[Tactic] Weekly Goal Setting

Governance
1

The purpose of this post is to share one tactic @Dylan, @puniaviision, @setoshi and myself have found useful for team coordination & effectiveness: Weekly goal setting & review.

The Coop has multiple teams of various sizes, formality, and focus working to produce impact for all Index Coop stakeholders. Effective coordination within teams is a cornerstone of collective success.

We have found weekly goal setting & review to be a simple & effective way to:

  1. Feel the achievement and progress we make each week
  2. Maintain alignment
  3. Coordinate more effectively
  4. Prioritize the right things
  5. Feel more in control; less reactive

For teams & folks already doing something similar - great, keep it up! This is not a suggestion for more meetings or additional reporting

For teams & folks who aren’t - this is food for thought if you are facing alignment, coordination, prioritization, reactivity, or “no feeling of progress” challenges.

How to do weekly goal setting & review

The “how to” is quite simple. It all comes down to making it a habit and sticking to it.

There are 3 pieces to this process:

  1. Recurring Weekly Meeting
  2. Daily Communication
  3. Tools

Recurring Weekly Meeting :spiral_notepad:

Review last week’s goals

  1. Which goals were achieved?
  2. What remains unfinished? Why? What needs to happen next to achieve the goal?

Determine next week’s goals

  1. What needs to happen next week to impact our objectives?
  2. What is important & urgent?
  3. Who owns what?

Daily Communication :phone:

Daily Standup (15 minutes max, or async)

  1. What are our top 3 priorities for the day?
  2. What blockers or questions do we need answered to make progress on priorities?

Async communication in chat

  1. Near constant amounts of “FYIs”, questions, updates to stay aligned & contextualized
  2. Often we only respond with a :+1: or “got it” but the context has been shared, and that’s what matters & makes a difference.

Tools :toolbox:

Ongoing Google Doc - To set and discuss weekly goals

Trello

  1. All goals are added from the Google Doc to a Trello board for tracking
  2. Throughout the week, update Trello
  3. When an goal is complete, it gets moved to a “Done this Week” column
  4. If a goal remains incomplete, it stays put and we talk about the status on the Weekly Meeting

Wrap

Wanna get a similar process rolling on your team but don’t know where to start? DM me and we’ll get rolling :man_dancing:

Not important or useful for you? Cool too :sunglasses:

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