BEYOND THE BUILD
Effective Product Leadership — Part 3: Excellence in Goal Setting
Product leadership is a multifaceted endeavor, requiring a delicate balance of strategic vision, tactical execution, and a relentless focus on driving transformative impact. At the heart of this challenge lies the critical task of goal-setting — defining the measurable objectives that will guide your product development efforts and propel your organization toward success. In this comprehensive article, we’ll explore the essential elements of effective goal-setting, starting with the foundational step of understanding the goal hierarchy in product teams. From the overarching product vision down to the granular sprint goals, we’ll examine how these objectives must be systematically aligned with your broader product portfolio and business strategies. But goal-setting is about more than just alignment — it’s about striking the right balance between ambition and realism, considering the ethical implications of your objectives, and securing widespread team commitment and buy-in. We’ll delve into the perils of being overly goal-driven, and outline strategies for cultivating a healthier, more sustainable approach to goal-setting. By the end of this guide, you’ll be equipped with the insights and frameworks necessary to elevate your product goal-setting prowess and steer your organization toward lasting meaningful impact.
Table of Contents
Product Leadership Success: Achieving Excellence Through Cascaded Goal Setting
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Product Leadership Success: Achieving Excellence Through Cascaded Goal Setting
Goal setting is the lifeblood of successful product development.
And this is for several key reasons:
- Guidance: Well-defined goals provide clear direction for product teams, helping them understand the specific objectives they need to work towards. This guidance ensures everyone is aligned and focused on the right priorities.
- Inspiration: Ambitious, inspirational goals can motivate and energize product teams, pushing them to exceed expectations and achieve remarkable results. Goals that tap into a deeper purpose or vision can be particularly powerful in this regard.
- Alignment: When goals cascade from the overarching product vision down to granular sprint objectives, it creates a cohesive thread that aligns the entire organization. This alignment ensures everyone’s efforts are working in concert towards the same outcomes.
- Empowerment: By setting clear, measurable goals, product leaders empower their teams to take ownership and drive progress independently. Teams are given the autonomy to determine the best path forward, as long as they deliver on the defined objectives.
Ultimately, effective goal setting is not just about creating a to-do list — it’s about harnessing the power of purpose, alignment, and autonomy to unlock the full potential of product teams.
When done right, goals become the lifeblood that sustains successful product development and propels organizations toward their most ambitious aspirations.
The Cascading Chain of Goals
Successful product leaders generally utilize a “Chain of Goals.” This cascading framework links your overarching product vision to the granular sprint-level objectives of your development team.
- Product Vision: At the top of this chain is the product vision — an inspirational, aspirational goal that defines the ultimate purpose of your product and the positive change it aims to create. This vision should be a concise, compelling statement that transcends any specific solution, instead painting a vivid picture of the future you’re striving to bring about. For example, a product vision for a healthy eating app could be: “Empowering people to make nutritious choices and lead healthier lives.” The product vision should cover at least the next 5 years and act as the “True North¹” to provide continued guidance.
- User and Business Goals: Flowing directly from the product vision is your user and business goals — the objectives that define what success looks like for your customers and your organization. These goals must be tightly aligned with your broader business and product portfolio strategies, ensuring your product efforts are in lockstep with your company’s overarching ambitions. User goals for the healthy eating app could include “Increase the number of users logging their meals daily by 20%” while a business goal could be “Achieve a 15% increase in subscription revenue from the healthy eating app.” These goals should be aligned with the overall business and product portfolio strategies. Their timeframe should aim to cover a medium-term horizon of 1–3 years to match the business/portfolio strategies.
- Product Goals: Next in the chain are your product goals — the specific, measurable targets that your development team will work towards. These goals should represent clear steps towards achieving your user and business objectives, providing a clear roadmap for your team. Product goals for the healthy eating app could include “Launch a new and improved meal planning feature” or “Improve the app’s user retention rate by 10%.” The timeframe of these goals will likely cover a shorter-term horizon of 2–6 months to align with the product planning and roadmapping process.
- Sprint Goals: Finally, at the base of the chain, are your sprint goals — the granular, time-boxed objectives that your team will tackle in each development cycle. These goals should be directly tied to your product goals, guaranteeing that every sprint represents a meaningful step toward your larger vision. Sprint goals for the healthy eating app could include “Implement the new meal planning feature” or “Optimize the onboarding flow to improve user retention.” The implementation of these goals/items would be timeboxed within a specific sprint which is typically 1–4 weeks in duration, so the sprint goals have a very near-term, iterative timeframe.
By establishing this cascading chain of goals, product leaders can ensure perfect alignment between their inspirational vision and the day-to-day work of their teams.
This framework empowers autonomy, rallies everyone around a shared purpose, and provides a clear path for translating strategic ambitions into tangible results. The true power of the “Cascading Chain of Goals” lies in its ability to align your entire organization around a shared purpose. By connecting each team member’s work to the overarching product vision, this framework transforms a collection of individuals into a cohesive, high-performing unit — all working in concert to bring that inspiring future into reality.
1.1 — The Power of an Inspirational Vision
At the heart of the cascading goal framework is the product vision — the most powerful goal that serves as the “True North¹” for the entire product effort. A compelling, inspirational vision holds immense power to drive success.
- Captivating Stakeholders: A well-crafted vision can captivate your team, stakeholders, and customers. By painting a vivid picture of the positive change you aim to create, the vision provides the motivation and direction needed to overcome challenges and push the boundaries of what’s possible.
- Guiding Strategy and Tactics: When defining your vision, it’s crucial to resist the temptation to tie it to a specific solution or product idea. Instead, focus on the fundamental problem you’re solving, the experience you’re enhancing, or the future you’re helping to shape.
This higher-level, aspirational framing gives you the flexibility to pivot your strategy and tactics as needed, while still staying true to your core purpose.
- Transcending the Practical: The product vision should not be constrained by practical considerations. Rather, it should be an inspirational, visionary goal that transcends the immediate and speaks to a larger, transformative impact. This elevates the vision beyond a mere to-do list, empowering it to rally people around a shared sense of purpose.
- Sustaining Alignment: By serving as the “True North¹” for the organization, the product vision provides continued guidance and alignment, even as lower-level goals and tactics evolve. This ensures that every step taken by the team ultimately ladders up to the overarching aspirations embodied in the vision.
1.2 — Aligning Goals, Aligning Teams, and the Product Vision
The true power of this goal-setting approach lies in the way it aligns your entire organization around a shared purpose.
By connecting each sprint goal to your product vision, you ensure that every team member understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture.
This fosters a sense of ownership and engagement and allows for greater autonomy and decision-making at the team level.
Of course, maintaining this alignment requires vigilance.
You’ll need to regularly review your goals, from the vision down to the sprint level, ensuring that they remain in sync and that any changes in one area are properly reflected throughout the chain.
Product strategy meetings and backlog refinement sessions are great opportunities to do this, keeping your team focused and your product on track.
2.1 — The Strategic Anchors: User and Business Goals
At the heart of successful product development lie the user and business goals — the strategic anchors that guide your efforts and ensure every decision, sprint, and feature is working towards the outcomes that matter most.
- Specificity and Measurability: These goals must be clearly defined and quantifiable. Vague aspirations like “improve customer satisfaction” are not enough — you need specific, measurable targets such as “increase the number of users logging their meals daily by 20%.” This allows you to track progress and determine if you’re truly moving the needle.
- Aligning with the Product Lifecycle: Importantly, user and business goals must be tailored to the current stage of your product’s lifecycle. Early on, the focus may be on achieving product-market fit and fueling growth. But as your product matures, these goals will need to evolve to address the needs of mainstream users and drive profitability.
- Adapting to Change: Of course, as your product and market evolve, these user and business goals will need to be regularly reviewed and updated. What worked in the early days may no longer be relevant as your product reaches new milestones. Maintaining this flexibility is crucial, allowing you to adapt your strategy while staying true to your overarching vision.
- Guiding Every Decision: By keeping these strategic goals front and center, you ensure that every decision, every sprint, and every product feature is working in service of the outcomes that matter most to your customers and your organization. This laser-sharp focus prevents wasted effort and keeps your team aligned on the most impactful priorities.
2.2 — Where to Start: User Goals or Business Goals?
One of the most common questions I get from product teams is: Where should we start — with user goals or business goals? My answer is simple: Begin with the user.
- Understanding User Needs First: By first deeply understanding the problems your users want to be solved or the benefits they seek, you can then determine how to create value for your business. This user-centric approach ensures that your product development efforts are grounded in the real needs and desires of your customers.
- Avoiding Internal Prioritization: Starting with business goals, on the other hand, runs the risk of prioritizing internal needs over customer needs. This can lead to unethical product decisions that ultimately harm your users, as the focus shifts away from delivering genuine value and towards optimizing for internal metrics or objectives.
- Aligning User and Business Value: Of course, the end goal is to find the sweet spot where user goals and business goals are fully aligned. But to get there, you must start by deeply understanding your users. Only then can you determine the best way to create value for both your customers and your organization.
- Iterating Towards Alignment: This is not a one-time exercise — it’s an ongoing process of iteration and refinement. As you learn more about your users and your business landscape evolves, you’ll need to continuously revisit and adjust your goals to maintain that crucial alignment.
Ultimately, the key is to keep your users at the center of your product strategy. By starting there and then thoughtfully connecting their needs to your business objectives, you’ll be well on your way to creating products that delight your customers and drive sustainable success for your organization.
3 — Translating Strategy into Execution: Product Goals
With your user and business goals firmly established, the next step is to define your product goals — the specific, measurable targets that will guide your development team’s work.
- Connecting to Higher-Level Objectives: These product goals should represent clear steps toward achieving your overarching user and business objectives. For example, if a user goal is to “Increase the number of users logging their meals daily by 20%,” a corresponding product goal could be to “Launch a new and improved meal planning feature.”
- Providing a Roadmap for the Team: By setting these product-level goals, you give your development team a clear roadmap to follow. They understand exactly what they need to accomplish to move the needle on the strategic priorities you’ve defined.
- Maintaining Flexibility: Importantly, product goals are not set in stone. As your team makes progress (or encounters challenges), you may need to adjust these goals to ensure you’re still on the right track. Maintaining this flexibility is crucial, as it allows you to adapt to changing circumstances while still staying true to your overarching vision and strategic intent.
- Iterating Towards Success: This iterative approach to product goal-setting is essential. It enables you to learn, experiment, and refine your efforts over time — all in service of achieving the user and business outcomes that matter most. By continuously aligning your tactical execution with your strategic priorities, you can ensure your team’s work is having maximum impact.
Product goals are the crucial bridge between your high-level ambitions and the day-to-day work of your development team. By setting clear, measurable targets that ladder up to your strategic objectives, you empower your people to translate your vision into reality.
4. Aligning the Team Around Sprint Goals
At the base of the goal-setting framework are the sprint goals — the granular, time-boxed objectives that your team will tackle in each development cycle. These goals play a crucial role in aligning your entire team around a shared purpose.
- Connecting to Product Goals: The key is to ensure that each sprint goal is directly tied to your higher-level product goals. This creates a clear line of sight, guaranteeing that every sprint represents a meaningful step towards your larger vision and strategic objectives.
- Empowering Ownership and Collaboration: Sprint goals are powerful because they give your team a clear, shared purpose to rally around. By articulating the desired outcome of each sprint — whether it’s acquiring new knowledge, addressing a risk, or delivering a user-facing benefit — you empower your people to take ownership and collaborate in pursuit of that common goal.
- Maintaining Visibility: To further reinforce this alignment, I find it helpful to make the sprint goals highly visible — whether on a physical task board, in your digital project management tool, or through regular team check-ins. This keeps the team focused on the priorities at hand and makes it easier to assess the success of each sprint. Your Scrum Master should always be on top of this.
- Fostering Accountability: When sprint goals are clearly defined and communicated, they also foster a sense of accountability within the team. Everyone understands their role in achieving the desired outcomes, which encourages proactive problem-solving and mutual support.
- Iterating Towards Success: Of course, sprint goals are not set in stone. As your team makes progress or encounters new challenges, you may need to adjust these goals to ensure you’re still on the right track. This iterative approach is essential, enabling you to learn, adapt, and optimize your efforts over time.
By aligning your team around these granular, time-boxed sprint goals, you create a powerful mechanism for translating your strategic vision into tangible, measurable results. It’s a crucial piece of the goal-setting framework that empowers your people, drives accountability, and keeps your product development efforts firmly focused on the outcomes that matter most.
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Grounding Product Goals in Strategic Context
Product goals don’t exist in a vacuum — they must be firmly grounded in the context of your organization’s broader strategic ambitions. This means aligning your product goals with both your business strategy and, if applicable, your product portfolio strategy.
The Strategic Bedrock
Successful product goal-setting begins with establishing a solid strategic foundation for your organization.
This starts with having a well-defined business strategy in place.
- The Importance of Business Strategy: Your business strategy provides the essential context and direction to ensure your product efforts are truly supporting the organization’s broader objectives and priorities. Without this overarching strategic framework, it becomes incredibly challenging to select the right product vision, user goals, and business goals.
- Incorporating Product Portfolio Strategy: But what if your product is just one piece of a larger product portfolio? In this case, you’ll also want to have a well-defined product portfolio strategy to guide your goal-setting process.
- The Role of Product Portfolio Strategy: This higher-level view of your related products helps you select the appropriate goals that will strengthen the portfolio as a whole. It ensures your individual product goals are aligned with and supportive of the strategic direction for your entire product ecosystem.
- Aligning Goals with Strategy: By grounding your product vision, user goals, and business goals in the context of your business strategy and, if applicable, your product portfolio strategy, you create a solid foundation for success. This strategic alignment ensures your product efforts are truly driving value for the organization and moving you closer to your overarching ambitions.
Establishing this strategic bedrock is a crucial first step in the goal-setting process. It provides the essential context and direction to select the right objectives and maximize the impact of your product development efforts.
Aligning Goals with Strategy
Once you have established a solid foundation with your business strategy and, if applicable, your product portfolio strategy, you can then begin to define your product vision, user goals, and business goals.
The key is to ensure these lower-level goals are directly connected to and supportive of the strategic priorities outlined in those higher-level plans.
- Aligning with a Diversification Strategy: For example, let’s say your business strategy emphasizes diversifying revenue streams. In this case, your product vision, user goals, and business goals should all ladder up to that strategic imperative. This could involve targeting new customer segments, developing complementary revenue models, or expanding into adjacent markets with your product offerings.
- Aligning with an Optimization Strategy: Conversely, if your product portfolio strategy is focused on streamlining and optimizing your existing offerings, your product goals should reflect that focus on operational excellence, cost reduction, and technical debt management. This ensures your product development efforts are directly supporting the broader strategic objective of improving the efficiency and performance of your current product ecosystem.
The Criticality of Goal Alignment
Aligning your product-level goals with the strategic priorities outlined in your business and portfolio strategies is a crucial step in the goal-setting process. This alignment creates a cohesive, mutually reinforcing framework that maximizes the impact of your product development efforts.
- Ensuring Strategic Contribution: By aligning your product vision, user goals, and business goals with your higher-level strategic frameworks, you can ensure that every step you take with your product is directly contributing to the organization’s overarching ambitions and priorities. This strategic alignment allows you to focus your resources and efforts on the initiatives that will drive the most meaningful value.
- Building a Cohesive Strategy: Ultimately, aligning your product-level goals with your business and portfolio strategies is the foundation upon which you can build a cohesive, high-impact product development strategy. This strategic alignment ensures your product efforts are truly driving value for your customers and your organization, rather than pursuing objectives that may be misaligned or even counterproductive.
By taking the time to carefully align your product goals with your higher-level strategic frameworks, you unlock the true potential of your product development efforts.
This alignment creates a clear, focused roadmap that empowers your teams, delights your customers, and delivers meaningful value to your business.
It’s a crucial step that separates successful product leaders from those who struggle to translate their ambitions into tangible results.
The Trouble with Misalignment
The danger of failing to align your product goals with your overarching organizational strategy is that you risk pursuing objectives that may not benefit your company or your product portfolio as a whole. This disconnect can have far-reaching consequences, including:
- Wasted Effort and Resources: When your product goals are misaligned with your broader strategic priorities, it inevitably leads to the misallocation of time, money, and other valuable resources. Your teams will be working on initiatives that, while perhaps beneficial in the short term, do not truly move the needle for the organization. This wasted effort erodes efficiency and squanders opportunities for meaningful impact.
- Conflicting Priorities: Misalignment between your product goals and your organizational strategy also creates internal tensions and conflicting priorities. Different teams and stakeholders will be pulling in different directions, undermining collaboration and collective progress. This lack of cohesion can grind your product development efforts to a halt.
- Undermining Organizational Values: In the worst-case scenario, this misalignment can even result in product decisions that actively undermine your organization’s core values and mission. Imagine, for instance, that your business strategy emphasizes sustainability and environmental responsibility, but your product goals are solely focused on short-term revenue growth. This disconnect could lead to product features or decisions that contradict your organization’s broader commitments, eroding trust with customers and stakeholders.
- Harming the Customer Experience: Ultimately, the ripple effects of this strategic misalignment will be felt by your customers. When your product development efforts are not firmly grounded in your organization’s overarching strategy and values, the resulting products and experiences are likely to fall short of customer expectations. This can damage your brand reputation and erode customer loyalty over time.
The Power of Strategic Alignment
When you get the alignment between your product goals and your organizational strategy right, the results can be truly transformative. This strategic alignment unlocks immense potential for your product development efforts.
- Driving Meaningful Value: By grounding your product goals in the context of your business and portfolio strategies, you ensure that every step you take is directly contributing to the organization’s overarching ambitions. This creates a clear line of sight between your team’s work and the achievement of your company’s strategic objectives.
- Empowering Informed Decisions: This strategic alignment empowers your teams to make informed, confident decisions. Secure in the knowledge that their work is driving meaningful value, they can navigate challenges and seize opportunities with a clear sense of purpose.
- Fostering Shared Purpose: The strategic alignment fosters a sense of shared purpose across your organization. Individual efforts seamlessly integrate into a cohesive, high-impact whole, as everyone understands how their work contributes to the realization of your overarching strategic vision.
- Providing a North Star: Moreover, this strategic alignment provides a crucial North Star to guide you through the inevitable twists and turns of product development. When challenges arise or new opportunities emerge, you can quickly assess how they fit within your strategic framework, allowing you to pivot without losing sight of your long-term objectives.
By aligning your product goals with your organizational strategy, you unlock the transformative potential of your product development efforts. Your teams are empowered, your decisions are informed, and your progress is guided by a clear, unifying purpose.
This strategic alignment is the foundation upon which you can build a cohesive, high-impact product strategy that drives sustainable success for your organization. It’s a powerful tool that separates the most successful product leaders from the rest.
Crafting Goals that Deliver Transformative Impact
While goals provide the roadmap, the motivation, and the alignment that empower our teams to achieve remarkable outcomes, not all are created equal — there’s a distinct difference between goals that merely check a box and those that truly catalyze transformative change.
Over the years, I’ve found that the most successful product teams apply a consistent set of criteria to ensure their goals are driving the desired impact. Some of these include:
- Shared: If you want your team to truly own and champion your goals, they need to have a hand in shaping them. Actively involving individuals in the goal-setting process fosters a deep sense of shared purpose and responsibility. Of course, this isn’t always possible — sometimes goals are set at a higher level. In those cases, it’s crucial to clearly explain the rationale and address any questions or concerns.
- Realistic: While ambition is important, your goals must also be grounded in reality. Overly lofty targets can quickly become demotivating, leading to unhealthy work practices and a sense of futility. Ensure your goals are achievable and measurable, with a clear path to success.
- Inspirational: The best goals create a natural pull, captivating your team and your stakeholders alike. To achieve this, focus on the desired outcomes and benefits, rather than just the outputs. Involve people in the goal-setting process, and choose objectives that are ethically sound and aligned with your organization’s values.
- Alignment-Creating: Effective goals direct people’s work toward the outcomes you’re striving to achieve. This alignment ensures that every effort, every sprint, and every decision contributes to your overarching ambitions.
- Autonomy-Fostering: While alignment is crucial, you don’t want to micromanage your teams. Great goals give them the freedom to figure out the “how” — empowering them to make autonomous decisions that drive progress.
- Holistic and Systematically Linked: Your goals should form a cohesive, interconnected framework, covering your product vision, strategy, and tactics. Each level should be systematically linked to the ones above and below, providing consistent guidance and ensuring your efforts are working in concert.
The Problem with Being Goal-Driven
Many of us are conditioned from a young age to find a deep sense of purpose and direction in pursuing goals — whether academic achievements, career milestones, or other measurable markers of success. And in the world of product development, this goal-driven mentality can feel like a powerful engine, propelling us forward.
- The Danger of Tying Self-Worth to Goals: However, when we tie our team’s sense of self-worth too tightly to the achievement of our goals, we set ourselves up for failure. The desperation to succeed can lead to crushing disappointment and a plummeting sense of confidence when those goals inevitably prove elusive, even with our best efforts.
- The Inevitability of Failure: The truth is that failure is a natural part of innovation. There are no guarantees of success, no matter how meticulously we plan or how passionately we pursue our objectives. And when we become overly attached to our goals, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture — the meaningful impact we’re striving to create, the lessons we can learn from setbacks, and the intrinsic value of the work itself.
- Losing Sight of the Bigger Picture: This overemphasis on goals can cause us to become myopic, fixating on the achievement of specific targets rather than the broader purpose and value we’re aiming to deliver. It can blind us to alternative paths, emerging opportunities, and the inherent worth of the journey itself.
- The Need for a Balanced Perspective: To avoid these pitfalls, we must strive to maintain a more balanced perspective on goals — harnessing their motivational power while avoiding the trap of becoming overly attached and self-worth-dependent.
By keeping the bigger picture in mind and embracing the inevitability of failure, we can unlock the true potential of goal-setting to drive transformative impact.
Establishing a Healthy Relationship with Goals
The key to harnessing the motivational power of goals without falling into the trap of being overly goal-driven is to hold them lightly, maintaining a balanced perspective.
- Avoiding a White-Knuckled Grip: Rather than clinging to our objectives with a white-knuckled grip, we need to put them in context. We must resist the urge to become consumed by the pursuit of our goals, allowing them to dominate our thoughts and emotions.
- Pausing to Reflect: When we find ourselves getting stressed or anxious about meeting a goal, it’s important to pause and reflect. We should ask ourselves: Why is this particular goal so important to me? What’s the worst-case scenario if I don’t achieve it?
- Embracing Failure with Grace: When we inevitably fall short of our goals, as we all do at times, we must take responsibility without being overly self-critical. Failure is a natural part of the journey, and by approaching it with understanding and grace — for ourselves and our teams — we can turn it into an opportunity for growth and learning.
- Cultivating a Healthy Mindset: This balanced perspective allows us to harness the motivational power of goals without becoming beholden to them. We need to maintain a sense of purpose and direction without tying our self-worth to the achievement of specific targets.
By establishing a healthy relationship with our goals, we unlock the true potential of goal-setting to drive sustainable success and become more resilient in the face of setbacks, more adaptable to changing circumstances, and more focused on the intrinsic value of the work itself.
When we get this right, we empower ourselves and our teams to achieve remarkable outcomes, all while preserving our well-being and maintaining a clear, grounded perspective on the journey ahead.
Setting Realistic, Sustainable Goals
The foundation for a balanced approach to goal-setting is ensuring that the goals themselves are grounded in reality from the outset. All too often, product teams fall victim to the allure of “stretch goals” — ambitious targets that may sound impressive but are ultimately unrealistic and unattainable.
- The Repetitive Cycle of Stretch Goals: The pattern is a familiar one: Management sets these unrealistic objectives, then piles on the pressure, demanding overtime and sacrificing quality in the process. The result is a demoralized team, a subpar product, and a failure to achieve the desired outcomes.
- The Need for Courage: To avoid this trap, we need to have the courage to push back against such unrealistic expectations, even in the face of organizational pressure. It’s not easy, but it’s essential if we want to create a sustainable path forward that empowers our teams and delights our customers.
- The Courage to Push Back: Of course, setting realistic goals in the face of organizational pressure is no easy feat. It requires a steadfast commitment to the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. But by mustering that courage, we not only protect our teams and our products, but we also position our businesses for long-term, resilient growth.
- Developing the Right Mindset: Achieving this balance starts with cultivating the right mindset. We must resist the temptation to set goals that are overly ambitious or aspirational, and instead focus on what is truly achievable given our resources, constraints, and capabilities.
- Leveraging Tools and Techniques: By drawing on established tools and techniques, we can translate this mindset into concrete, measurable goals. This might involve techniques like story points, Planning Poker, or burndown charts — all of which can help us arrive at realistic, data-driven targets.
When we get this right, we create a foundation for sustainable success. Our teams feel empowered, not overwhelmed, and our customers receive products that genuinely meet their needs.
It’s a virtuous cycle that drives meaningful impact, rather than a race against the clock to hit unrealistic marks.
Addressing Unhealthy Work Cultures
Establishing a healthy, balanced approach to goal-setting is challenging enough, but it becomes exponentially more difficult when the root of the problem lies in the work culture itself.
If declining unrealistic goals would be unacceptable in your workplace, it may be time to take a hard look at whether that environment is truly conducive to long-term success and well-being.
- Assessing Your Ability to Drive Change: The first step is to reflect on your power and influence within the organization. Do you have the authority and support to bring about positive change, or is the organizational dynamic too entrenched and resistant to such efforts? Identifying the scope of your ability to impact the culture is crucial in determining the best path forward.
- Weighing the Costs of Staying: If you determine that the work culture is fundamentally unhealthy and that you lack the means to transform it, you must then consider whether it’s worth continuing to toil in that system. After all, our goals — whether product-related or personal — should serve to enrich our lives, not diminish them. And if the culture around us makes that impossible, then it may be time to seek greener pastures.
- The Courage to Walk Away: This is undoubtedly a difficult decision with ample uncertainty and risk. Leaving the security of a familiar workplace, even an unhealthy one, can be scary. But sometimes, the greatest act of courage is recognizing when a situation has become untenable and having the conviction to remove ourselves from it.
- Prioritizing Well-Being Over Short-Term Metrics: By doing so, we send a powerful message — that we will not compromise our well-being, our values, and our long-term potential in service of short-term metrics or organizational dysfunction. It’s a stance that not only protects our interests but also has the potential to inspire change within the system we’re leaving behind.
- Seeking Better Work Environments: Of course, the path forward is not always clear. Seeking out a new, healthier work environment can be a challenging and uncertain process. But by taking that leap, we open ourselves up to the possibility of finding an organization that truly aligns with our goals, our principles, and our vision for a fulfilling, sustainable career.
It’s a difficult road, to be sure, but one that can yield immense personal and professional rewards.
In the end, the decision to stay and fight or to move on is a deeply personal one, guided by our values, our ambitions, and our unwavering commitment to our well-being.
The Power of Stretch Goals and Achievable Targets
“Stretch goals” are ambitious objective that seems just out of reach. These “moon shots” are meant to be inspirational, pushing us to reach for the stars and redefine what’s possible.
And when applied judiciously, stretch goals can be incredibly powerful. They can galvanize teams, spark innovation, and set us on a trajectory toward truly remarkable outcomes.
- Product Vision: When setting your product vision, stretch goals, or bold and aspirational targets that transcend any specific feature or tactic can be ideal.
- User, Business, and Product Goals: It’s important to recognize the unique role of stretch goals and not confuse them with the more grounded, achievable objectives that should guide our day-to-day efforts. User goals, business goals, and product goals need to be firmly rooted in reality — targets that the development team and key stakeholders can confidently commit to meeting. Anything less risks demotivating the team and eroding trust.
- Sprint Goals: When it comes to sprint goals, realism is essential. These short-term, time-boxed objectives must be within the team’s capabilities, or they simply won’t be able to deliver on their promises.
Crafting Products with Purpose: Choosing Ethical Goals
As product leaders, we face a constant challenge — how do we ensure our offerings generate tangible value for both our users and our business? It’s a delicate balance, made all the more complex by the prevalence of “free” digital products that rely on engagement-driven business models.
But I believe we have a responsibility to rise above the temptation of short-term gains and prioritize the long-term well-being of our customers.
- The Troubles of Addictive Design: Facebook as a “free” platform, has built its business model around maximizing user engagement, collecting data, and selling targeted ads. And while this approach may generate impressive short-term metrics, the impact on user mental health is deeply concerning. By intentionally designing features to be addictive — constantly triggering our fear of missing out, our need for validation, and our craving for novelty — Facebook has prioritized its interests over the well-being of its customers. The result is a product that can have a profoundly negative effect on our lives, eroding our focus, our relationships, and our sense of self-worth.
- Our Ethical Responsibility: As product leaders, we must ensure our creations do not harm. While users are ultimately responsible for their own choices, we cannot ignore the outsized influence our designs can have. If we knowingly create products that are engineered to be addictive, then we are complicit in the damage they cause. Instead, we must strive to develop offerings that genuinely benefit people’s lives — or, at the very least, do not undermine their mental, physical, or emotional well-being. This means applying principles of “calm technology,” designing for fairness and inclusivity, and considering the environmental impact of our work.
Aligning Business and Ethical Goal — Of course, generating business value is a crucial part of our role as well. However, I firmly believe that these two imperatives — user benefit and commercial success — are not mutually exclusive. When we align them, we unlock the true potential of product development.
People are increasingly willing to pay for digital products and content they perceive as truly valuable. And by prioritizing ethical goals that attract and delight our customers, we can build sustainable business models that don’t rely on exploitative tactics.
Moreover, taking a principled, user-centric approach can be a powerful talent magnet.
People want to work on products that make a positive difference in the world — and our ability to articulate and deliver on that vision can be a major competitive advantage.
Ultimately, the path forward is clear: We must be willing to challenge the status quo, to push back against short-term gains, and to champion a new era of ethical, purpose-driven product development.
Collaborative Goal-Setting and Team Commitment
What good are even the most meticulously crafted objectives if the people responsible for achieving them aren’t fully on board?
In my experience, securing widespread buy-in is just as crucial as defining the goals themselves.
Without it, you risk half-hearted effort, siloed priorities, and a general sense of disengagement that can derail even the most promising initiatives.
- The Collaborative Advantage: So how do we ensure our teams and stakeholders are truly invested in the goals we set? The answer lies in a collaborative approach to goal-setting. By actively involving the people who will be responsible for executing these objectives, we foster a deep sense of shared ownership and collective responsibility. Sure, it may require a bit more upfront work, but the payoff is immense. Once a goal has been collectively agreed upon, everyone feels accountable for its success — and they’ll work together to make it happen.
- Engaging Stakeholders Individually: Of course, not every situation lends itself to a fully collaborative process. Sometimes, logistical constraints or organizational dynamics make that approach impractical. In those cases, I recommend taking the time to meet with stakeholders and team members individually, soliciting their feedback on draft goals, and incorporating their perspectives. This one-on-one engagement is especially crucial when it comes to the higher-level vision, user, and business objectives. If these foundational goals aren’t widely understood and accepted, getting buy-in on the more granular product and sprint targets will be an uphill battle.
- Avoiding Common Pitfalls: Throughout this process, it’s important to steer clear of a few common missteps. Resist the urge to pressure people into agreeing with you, or to simply defer to others and let them decide the goals. And while compromise is important, don’t make weak concessions just to appease everyone — know when to push back firmly. At the same time, maintain an open mind and empathize with your team’s concerns.
When people feel heard and respected, even if they don’t fully agree, they’re far more likely to get behind the goals you set.
Note
[1] — The “True North” refers to a key concept in lean process improvement that provides a guiding vision and compass for an organization. The key points about “True North” are:
- It is an idiom that emerged from Toyota about 20 years ago, representing the ideal or state of perfection that a business should continually strive towards.
- True North is a precise, concise, and universal set of ideals that transcend any particular organization, strategy, geography, or culture. It describes what the organization “should” do, not just what it “can” do.
- True North acts as a “compass” to guide the organization from its current state to where it wants to be. It is a reflection of the organization’s purpose, mission, and strategic foundation.
- True North is not an absolute destination, but rather a concept that represents continuous improvement. It provides a guiding vision, even though the ideal state can never be fully achieved.
- Aligning the organization’s day-to-day activities and goals to this True North vision is what makes an organization “first class” and drives sustained progress.
