A Dave and Dharm DeMystify Special Series - From Vision to Impact with Shargiil Bashir

FROM VISION TO IMPACT EP 3 : SET CLEAR GOALS

• Dave Wallace • Season 1 • Episode 3

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This episode emphasises the importance of establishing clear, well-defined sustainability goals as the guiding force for organisations to ensure they are moving towards meaningful environmental and social change. Shargiil advocates for the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) to ensure goals are both effective and accountable.

There is a distinction between short-term goals (achievable within 12 months) that provide quick wins and build momentum, medium-term objectives (2-3 years) that enable systemic changes, and long-term ambitions (5+ years) that embody enduring sustainability commitments. Goals should not only have quantitative metrics but also qualitative objectives, with examples including fostering inclusivity and enhancing community engagement.

The benefits of SMART goals are clear, as they lead to improved focus and prioritisation, alignment with stakeholder expectations, and demonstrate tangible progress. It is also important to stress that goals must align with an organisation's vision, mission, and core values, whilst addressing material ESG impacts identified through comprehensive assessments.

It is important to establish yearly targets with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be integrated into management scorecards and potentially linked to executive remuneration.

Successful implementation requires clear ownership, adequate resource allocation, risk assessment, and robust monitoring processes. 

Effective goal-setting transforms sustainability from aspiration into measurable, accountable action, positioning organisations as responsible players in the evolving sustainability landscape whilst ensuring continuous improvement and stakeholder trust.



SPEAKER_02:

We need to take this big goal and break it down to some smaller, tangible things that we can all work with, right? Because if you're sitting... in a leadership position or in a small team where you're leading something, you can start seeing, okay, where do I fit into this big 2050 ambition, right?

SPEAKER_00:

In episode three, Shargill and Dave focus on the importance of setting goals. Shargill talks through the difference between short-term targets, medium-term goals, and longer-term aspirations, and why it's critical to ensure that goals are smart.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to today's episode. And this time we're going to be delving into chapter three of your book, Shajil, which is about setting clear goals. And I just wanted to start by reading the quote that you give at the top of the page on chapter three. I've been really sort of mulling it over and thinking about it. It's a great quote, which are goals may give focus, but dreams give power. make sure yours are both clear and compelling. And that's John C. Maxwell. It's a beautiful quote. But anyway, let's kind of dive in. So what's the importance of goals? Let's start with that. So it's a

SPEAKER_02:

little bit like setting goals is the same like setting a sail without knowing your destination, right? You can go anywhere and you're not going to get exactly where you want to go, right? That's why it's so important to set very clear goals. to say how you're gonna get there, right? And in this chapter, what I found was really, really important to convey is that you can make all kinds of strategies and priorities and directions, but if you don't set a goal, what is it that you're trying to achieve, you're not gonna make any difference and you're not gonna get any closer to where you want to be. So that's, first of all, why it's very important to set goals. And what's also important is to split your goals up a little bit, right? So what I really talk about in the book is to say, you need to have ambitions, goals, and KPIs, right? So ambitions for me is a little bit linking it to the great quote you just highlighted. It's a little bit about linking it to the dream. What is it that you want to achieve? That's your ambition, right? And I typically say is that ambitions are three to five years down the line, right? It's something that you look out and you said, it would be great to be there, right? And then you say that that's my ambition. And then the goal is, okay, so what's the steps I need to take to get to that point specifically? And then you develop it down to some specific KPIs that can be the yearly measure. You say, okay, this year I'm going to achieve this, this, and this, right? This is my target to get to that point. So for me, the goals are super important. And what helps is that you have this kind of a view of setting the ambition, having the goals and operationalizing this with some very specific operational KPIs, right? If you just imagine a pyramid, you will have something that is on the high top, which is your ambition. That's your strategic direction. You have your goal, which is kind of your tactical way of getting there. And then you have your operational KPI, which is in the bottom of the pyramid, which is basically the foundation you're laying all the time that it's going to get you to that point.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean it sounds like it's a bit like a focusing as well isn't it you know levels of fidelity so I guess ambitions can be a bit more ethereal in terms of that's what we're looking to do but as you kind of come down into the targets then you get that fidelity of this is what we're going to do and how we're going to measure that is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And you need to somehow, again, you need to be able to see that vision, right? When you're setting the strategy, when you're presenting it to your leadership, you're presenting it to your board, or you're discussing it with some of your stakeholders, you need to know that's the direction I want to go to, right? I want to become the most sustainable company. or this is the direction I want to take. Okay, if that's the direction you want to take, what are the goals that is going to get us there? What are the things we will need to do in the next three to five years that will help us become the most sustainable company if that's the ambition you have set? And then you break it down. If I want to then become the most sustainable company, those are the goals I need to achieve. What will I need to do specifically in the next 12 months to go there? It might be that I need to reduce my emission by this and this, or it might be I need to change the whole packaging system. We are using it to become more recycling packaging. And it might be phase one is going to happen this year. Phase two is going to happen next year and so on. So it's just about breaking these things up step by step to get to that point specifically.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I guess what you've then got is sort of short, medium and long-term goals, aims, ambitions. I mean, I really like the way you talk about ambition goals and targets as well, because I think that's really helpful in terms of sort of bringing this to life. How do you balance the sort of those short-term kind of targets with the long-term ambitions as well? If you sort of start with the distance and then come back, that you're going to be able to achieve things perhaps in the short term, which obviously will have an impact on the long term. But actually, the long term may change, I guess, at some point as well. So how do you balance between short and long term?

SPEAKER_02:

It's a really good question, Dave. And I think, honestly, that's one of the biggest challenges you face, that how do you make that balance, right? Because as you mentioned, your long-term ambition might change, right? Because of the circumstances around you, it might be internally from the organization you work in and so on. But that's why it's important that you break it down by step by step to say, what's going to get it there? So if we need to be at this point over the next five, 10, 15 years. Like we discussed the net zero a lot, right? Net zero by 2050. Most companies are, I don't think any company or any governments have plans that go to 2050, right? But if you had the ambition of becoming net zero by 2050, we can say, okay, then what's the goal we need to set, right? So there's a couple of things we can do. We can reduce our emissions specifically. We can start investing in renewable energy as an example that can support us to get to net zero. So we know some of those levers are, and then you start building, okay, then what are the specific KPIs I can get to from that perspective? And that's how you need to break it down. You need to take this big goal and break it down to some smaller tangible things that we can all work with, right? Because if you're sitting in a leadership position or in a small team where you're leading something, you can start seeing, okay, where do I fit into this big 2050 ambition, right? I'm fitting in by I'm helping us recycling or I'm helping reducing waste or I'm helping with getting renewable energy sources into the organization. So we all play a small role in this big organization or any kind of organization to say, what is it that we are contributing it specifically that is going to get us to this ambition, this dream we have set out there to get us to that point. And I think that's why splitting that up is very important. And the question you make is, which I think is really good, is about what does it take, right? Because sometimes we have to make some trade-offs. And some of these trade-offs might not be easy, right? Because it might be that pursuing this long-term journey might require you to do some short-term trade-offs right now, right? And this could be something like, okay, even though they have an ambition of net zero by 2050, but right now I need to get new cars into my fleet. And I simply cannot afford to take electric vehicles, or electric vehicles might not be available for the kind of fleet I need. So I'm willing to compromise now to say, I'm just going to take a normal car that is run on fossil fuel for the next two years. But that does not change my ambition. But right now, I'm just not able to do this. I need to make that trade off myself right now. And I think that's important to remember, because that's why that long-term ambition is so important, because Things change from a year-to-year basis. It could be some circumstances around you. It might be that some regulation changes or something else happened that you're not able to do exactly what you had planned to do over the next 12 to, let's say, 36 months. But then you still have the long-term ambition, and then you're adjusting those short-term KPIs that can still support you to achieve your long-term goal, but at the same time help you to do the right decision on the short-term that can support maybe profitability or the right direction of your company or employee well-being or other things that you might need to make a trade-off on.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's a really interesting point. But I guess what you're saying is you're doing this consciously. You're making those decisions. rather than sort of slipping into them, which I think is the danger around a lot of this stuff. I mean, I think the other thing that is really interesting about this setup is... But actually, you know, for employees and stakeholders, the long term can seem very distant. And breaking things down in the way that you have done, you can set targets. And, you know, when you achieve those targets, you can sort of celebrate those targets and then remind people about the long term vision as well. So this is about bringing people along as well, isn't

SPEAKER_02:

it? Very much so. Very much so. I think it was in the first chapter we discussed this about having that leadership commitment and where we discussed the burning platform, right? And you need to be able to then also link the small things you are doing to that burning platform. If the burning platform is that, you know, the challenges we are seeing in the world around us, whether it's related to environmental or social challenges, if those are the burning platforms, what are the things we are doing that is supporting from that perspective, right? This might be reducing our footprint, right? Reducing emissions to support the environmental challenges or us as a company might face some challenges that we need to address. And if the company needs to address those challenges, what are the steps we take? But also from a social impact perspective, if we are seeing that in an organization that the employee engagement is falling and that's our immediate burning platform, then what are the KPIs that we are doing to address that, right? It might be that, you know, if remuneration is one of the biggest challenges, well, we as a company cannot just afford to give everybody 5%, 10% salary increase, right? Very few companies will be able to do that. But what are then the other things we could start working on increasing that engagement, it might be finding better work life balance to our employees, or it might be some other initiatives we could take to support them from that perspective. And that's where those goals are so important to say that, okay, you know, we need to make some trade offs to achieve that bigger picture. And things are not always as simple as to do right, because then everybody will meeting all their targets and dreams all the time but that doesn't happen and that's why you need to split those and set those targets and it's very important i think i write about this in the book it's about you know using the smart framework which is basically about

SPEAKER_01:

i was just about to ask about smart

SPEAKER_02:

so yeah fantastic Yeah, and this is basically about making sure that your goals are specific, they're measurable, they're achievable, relevant, and there's a time bound somehow that there's an end of them to achieve them. And this is very important because, first of all, you need to be very specific when you're setting those goals and KPIs that you can say, okay, the goal here is to achieve this and this. And again, the example could be that we need to enhance our employee engagement. That might be something that is very specific. Then you make it measurable. How are we going to measure our employee engagement, as an example? Well, we can measure this through doing a questionnaire, a survey, and so on. how can we achieve this specifically and how do we make it relevant, right? So if all employees are already very happy and that's not a challenge, well, then why are you doing this? You needed to make it relevant to your specific stakeholders from that perspective. And then you make it time bound, right? Is it something you do on a yearly basis, every 12 months, every six months? How do you do it from that perspective? And I think that's so super important to be able to highlight that. And I think in the book, I'm using some examples of how we have seen Unilever do it, how we have seen Apple do it, and so on, where you have really, really big companies, right? And sometimes people think that big organizations have it very easy because they have the resources and so on to do so, but with big companies also comes a lot of complexity, right? Because you have so many different layers, and how do you make sure that somebody in the lower part of the hierarchy of the organization are still feeling that the KPIs they're working on is contributing to the overall goal the board or the leadership of the company has set from that perspective. And I think that is where having the framework like SMART makes it so very helpful to making sure that your goals and KPIs, they're very specific. You can measure them. And it's something that is achievable, right? You don't set unrealistic goals that people already give up before even started, right? And I think that's why it's so super important to have that framework and it can help small organizations and it can help large organizations. And I think that's something that is really, really positive.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it's a lovely framework because it's so understandable and I think so actionable as well. And I guess, you know, it also, like you allude to it in terms of some of the things you've been saying, but it also makes sure that your goals align with the overall business strategy as well. So we've got to make sure that in all of this, that there's a link with that business strategy, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And I think that framework exactly helps you with that, right? It helps taking something that is very complex, very long-term that a lot of us understand and can vision, but help you break it down to something that makes it very concrete that all of us can understand and start saying, okay, this is my role. This is how I can contribute to this specifically. And I think that's quite uniqueness of that framework and also helps you make sure that you are contributing and something you are able to measure and follow on, right? Because one of the key things is that how do you measure the progress? And that's super important. And that's why these KPIs can help you, right? Because if you just say, okay, once a year, we're going to say, did you do well? Did you achieve your KPI? Did you not achieve your KPI? But that's where it's so important that you can keep measuring the progress from month to month, quarter to quarter, or whatever the frequency might be needed for that specific goal is something that you can measure and you can assess how we as an organization are moving and making sure that we are supporting the business strategy that has been set.

SPEAKER_01:

That's really interesting. And then it's sort of all about continuous improvement as well. The framework gives you that flexibility to ensure that you're able to course correct as, as you say, if you don't sort of meet KPIs or the world changes around you, you're able to kind of improve course correct and change things. I guess as a framework, it's really critical that people understand that nothing's set in stone. This is about making sure that you're sort of heading towards your ambition, but sometimes that will mean that you have to change things, isn't

SPEAKER_02:

it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think if you combine the first part we spoke about, having something that is long-term, medium-term, short-term, with the framework of smart, where it is something that is very specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, if you combine those two things, I think you have this uniqueness that gives you the flexibility, but also the focus, right? Because you have the focus on the overarching goal all the time, and then you have something that is flexible and something you can work with, right? So because the circumstances around you are changing, but then you can adjust your KPI in order still to achieve that long-term goal, right? And the good part of this is exactly as you mentioned, Dave, right? Because it might be that This year I achieved this. Now you don't need to think about setting whole, you know, foundationally new KPIs because you still know what your overarching long-term goal is. So now you just adjust or change your KPIs that are still in line with your overall ambition, right? And I think that's the really beauty of this, that it's not going to be something totally different or you suddenly change the whole everything. It might happen from once in a while when you change the strategic direction, but overarching, you will continue optimizing and changing your KPIs to still be in line with your long-term ambition. And that's why combining long-term, medium-term, short-term together with something that is very concrete makes it so, I think it comes so well together. and create something that becomes very tangible for the individual, but also from an organization that you can see how are we progressing towards our overarching long-term ambition.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. I mean, so you talked briefly about Unilever as an example. Could you just give us a thumbnail of how Unilever have managed to kind of balance all of these things?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, Unilever is a great example. They have done so much on sustainability. They were one of the first leaders coming from a leadership perspective to really focusing on the topic of sustainability and truly embedding it across their organization. They also, as an example, one of the things they did was really helpful was that they linked their leadership remuneration to specific goals as well. So I think that's some very good examples because today we still see a lot of leadership across different companies that does not link their remuneration to the KPIs that are set. Not necessarily sustainability KPIs, but KPIs in general. And Unilever did this very specifically. They said that they set some specific KPIs on sustainability from that perspective that was very measurable. And then it was that, okay, if we achieve this goal specifically and so on, that was helping the organization. It was helping the company. to the benefit of your shareholders, your stakeholders, your customers, your employees, and so on. Well, if you manage to achieve those, the remuneration for the leadership will increase as well, right? And they try to embed that across their organization as well. And I think that's a really, really good use and incentivizing to achieve those goals as well. And that's only possible once you make your goals very specific And again, as going back to the whole smart framework, right? That you make them measurable and you make them achievable. And even more importantly, you as an individual can see how is it that my goal is linking to the overarching ambition of this organization. And that's really what makes it helpful. And plus, it gives you a personal benefit as well that you can see that, you know, if I'm helping my organization is benefiting them at the same time is also helping me financially from that perspective. So I think finding that and leading and today, luckily, many more companies do that and implementing that kind of structure. But I think by them and Showing that leadership, I think, has helped a lot of companies form that and put sustainability on the top of the leadership because suddenly it becomes a link to their remuneration and gives that extra incentives.

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's really interesting. It was Paul Pullman, wasn't it, who kind of got this going. And I think he's become a real champion for sustainability. And it's fascinating to see how a large company, a conglomerate like Unilever, they've managed to tie all of these things together. So look, I think it's been really clear and interesting. So thank you so much. I guess from a practical point of view, if there's companies out there who want to really start setting goals, what's the first thing they should be doing today? I

SPEAKER_02:

think very practically, you need to start, I think the simple thing is, what's your long-term ambition? What are the goals that are going to get you there? And what could be the KPIs that are going to help you? And I think in order to get started, in the book, I've mentioned examples of what those long-term Ambitions, medium-term goals, short-term KPIs could look like from environmental, social, and governance-related topics. So a little bit of inspiration that, you know, what could some of these ambitions and goals look like? So you can try to work from your own perspective. This could be linked to recycling, waste. It could be to the social factors for the employees, customers, and so on. So I try to provide some different examples that, you know, I found through my research of different companies, what kind of KPIs had they set, and try to give some examples in the book. So if you really want to get started on this, you can find some inspiration of what some of the other companies are doing, either through their website or in the book specifically, you will be seeing some of those KPIs and long-term ambitions, what those could look like. So it can help you find some inspiration that what's relevant exactly for your team organization within your industry that could help you get started. Thank you so much. That's been brilliant. Thank you so much for having me, Dave.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for tuning in to Dave and Dom Demystify. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe and tune in next time as we take another topic and demystify it.