Countless leadership teams gather every day. Skilled people who sit down to discuss challenges and make plans for further success. Even if the intention is good, the will and ability are present, in all too many cases it has little effect on goal achievement. How can this be?

The reason for failure to achieve goals is often found in:

• Lack of precise and consistent goals
• Lack of utilization of the collective expertise in the team
• Lame relationships in the team
• Lack of focus on solutions, too much focus on causes
• Lack of structure and predictability in meetings

1. Precise goals increase the likelihood of success

Setting good goals is demanding. The result is often that the individual goals do not point in the same direction or they deviate from the company's main goal. Efforts made to achieve incorrectly defined goals often have the opposite effect and take the department or division away from its intention. That is why the goal process is important. All individual goals should build on the main goal. The goals should be supported by a few but crucial and prioritized activities. These should be precisely formulated, measurable, time-bound and, last but not least, all individual goals should be collectively anchored in the team.

2. Utilize collective expertise

Far too many members of a leadership team spend an unnecessary amount of time defending their own actions or explaining the reasons for deviations. Set up a predictable and tight management structure in meetings that openly exposes deviations in the team from the defined goals, and that also captures collective advice and input. This is no easy task, and few teams manage this without assistance. The key is preparation, good relationships in the team and tight, predictable management of the meeting. Very few teams have this naturally in place, but most develop quickly with a little help. Those teams that manage to harness the power of collective expertise will have a much higher probability of achieving both their individual and collective goals. Easy to say, but it takes some doing.

3. Clean up stagnant relationships

It is rarely the professional competence or the formal structures that prevent a team from developing. Often it is underdeveloped, non-existent or sometimes broken relationships between team members that are the biggest obstacle to goal achievement. Achieving collective goals requires utilizing collective competence for mutual help. Debris in the relationship machinery is more than a bottleneck that needs to be resolved. Well-functioning relationships are perhaps the most potentially powerful tool for goal achievement in a team.  

4. Look ahead

There is little progress in standing with your back to the direction of travel and discussing what has happened. Start by talking about solutions rather than causes. If you only look ahead in meetings, the need and time spent defending yourself will also disappear. At least as important is that the team should be energized. Shifting the focus forward means that energy is not used to mediate between disputing debaters about the cause of deviations, but is supplied to the team as forward-looking positivity. It may be new to many, but it is entirely possible to leave a meeting motivated. Or, to put the list a little higher, everyone should leave a meeting motivated and inspired!

5. Preparation is a prerequisite and regular, predictable meeting management is a guarantee of security.

The boring message for many is that good preparation still applies. However, this is precisely what makes a difference. Not only preparation of your own issues and goal status, but also of your colleagues. By establishing a predictable review and structure in the meetings, preparation will become a natural part of the role each participant knows they will fill in the meeting. It often lags at the beginning, but improves significantly after a few times. Conduct the meetings with a tight predictable structure where everyone's opinions systematically become part of the learning. This makes the preparations precise, accurate and time-efficient. Not least, the individual and collective effect on the goals will quickly become apparent.