Why teams fail to meet goals

You meet with team members periodically to set team goals. But lately the team has missed several important targets. Why? Teams usually fail to meet goals for one of the following reasons:
• Too many goals.
If you come out of meetings with pages and pages of team goals, rest assured that the team will meet few, if any, of them.
Suggestion: Focus the team’s energy by establishing one or two top goals per week or month. If you call every routine task a “goal,” team members won’t take you seriously. A goal should be a rallying cry for peak performance.
• Not enough accountability.
Do you set goals but fail to follow up on them? If so, people sense that the goals weren’t all that important.
Suggestion: Once you set a goal, show your interest and concern—which you can do without directing the team’s every move. Never set a goal you don’t plan to follow up on.
• Too much forgiveness.
How do you react when team members fail to meet their goals? Do you say, “That’s OK; you’ll do better next time”? If you forgive every failure, you demotivate those members who do meet their goals.
Suggestion: When a team member falls short of a target, find out why. Perhaps the goal was unrealistic or the person needed more time or training. Make sure you didn’t contribute to the person’s failure. Then spell out very clearly what will happen if a team member fails to meet goals in the future.
— Adapted from Managing People At Work, Professional Training Associates.