Everyone needs goals. As an IT leader, it will be your responsibility to help your team set individual and team goals. Although this sounds simple enough at first, in practice it is often a bit tricky. The most important question you will have to answer is how you want to set goals: top-down or bottom-up?
The top down approach
Say hello to “Big Brother” – he will set the goals for you and your team. The top-down approach to goal setting is where your company’s top management identifies the goals they want you and your team to work toward. They then ask you to assign these goals to your team members.
When goals are set in this way, the company has generally identified a broad set of goals that it would like to achieve in the near future. Your task is then to take these broad goals and create goals for your team members that are aligned with what the company is trying to accomplish.
Although it may seem a bit overbearing at first glance, this approach is actually well-suited to certain situations. Specifically, there are three types of IT workers who need to be assigned goals from the top down: those who need close supervision to do their jobs, new team members, and any team member who doesn’t know or understand what the goal is. the company. goals are.
The bottom-up approach
As a manager, you’d think the bottom-up approach to creating goals for team members would be easier than the top-down approach, but it turns out it’s not. In the bottom-up approach, your team members create their own goals.
Once this is done, it becomes your responsibility to combine these various goals into a unified set of goals for the team. As you can well imagine, this can be quite a challenge for any manager.
There are certain types of team members for whom the bottom-up method of goal creation is appropriate. Specifically, those team members who determine their own work, who understand the company’s goals and strategy to achieve those goals, and who understand their role in the company.
It’s about the purchase
Regardless of which of these two methods is used to set your team’s goals, it will be important for everyone on the team to agree to both your personal goals and those of the team. As an IT leader, it’s your job to make sure this happens.
The best way to gain buy-in from your team, no matter how you choose to set goals, is to get everyone involved in your goals. Participation creates a sense of ownership, and as an IT leader, that’s what you want from your team.
If you’ve used the top-down method of assigning goals to team members, it can be a bit difficult to gain buy-in. However, taking the time to talk with team members about their goals, why they’re important, and how they relate to the success of the company can foster a sense of ownership.
What all this means to you
Goals are a critical tool IT leaders need to point the way for their teams. The best way to create those goals has been an ongoing debate since the beginning of time.
The two most common methods used today are top-down and bottom-up. In the top-down method, IT leaders assign goals related to business objectives to team members. In the complementary approach, team members create their own goals and the IT leader uses them to create a set of team goals.
In the real world, a combination of top-down and bottom-up methods are often used to create goals for IT teams. As an IT leader, it’s your job to make sure that not only are goals created, but that each goal also has an owner who will be responsible for ensuring it’s achieved. Good luck!
