Goals help empower employees to control their performance and development with clear, measurable objectives. Goals allow you to communicate what you are focusing on and define your developmental milestones or share initiatives you are working on that align with the company's priorities.
Difference between objectives and key results
Creating a goal with goal differentiation means creating objectives and key results.
- Objectives are qualitative goals that will inherit the progress of supporting key results or child objectives. Objectives help set the direction for the entire company, department, team, or individual, and are usually aspirational. When creating an objective, you will not have the option to select a measurement due to the nature of objectives.
- Key results are quantitative (#, $, %, binary) goals that measure progress to attainment. Key results help measure what you need to accomplish the objective and are usually metrics-driven and tangible.
Learn how to create key results in How to Create a Key Result with O&KR Differentiation.
Create an objective
There are two places in Lattice where you can create an objective:
- Goal creator
- Goal Explore page
Option 1: Goal creator
Step 1: Navigate to Home > Create goal > Select Objective.
Option 2: Goal Explore page
Step 1: Navigate to Goals > Click Insert objective.
Objective fields: Details
Step 2: Enter an Objective Title.
Step 3 (optional): Write a Description.
You may optionally write a description to remind yourself and your teammates about some details of the goal.
Step 4 (optional): Select a Goal Cycle.
If an admin has created a goal cycle, you may be asked to select a cycle that this objective falls under. This is a time period in which your goals are being worked on. If you have any questions about this, we recommend reaching out to your admin!
Step 5: Establish a Start date.
Select the date the objective is expected to start. This is a required field - You can default to the date of creation by selecting Choose today.
Step 6: Establish a Due Date.
When establishing a due date for the objective, we default to the end of the current quarter or the end of the goal cycle. You may use the date-picker calendar to select another end date in the future.
Step 7: Select Owners.
Most goals created in Lattice are personal goals, owned by one person. However, goals can also be owned by more than one person.
Step 8: Select the goal Type.
Objectives can be for an Individual, a Department, a Group or the Company. Keep in mind, the types of objectives you see will depend upon the permissions your admin has granted you.
Objective fields: Additional information
Step 9: Choose Visibility.
Objectives can be public (visible to the entire company), private (only visible to you, your manager, their managers), or private to selected departments (only visible to goal owners and members of the departments selected).
Step 10 (if cascading goals is enabled): Add a Parent objective or key result.
A parent goal (or a cascading goal) is a way to align your goal with other goals within the organization. Under the "Align to objective or key result" option, search the parent goal that you want to align your goal to. You can align to both objectives and key results.
Please note that parent goals will only be visible if your admin has turned on cascading coals.
Step 11: Set a goal Priority.
You may optionally set a priority for the objective (P1 - P10), which will be displayed next to the goal on certain pages throughout the site. Goals will also be listed in order of priority (P1 first).
Step 12: Select applicable Tags.
Tags are optional but help classify and organize goals. Admins create these!
Step 13 (via the Goal creator page): Add Supported goals.
When creating an objective, add key results or metrics that impact the overall goal. Key results help determine if you are tracking properly against your goal.
- If cascading goals is enabled, you will also be able to add a supporting objective that aligns to your current objective.
- If cascading goals is disabled, you will only see the option to add a key result.
Step 14: Publish or Save Draft.
Goal drafts are visible to the owners and their managers but are not visible to the rest of the company.