Goal setting overview

Goal setting overview

Types of goals

Goals exist at every scale in most organizations, from company-wide strategic plans to an individual employee’s objectives. We’ve broken goals down into these categories: Organizational, Departmental, Team, and Individual.

Organizational goals

Organizational goals are usually broad objectives that can’t be completed by one single person and will require contributions from employees across the organization. An example of an organizational goal might be to “Increase revenue by 50%” or “Establish a new company-wide review cycle system.” Like all goals, organizational goals have owners who are accountable for tracking progress and delivering results, but the owner of an organizational goal probably won’t be responsible for completing it single-handedly.

Departmental goals

Departmental goals have a narrower scope than organizational goals, but still require teamwork across a department to complete. Departmental goals are used to keep track of a single department’s contribution to larger organizational objectives; for example, a marketing department might have the goals “Source 100 qualified leads this month” or “Choose an external marketing agency to work with.” The owners of departmental goals are usually the people in the department who are chiefly responsible for achieving the goal.

Team goals

Teams within a department can use team goals to track progress on goals that require the contribution of more than one person but not the entire department. For example, the Demand Generation team within the Marketing department can set and track team goals. Usually the team lead is responsible for achieving the goal.

Individual goals

Individual goals are assigned to one person. The goal owner may work closely with other employees to accomplish the goal, but the responsibility of achieving the goal falls on the individual alone.

Navigating the Goals page

If your organization has a lot of goals, it can be overwhelming to find the one you’re looking for. We’ve separated the Goals page into three tabs to make it easier to navigate: My goals, All available goals, and Archived goals.

My goals

The My goals tab shows you every goal that you own. Goals that you’ve created for or assigned to others won’t be shown here.

All available goals

All available goals show you every goal that you have permission to view. This will include goals you own as well as any of your direct reports’ goals if you’re a manager. If you’re an admin, you’ll be able to see all goals created across your organization.

Archived goals

Archived goals show you every archived goal that you have permission to view. For more on archiving goals, check out our article on How to make changes to an existing goal.

Sorting goals

All of the goals under each grouping can be sorted by Goal name, Due date, Owner, Progress, and Status. Click each header to sort the goals.

Filtering goals

To filter goals, click the Filter button in the top right corner. You can filter goals by Status and Type. For details on goal statuses and types, check out our articles on How to update a goal's progress and How to create a goal.



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