Goals in the workplace

In his 1954 book The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker recognised the need for new management practices to meet the changing demands of a post-war economy. He proposed “management by objectives” (MBO), a system where individuals and their managers collaborate to define and agree upon goals. Drucker believed that employees actively involved in the goal-setting process are more likely to achieve those goals.

In the 1970s, then Intel CEO Andy Grove developed Drucker’s MBO by incorporating the measurement of goal achievement into his Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework. Where Drucker focused on individual goals, OKRs evolved to emphasise organisational objectives and common goals for teams.

These two perspectives represent two sides of goal setting: the organisational goals for strategic direction, and the individual goals for engagement and productivity.

Strategic priorities and individual goals

While investment in corporate strategy has increased steadily, the workplace has moved away from individually-owned goals. Why is this? Put simply, it’s extremely hard to do well. Setting and managing individual goals, and keeping everyone aligned, is complex and time-consuming, especially at scale.

In today’s environment, however, equipping individuals with clear goals is more important than ever. Employees with autonomy—who understand what they need to do, and why it matters—are likely to be more effective. When employees are involved in goal setting, the intrinsic motivation of goals not only improves outcomes, it improves wellbeing. For organisations, supporting individual employees to be engaged and aligned with strategic objectives is a powerful lever available to senior management to improve performance.

Goal setting in Fraim

At Fraim, we’re simplifying the process of goals with a creative use case for generative AI. Fraim applies the capability of Large Language Model AI specifically to the creation of goals and their alignment to corporate strategy.

Fraim uses AI-powered conversations to cascade strategic priorities and then guide individuals to create aligned goals with AI support and managerial feedback. Fraim AI orchestrates these conversations across the whole company, streamlining responses and consolidating feedback, making organisation-wide goals both comprehensive and fast.

Fraim guides the creation of goals around key concepts:

• Alignment. Clearly communicated strategic priorities give everyone the context to devise individual goals that are relevant and aligned. Then managers can refine and approve, instead of delegate.

• Speed. Goals should be fast and simple to set. Here, useful is more important than perfect: being able to quickly adjust goals to changing priorities is critical to keeping them relevant.

• Buy In. Engaging people in the creation of their own goals drives positive outcomes for both employees and within organisations.

• Standardisation. A consistent approach to goal setting within a digital environment maintains quality, and allows for useful insights to be timely and accessible.

• Adaptable. Setting goals at the start of the year and not looking at them for 12 months isn’t useful. The ability to adapt goals in a continuous process of alignment and adjustment, makes companies flexible without losing the core purpose.

The Fraim Goal Space

Fraim acts as a central hub where all the activity happening across the organisation is captured in the form of goals. We call this concept the Goal Space: A sophisticated and creative digital environment which acts as a source of truth for the state of the company, constantly refreshed with real-time data.

Fraim shifts from top-down goal setting to a model that’s both simpler and more comprehensive, using AI to enable individual goal setting with managerial review. This new approach can bring focus to all the activity happening across the company.

Effective coordination requires more than just communicating goals and assuming understanding. It involves empowering individuals to set their own goals and providing continuous feedback for consistent, light touch alignment.