Goals & Objectives

Defining key goals, objectives and outcomes

Keeping your vision and mission in mind, it's time to define your goals, objectives, and outcomes. Where are you going? What are you trying to achieve? What are the business challenges? How will you get there? What milestones and major initiatives need to be accomplished to drive your digital transformation forward?  

Playbook chapters

Starting with input from your key stakeholders

Identify goals and objectives based on the needs of your key stakeholders. Have conversations with stakeholders to clearly understand their needs and wants when it comes to the digital workplace. You can choose to conduct one-on-one conversations, interviews, or surveys to gather the input you need. 

Some important considerations for stakeholder input include:

  • What is the stakeholder's impact level/influence level/interest level?
  • What level of support does, or will, the stakeholder provide to the digital workplace transformation project? 
  • What level of involvement does, or will, the stakeholder have in the project (passive, active, etc.)?
  • What are the reasons for stakeholder resistance or support?
  • What action(s) are required to address this stakeholder group to get useful and valuable input? 
  • Who will be your main point of contact for this stakeholder group?
  • How will your outreach to stakeholders align with your communication strategy?

Once you have gathered input for key stakeholders, compare their feedback and find common goals and objectives that will provide the greatest value and impact. 

What is the difference between KPIs, objectives and goals?

  • KPI: the specific business challenge you are trying to solve in your digital workplace. 
  • Objectives:  broad statements of what you want to achieve focused on a specific KPI. 
  • Goals: where you want to be within a specific time frame. Must be measurable.

Prioritizing your goals and objectives

Remember, your goals and objectives should ultimately link back to your mission and vision. Sorting through your list of needs and wants can be a large task. It's best to start by finding commonalities, sorting your information into more cohesive high-level themes that will provide you with a strong foundation to start defining your goals and objectives. 

One option is to concentrate on the four key business challenges as your high-level themes to relate your goals and objectives to: 

  • Communication
  • Collaboration
  • Knowledge management
  • Culture

PlaybookTip_Icon.png Playbook Tip: Build themes to create your goals and objectives

Start a card sorting activity to discover the high-level themes that apply to multiple stakeholder groups. Follow the steps below and give it a try yourself: 

  1. Write key insights, needs, and wants from stakeholders on sticky notes (one insight/need/want per sticky note). 
  2. Place all your sticky notes on a wall.
  3. Start grouping similar insights, needs, and wants together on the wall, forming groups of sticky notes. 
  4. After grouping together your sticky notes, take a step back and look at the groups you've created. 
  5. Consider the theme of each group and put a name to that theme.
  6. These groups will be the high-level themes you should keep top-of-mind when defining your goals and objectives.
NEtips

Networked Enterprise Tip: Identify and engage stakeholders of the entire networked enterprise  

Defining the goals and objectives for your networked enterprise involves understanding the unique use cases of your spokes and the overarching purpose of your hub. To accurately define these goals and objectives, it’s vital to include all key stakeholders in the planning stage, including stakeholders of the individual spokes and not just stakeholders of the central hub. 

When identifying key stakeholders, ask yourself: 

  • Who is the initiating party? 
  • Have others expressed interest in the purpose and plan for the digital workplace? 
  • Who should have input on defining the goals and objectives of individual spokes? 

For example, for the external stakeholder use case of a networked enterprise, a goal for your spoke sites may be for members to transform their spoke into their own digital workplace or that your spoke sites are to be used simply as a method to authenticate users into the central hub. 

Plan Stage

Chapter Listing:

Toolkit

Access key resources to build out your digital workplace goals.

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