of reflection. After all, it’s really about being intentional with how you show up at work and figuring out what you want to do next. You are the only person that can answer these questions.
Personal Brand - What are my values? What does a good employee, a team member, or a leader look like?
Writing Goals - Combining personal and corporate goals into words
Tracking Goals - Setting up benchmarks, monthly/quarterly inventories, and identifying pivot points (not every goal is worth keeping)
Feedback Loops - Having hard conversations with accountability on both ends
