One of the most common requests I receive from bank leaders when addressing their teams as one year ends and another begins is to emphasize the importance of setting goals.
When I hear this request, I often jokingly ask, "Well, don't you set their goals for them?"
I'm fairly certain they don't just turn the page on a new year and say to their teams, "Hey, just get out there and figure it out. Surprise us!"
The challenge isn't getting managers and teams to set business goals — again, we often do that for them — it's helping them understand the goals they are given and getting their agreement and commitment to achieving them.
Over the years, one of the issues I've observed repeatedly is that employees in the field — from front-line staff to middle management — often do not understand how their goals were determined or agree with whether those goals are fair.
To be honest, I've sometimes found myself quietly siding with discouraged employees in the field. When production goals seem to be based on little more than, "This is the big number the organization wants to reach," followed by simply dividing it evenly among branches, employees or other groups, the result is often disheartened teams.
Now, if that is essentially the policy and it exists for defensible reasons, so be it.
However, it still needs to be clearly explained by leadership.
I often remind leaders that while our people in the field may be on the same team, they aren't all playing on the same field. Few would argue against the idea that not all markets are created equal.
Even within certain markets, the reasonable production goals for different locations can vary significantly.
The reality is that some managers and teams achieve more with less than others. Some of the best managers in many organizations run some of the more challenging locations.
In a former role managing a sizable branch network, one of the regional managers I supervised often referred to underperforming branch locations as "dog branches" in private conversations.
He'd say, "Well, these branches over here are on target, but those locations are just dog locations."
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When he'd say something like that, he was mostly referring to the lower market opportunities and various challenges faced by some locations.
I used to tell him that he needed a new metaphor for branches he was disappointed in. Hey, I like dogs.
But, playing along with his comparison, I'd point out that some of the best management performances we saw in any given month or quarter came from managers who turned Great Danes into Chihuahuas.
In other words, they made the best of a challenging situation. Less talented or less motivated teams would have produced noticeably poorer results.
And that's the rub — it often requires significant effort, research and subjective judgment to establish goals that are as fair as possible. Different organizations vary widely in the amount of manpower and resources they dedicate to this process.
But regardless of whether an organization invests significant time and resources into goal setting or relies on leaders using gut instincts and back-of-the-envelope calculations, how those goals are communicated and explained is critical to the morale of the team and their efforts to achieve them.
A former senior manager of a regional bank once impressed me with his dedication and process for teaching his managers the nuts and bolts of branch profitability.
As simple as it sounds, he wanted everyone under his leadership to have a clear understanding of how their bank kept the doors open — essentially, how it made money and why their goals were set as they were.
He discovered that as his teams became more knowledgeable about the business of banking, their engagement levels increased in influencing and managing the factors within their control.
He also identified direct correlations between their understanding of the business, improved customer experience scores and higher production levels in the branches.
Our best managers are not discouraged or disengaged by challenging jobs or ambitious goals. What tends to dishearten them is a lack of understanding of the reasoning behind their goals or feeling unheard and ignored in the process.
The person you help understand and take ownership of a goal is far more likely to exceed expectations than someone who feels their goal is unfair or unsupported by reason. Additionally, if circumstances outside a manager's control significantly alter the business outlook, responsiveness and flexibility in adjusting goals can help keep everyone in the game, so to speak.
To improve both morale and performance, ensure your teams understand the "why" and "how" behind the "what" of the goals you set for them.
