As a company, we used to sit down every year for a full-day offsite meeting and set goals.

“This year we want to double our membership” or
“Get profiled in 3 major press outlets” or
“Increase revenue by 25%.”

After a few years of this, and especially after the pandemic, we realized that most of our goals were arbitrary.

Why not triple membership? Or 5 pieces of press? 10? Double revenue?

Not only were they arbitrary, but most of our goals were too big in scope and out of our control. We can’t control the outcome and we certainly can’t predict what the world or even our lives, let alone our company and community will look like in 12 months.

So we stopped to think about why we set goals.
Why do we set goals? (Why do you set goals?)

After debate and discussion on the topic, we came to the conclusion that a goal is a means for determining where we should put our energy– what area we should focus on and have some metric of determining if we were successful or not. In short, our goals set our priorities and direction.

So then, we thought, why not just determine a limited number of priorities? We chose 3 for the year and added specific meetings to discuss and work on those projects every week.

This past year, our priorities were:

1. community and product maintenance

2. membership growth via marketing

3. expand corporate offerings

That is enough for us to know where to aim our attention. We’re not a company of super competitive people that want to be the best at any cost. If we realized we were 10% short of our revenue goal, we’re not going to be working 100 hours weeks to hustle and make it happen. That’s not who we are and that’s not what Caveday is about.

This approach also makes us more agile as the world changes, allowing us to shift our focus intentionally without feeling like we’re abandoning a goal we set months ago. That agility helps us play the long game of running a community and a company.

It’s a better fit for us than more traditional goal-setting. That doesn't mean it’s right for you. But it’s an alternative worth trying.

The challenge is that traditional goals are great for having a concrete metric to measure success. Without that quantifiable benchmark, it can be hard to know how you should adjust. For us, one thing that works is having a regular process of retro-ing projects that includes objective outcomes and data as well as subjective results and learnings. We’ve also chosen to set some goals on specific projects. Using past data, we can set incremental goals on a sale, marketing effort, or press.

It’s always worth questioning the system you use and make sure that it’s as effective as it was when you first implemented it. If not, time to make some adjustments.

Good luck out there…

Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.