Often bigger goals require a few people to contribute. A Parent Goal is an objective that is shared with others through the process of Alignment.
This article covers:
- What is Alignment?
- How to Align a Goal with Other People
- How to Allow and Request People Align with your Goal
- To Add Your Goal to an Existing Shared Parent Goal
What is Alignment?
Within the platform, allowing and requesting people align with your goal means sharing it with others, allowing them to contribute by creating their own goals. It does not refer to creating and assigning goals directly to employees; however, you can also create goals for your direct employees.
Goals on the platform can be aligned both up, down, and across reporting lines; for example, a manager could set a goal such as a strategic objective for their department - employees could then create their own more specific goals which when completed would align with the overarching strategic objective. Similarly, an employee can share a goal with their manager; for example, if their goal requires specific assistance from their manager. In this way, their manager can create a goal for themselves based on the employee's goal. For further information on the alignment of goals please see the Goal Alignment article here.
How to Align your Goal with Other People and the Organisation Objectives
1. When creating a new goal, within the Alignment section select Choose Alignment to align your goal with others in the business that have shared their goals with you, or the Organisation Objectives set by the business.
2. Choose the Org Objective or Parent goal shared with you that you would like to align your goal to and select Apply.
How to Allow and Request People to Align with your Goal
1. When creating a new goal, within the Alignment section Search for the people you wish to share your goal with so that when they are creating their goal they will be notified by email and be able to Choose Alignment to view the goal you have shared with them.
- You can share goals both up, down, and across the organisation structure.
- The people that you share your goal with will be able to align their goal to yours and similarly request that others align with their goal creating a tree of goal alignment.
Tip: When creating a goal you intend to share, it is important to include sufficient information for the person who will be using it as their Parent Goal. They will need this information to effectively set their corresponding goal. The information you include in the ‘description’ text box of your goal and subsequent measurements is what the corresponding goal setter will have visible to them as well as the category and due date.
To Add Your Goal to an Existing Shared Parent Goal
1. When creating a new Goal, select Choose Alignment, and in the align with drop-down select the parent goal you wish to align with.
- You can only do this for organisation objectives or for goals that have been shared with you.
2. You can also subsequently share a Goal that has been shared with you, to ensure alignment, by following the steps above.
Employees can see the parent objective that their Goal is contributing to (i.e., the Goal directly above them).
If they have shared their Goal with other people, this will also be visible. If a Goal is shared down multiple times, the Goal owner will be able to see each contributory Goal that feeds up into their own objective.