The blog

For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Some­thing I’ve been pondering

Goals can cer­tain­ly look dif­fer­ent. Some­times, with a client, I see goals that sound some­thing like ​“We will coor­di­nate with… [anoth­er par­ty].” Often, the orga­ni­za­tion is a gov­ern­ment agency or anoth­er type of pub­lic enti­ty. I have asked many times, but I have yet to receive an answer that clear­ly explains to me what coor­di­na­tion actu­al­ly entails, let alone what needs to be done to con­sid­er the goal of coor­di­na­tion achieved.

An untapped opportunity?

There­fore, I sus­pect that the goal of ​“coor­di­na­tion” is so vague that it is dif­fi­cult to know when it has been achieved and what is expect­ed to be done to reach it. There is a hid­den oppor­tu­ni­ty for a sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er and more pri­or­i­tized every­day life for those respon­si­ble for it, if the goal is made more concrete.

Do this

If you rec­og­nize your­self in hav­ing goals to coor­di­nate with others,

1. Exam­ine your­self: Do you clear­ly know what you should accom­plish when you ​“coor­di­nate” dur­ing the year? How will you know when you have reached the coor­di­na­tion goal, and how do you see that there is still some work to be done?
2. If you find that the goal would ben­e­fit from being con­cretized, for­mu­late it more specif­i­cal­ly. If you do not have the author­i­ty to do so, for­mu­late a new, com­ple­men­tary goal that more con­crete­ly mea­sures whether you have suc­ceed­ed in coordinating.
3. If you’re not sure how to make the goal more con­crete, dig deep­er into the verb ​“coor­di­nate”:
   • What, in fact, do you do when you coordinate?
   • How do you know when you have coor­di­nat­ed enough? What does it look like? Is it when you have done what you do when you coor­di­nate X num­ber of times — had a cer­tain num­ber of coor­di­na­tion meet­ings, for exam­ple, or tak­en at least one coor­di­na­tion ini­tia­tive each week? Is it when some­thing has changed for the bet­ter to a cer­tain extent as a result of coor­di­nat­ing, a process that flows Y% bet­ter? Is it when a stake­hold­er has reached a cer­tain degree of sat­is­fac­tion with the coor­di­na­tion? Some­thing else?
4. Add the new (or refor­mu­lat­ed) goal where you fol­low up on goals dur­ing the year, or sug­gest to the deci­sion mak­er that the new goal should also be included.

More cel­e­bra­tion and eas­i­er prioritization

If you make your goal of coor­di­na­tion spe­cif­ic and mea­sur­able, it will be eas­i­er for you to see if you have suc­ceed­ed than oth­er­wise. You will be bet­ter able to cel­e­brate your suc­cess­es (and rec­og­nize when you need to do some­thing else or take addi­tion­al steps because you haven’t quite reached your goal).

It will also be eas­i­er for you to iden­ti­fy which tasks to pri­or­i­tize dur­ing the year to reach your goal, as it is clear­er to see which tasks con­tribute to a goal when the goal is well-defined.

What do you do?

What do your goals for coor­di­na­tion look like? Please send me an email. I am curi­ous and want to learn more about this con­cept that has been too vague for me so far.

(Are you strug­gling with set­ting your goals? Check out my post con­crete goals make you hap­pi­er!)