I’ve been spending a great deal of time lately working on company-wide goals. It is important to keep them simple and memorable. For us, our goals are based on the following items:
- Customer renewal rate – this reflects how well we’re doing providing on-going value to customers, our support team, product enhancements, and overall community
- Recognized revenue – this combines new license revenue, maintenance and support fulfilled (recognized monthly), and services delivered (consulting and training)
- Booked revenue – this reflects how well our sales team is doing, the competitiveness of our software, and the quality of our marketing
The goals are laid out for the current month, quarter, year, and following year. We don’t go further out than the following year (e.g. five year goals) as we like to focus on the most tangible timeframes where we have control.
Individual goals, department goals, and leadership goals build up to the company-wide goals. The company-wide goals are always quantitative whereas the individual and department goals are a combination of quantitative and project goals. With this methodology in place, everyone in the company always knows what we’re working towards and our current progress is reiterated on a consistent basis.
From my point of view, you are describing KPIs, not goals/objectives. (http://alignment.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/target-vs-goal/)
In other words, you are describing how you keep score but not what you’re trying to achieve. For example, not all customers should be renewed (ex: not profitable) and promoting booked/recognized revenue instead of cash collection may cause DSO issues.
As far as connecting company, department, and individual objectives (or KPIs), I would recommend formal methods of alignment through cascading. (http://alignment.wordpress.com/2007/03/24/cascading-satisfaction/)