How to Measure Aspirational Goals

It’s common for strategic goals to embody aspirations like world-class, best-practice, leading-edge, best-in-class, and world-leading. But how do we measure such goals in a way that helps us turn them from aspiration to actuality?

Aspirational goals aim for more than just incremental improvement or increased stability in volatile times. They boldly aim to “be the best”, like these:

• “Deliver world-leading research and world-class education” – from a university
• “Build a world-class curriculum” – from a national education department
• “To be the best city in the country” – a city council (local government)
• “Maximize our value as a leading practices federal agency” – federal government agency
• “To be the safest industrial company in the world” – motion and control engineering company
• “Grow as an aerospace and defence leader” – aerospace manufacturing company
• “To be a global healthcare leader, delivering outstanding outcomes in health and education” – healthcare and hospital service
• “A bold vision for [our community] to be the healthiest people in the world” – state government health department
• “To be a world-leading institute in the field of infection and immunity” – research, laboratory and diagnostic services

Aspirational goals have their place, particularly in sectors seeking breakthrough change. But like many strategic goals that are written with the best intentions to inspire excellence, aspirational goals are also a challenge to meaningfully measure. And we all know that without meaningful measurement, excellence will remain elusive.

There are exceptions, but they are few. For the aspirational goal above, “To be the best city in the country“, is measured deliberately and thoughtfully using a recognised Social Progress Index. This index is made up of 57 measures (they call them drivers) such as child mortality rate, equal access to quality education, satisfaction with water quality, political rights and vulnerable employment. It’s not a light-weight metric that can be brainstormed over morning coffee and cake.

Most organisations with aspirational goals, however, don’t have meaningful ways to measure them. For the aspirational goal above, “Deliver world-leading research and world-class education”, the measures they chose for research were Annual Research Income and Research Income per Staff FTE. These are both easy to measure, but neither provide direct evidence of how world-leading their research actually is.

Poor measures of aspirational goals are usually caused by two common mistakes we make when trying to measure them:

1. We seek measures that evidence the achievement of the aspiration, asking questions like “how do we measure ‘best practice’?” or “how do we measure ‘leading edge’?”
2. We overlook the need to detail the specific performance results that most need to lift in the thing in which we want to achieve best practice or leading edge or world class status.

Two shifts in how we approach the measurement of aspirational goals can lead us to much more relevant measures that also direct our efforts to the changes that will make the biggest leaps toward achieving those aspirations. These shifts are:

1. Separate the aspiration from the performance results.
2. Detail the performance results that need to improve.

Shift 1: Separate the aspiration from the performance results.

Asking “how do we measure best practice/leading edge/world class?” is the wrong question.

It’s the wrong question, because it puts our attention on the level of performance we’re aiming for, and not on the performance results we need to improve to reach that level. The right question becomes clearer after we can see that aspirational goals have two parts: the level of performance, and the performance results to lift to that level.

To illustrate, here are a few examples from the list of aspirational goals above:

• “Build a world‑class curriculum” – world-class is the level of performance, and then there will be a set of performance results related directly to how a curriculum should be evaluated.
• “To be the best city in the country” – best in the country is the level of performance, and then there would be many performance results that collectively define what an entire city should excel in to be the best.
• “To be the safest industrial company in the world” – in the world is the level of performance, and there would be a collection of essential performance results for safety in an industrial company.
• “To be a global healthcare leader, delivering outstanding outcomes in health and education” – global leader is the level of performance, and then we’d need a collection of performance results that define excellence in healthcare.
  • Notice that this goal might actually be two goals. The first is the aspirational goal to be a global healthcare leader, then the second goal is to deliver outstanding outcomes in health and education. This second goal may or may not be included in the performance results that define excellence in healthcare.

We don’t try to measure the aspirational level of performance, because it’s unclear what we’re quantifying. And we can’t know what we’re quantifying until we can articulate the performance results that define the thing we want to “be the best” at.

Shift 2: Detail the performance results that need to improve.

It could be said that those aspirational goals are not really goals at all. Goals need to be specific and measurable, otherwise it’s near impossible to recognise, in the real world, whether we’re achieving them or not. But as aspirational themes or intentions, they certainly give a concise context to one or more specific and measurable goals that can collectively raise the organisation to that aspiration.

Now that we’ve separated the aspiration from the performance results, in Shift 1, we can see how this can work. Consider again this aspirational intention, from a research, laboratory and diagnostic services institute:

• “To be a world-leading institute in the field of infection and immunity”

The right question to ask would be “what are the most important performance results that define excellence in the field of infection and immunity?” It’s the right question, because without understanding what specifically such an institute must excel at, there is no way to evaluate or judge – or even monitor – their progress toward becoming world-leading.

Answering this question will lead to many performance results, but might include performance results something like these (note these are written using the ‘future facts‘ grammar we often use in PuMP):

• Research always builds on or adds to the body of knowledge in infection and immunity.
• Research findings always lead directly to improved patient care.
• Diagnostics are always accurate first time.
• Diagnostics are turned around quickly.
• New treatments decrease infectious disease occurrence.

While all these performance results, and at least several more, would define excellence in the field of infection and immunity, not all these would necessarily require improvement in order for an institute to be world-leading. They may already excel at some or many of these. This brings them to a few strategic decisions to make:

1. What is the current performance level for each of these performance results that defines world-leading?
2. Which of our performance results fall short of the world-leading performance level?
3. To become world-leading, which of these performance results should become goals to measure and improve?
4. Which measures best evidence our chosen performance results? [More on choosing measures here.]
5. What targets for these measures will represent world-leading performance levels?

Even for the city council that measures their aspirational intention “To be the best city in the country” with the Social Progress Index would need to prioritise. They couldn’t improve all 57 of the measures that comprise that index, along with other important goals in their strategic direction. They’d almost certainly need to prioritise their time and resources using the five steps above.

Aspirational goals aren’t easy to achieve.

Clearly, a downside to setting aspirational goals (perhaps we should start calling them intentions, instead) is that they can unpack into a surprisingly large number of specific goals to measure and improve. If an organisation is already well on the way to becoming world class, best practice, leading edge or “the best”, then the number of goals will be smaller. This means they can bring their aspirational intentions to actuality sooner.

However, for organisations that haven’t defined what excellence means in their industry, or haven’t much of a track record in measuring such results, they will have an overwhelming large number of specific goals to pursue. This means bringing aspirational intentions to actuality will take a much longer time. But by starting with the right questions, those five listed above, they won’t waste anymore time.