(Part 1 of a series)

“We tried a strategy once. It didn’t work. We aren’t going to do that again.”

The partner of a company told me this. Then he began describing, without recognizing it, his preferred strategy for moving forward. As he did so, I could see why it didn’t work.

Most leaders understand, at a gut level if nowhere else, the value of having a guiding strategy and goals. Even if they use other language to describe it. What many struggle with is making strategy work.

The reason leaders often say “strategy doesn’t work” is because they didn’t know how to translate it into operational reality.

The solution is in understanding the principles behind successful strategy implementation.

Many leaders assume at least one of two things.

First, they assume everyone understands the goal, even if it has never been clearly communicated.

Second, they assume that if high-level strategic goals exist, people will naturally know how to roll them out in an aligned way throughout the entire organization.

Rarely is either true.

A high-level goal by itself does not create alignment. It has to be broken down so that everyone either knows, specifically, how to contribute to the goal or how to support those who are directly contributing.

Then there needs to be regular accountability to ensure progress and address challenges early.

The solution, in most cases, is creating a structure and a set of practices that push your strategy and resulting goals through the entire company. This way, everyone pulls together.

This concept is a set of principles called management by objectives. If you commit to practicing them, you’ll find the steady traction you are looking for.

Managing by Objectives

The term “management by objectives” was coined by Peter Drucker in his book The Practice of Management back in 1954. It elucidates these core principles:

Focus on results, not activities: Evaluate based on outcomes, not on inputs such as how busy people are, how many hours are worked, or how much responsibility they carry.

Align objectives toward organizational goals and strategy: Company-wide goals waterfall down to departmental, team, and individual objectives. Everyone contributes to at least one objective. Attention is paid to potential misalignment in incentives or approaches.

Set goals together: Managers and subordinates develop their contribution toward goals together, based on the higher-level goals. This creates buy-in and taps their knowledge and experience.

All goals should be clear and measurable: SMART goals are a useful framework. Whether you use SMART or another framework, good goals are easily measurable, have a clear owner, and a deadline.

Autonomy in means, responsibility for results: Leaders and teams have flexibility in pursuit of their goals. But they do have to report back for results. Clearly defined values and policies help provide appropriate guardrails.

Continuous tracking and constructive accountability: Scheduled regular tracking of progress. Have real conversations about challenges or stalls.

Future-oriented performance management: Marshall Goldsmith uses the term “feedforward.” Emphasize, “Here’s what to keep doing,” or “Here’s what to try next time,” as opposed to only focusing on what went well or poorly last time.

Management by objectives is not mainly about writing better goals. It is about using goals to make management easier and more aligned. This allows managers not to always have to put out fires and instead focus on ensuring alignment with high-level expectations about deadlines, standards, and values.

How this helps

Imagine wrestling with the question of whether or not to let employees work virtually from home. Many of you don’t need to imagine this.

Leaders ask, “How do I know if they are really working?”

The answer: It doesn’t matter. What matters is whether they are accomplishing what you asked them to accomplish, to the expected standards, in the timeframe you wanted.¹

Maybe the issue isn’t working from home. Maybe you want to expand geographically. Or maybe you are growing enough to need separate departments or additional layers of management.

The core concept is this: manage your team, your entire company in fact, by structuring strategic direction so you can clearly evaluate whether people are accomplishing what you asked them to accomplish, to the expected standards, in the timeframe you wanted.

A company can have motivated people and still fail to gain traction because it has not meshed the gears of higher-level strategy and street-level operational and administrative decisions.

Where this gets tricky

The devil, as they say, is in the details. The tricky parts of making this work are addressed in the seven principles above.

Here’s what often happens instead.

1. Focus on inputs, not outcomes

We say, “All management needs to attend a leadership training.”

That’s an input. It may or may not produce what you wanted the training to accomplish.

Versus: “Build a team that provides two layers of competent redundancy for each senior leadership or key technical role within the next 12 months.”

That is what you want. There might be more than one way to get there. Training may or may not be part of it.

Most strategic plans define inputs, not outcomes. People are busy. But not productive.

2. Goals are misaligned across the company and not directed toward the strategy

Some companies err by thinking that once a high-level goal exists, everyone understands it and how to harmoniously contribute toward it. In reality, many prioritize some goals and not others. Or are they incentivized to pursue goals in a way that diminishes support for each other?

In other cases, leadership is passive and asks their managers to create their own goals, which are fed up to shape the strategy. Kind of like creating a recipe out of whatever is left in the fridge.

Without a unifying sense of direction and strategy, goals are often not aligned, do not support each other, and may even be at cross purposes.

3. Goals are dictated, not built together

This is the “get buy-in” step. Many leaders skip it for expediency or lack of trust and just issue directives.

There are two prices you pay for skipping this.

First, reduced or no buy-in. It always feels like “corporate’s goals” or “the boss’s goals,” not “our goals.”

Second, you miss out on your team’s knowledge and situational awareness. You lose their input about what can be accomplished, how quickly, and what it will actually take.

There is a place for directives, especially when it comes to the highest-level strategy and goals. But it is usually more productive to let teams determine how they will contribute toward higher-level goals, and sometimes even what that contribution will be.

They typically have a better sense of their capacity and real-world circumstances.

4. Goals are vague, and success isn’t defined

Examples of goals that are commonly set: “We want to be best-in-class” and “We want to be the best place to work.”

They sound great and aspirational. But there is no collectively agreed-on target. It becomes nearly impossible to track progress, evaluate success, or align effort.

The solution is not to remove aspiration. Instead, define it.

For example:

Best in class: Reach top-quartile performance among regional peers on gross margin and on-time delivery by Q4 2027.

Best place to work: Achieve “Best Places to Work” recognition in our market by 2028.

Aspirational language is not the problem. Undefined aspiration is.

5. Managing too closely, providing too much direction

Instead, hold onto this concept: As much as possible – allow autonomy in means, require accountability for results.

Provide less direction for how to do it and more direction for outcomes and standards.

The closer to the front line and entry-level positions you are, the more direction is usually needed because you are teaching standards. The further you move up or the more trained someone is – usually the less direction they need.

The more your people have internalized expectations and standards, the more autonomy can be given.

6. Not keeping people accountable to progress or results

Imagine sending your very independent daughter to college 1,000 miles away, and she wants to drive there alone.

That makes you nervous. But you know she needs to make adult choices, and you know she needs support.

So you agree to check in each evening at 5 p.m. Together, you estimate how long the trip should take and where she should be at the end of each day. If progress changes, the next day’s target can change too.

This way, you do not have to track her phone, make her call every two hours, or drive with her. Instead, you know the expected pace, the daily checkpoints, and when she should arrive.

How this applies to your team: Define who is responsible for overseeing success, how long the goals will likely take, major destination points along the way, and the time frames they should be achieved. Then, importantly, set a regular schedule to check in on progress and keep to it.

If they fall behind or are off track, you can discuss problem-solving or adjust expectations early, before the problem gets too big.

When managers skip regular accountability, small problems emerge and grow. Progress nearly always stops.

The most likely thing to happen is inaction. People get sucked into firefighting and stop working toward goals.

The second thing that happens is that the most driven people start creating their own direction, which may not be the intended one.

If these people are not the leaders, the organization becomes misaligned. Silos get built. Teams begin working at cross purposes, often with the best of intentions.

7. Fixating on yesterday instead of paying attention to tomorrow

“Boss, what did you think about the project I completed?”

“It was good. Thanks.”

Or, (worse) “Could have been better.”

Feedback can be interesting, but it is rarely given well and often not very valuable simply because the recipient does not know what to do with it or how to apply it to future work.

What is far more valuable is to suggest a direction that can be used tomorrow:

“Here is what you do really well and what I hope to continue to see more of in the current project.”

Or:

“This is what created an issue before, and here is my suggestion to avoid that in the current project.”

That is the value of future-oriented performance management. It gives people something useful to do next, not just something to think about from the past.

Final thought

Most leaders do not fail because they do not care about goals. They fail because they assume that once a goal exists, everyone understands it and/or knows how to contribute toward it.

They don’t.

Management by objectives is the discipline of translating strategy into operational reality. Once you figure it out, management begins to feel easy.

But if that translation does not happen, you are spinning your wheels with inaction, misalignment, or both.

Understanding the principles I’ve described here is one thing.

In Part 2 (the next article), I’ll address the subsequent challenge: How to structure objectives so they actually cascade through the organization without creating confusion, silos, or cross purposes. This is where you gain traction.

Stay tuned.

Take good care,

Christian