Goals and Objectives
A flexible, realistic, and graph-aware approach
The Dotwork Starter Pack offers a flexible, realistic, and graph-aware approach to goals. It's designed to reflect how teams actually work—not how we wish they worked in a perfect world.
Principles Behind Goal Design
- Goals don't need to follow a single cadence. Some may align with sprints or quarters; others may span a half or a year. You can set goals aligned with a rhythm—or start one at any moment based on the work.
- Goals come in many forms. Some are anchored in moving key metrics. Others track progress toward major milestones or desired impacts. And some are what we call anti-goals: intentional statements about what not to do.
- Be careful with cascading. Traditional goal systems often mirror the org chart, moving from general to specific. But real work doesn't always flow that way. Overly rigid cascades stifle learning and reduce autonomy.
- Don't conflate goals with performance management. We've seen too many teams implement OKRs, only to tie them tightly to evaluation and incentives—losing the original purpose of goals as shared sense-making tools.
How Dotwork Handles Goals
The Dotwork Starter Pack introduces a graph-based system that lets you define, link, and evolve goals across time horizons and types of work.
1. Align Goals with Cycles (If You Want)
You can choose to align goals with shared cycles like:
- 1–2 weeks
- 6 weeks
- 1 quarter
- 1 half
- 1 year
This structure helps teams coordinate status collection and sync-up rituals—but you're not locked into it. Use cycles where it helps. Skip them where it doesn't.
2. Set Goals Anytime, Relate Them Freely
You can also create goals on demand and nest or relate them however you'd like. Want to define a "milestone" goal that rolls into a larger quarterly objective? You can. Want to mark something as "contributes to" a company-level outcome? You can do that too.
3. Build Goal Graphs, Not Cascades
Because goals are objects in the graph, they connect automatically to work, bets, and metrics. For example:
- An Opportunity → Option → Bet → Experiment chain will inherit upstream goals unless you override them.
- You can also attach goals to business outcomes, learning goals, or structural changes—whether or not they map to work in flight.
This lets you think of your goals not as a rigid tree—but as a navigable goal graph, with branches, milestones, dependencies, and learning loops all traceable.
Best Practice: Focus on What Teams Can Influence
We encourage teams to ground their goals in:
- Movement of actionable inputs
- Bet-level metrics
- Clear capabilities they aim to improve
This keeps the focus on things within a team's sphere of control—not just abstract, lagging metrics.
In Dotwork, You Can:
- Connect goals to each other (e.g., "contributes to," "milestone toward")
- Define and view goal graphs across time horizons and artifacts
- Link goals to any object: teams, bets, experiments, scopes, drivers, impacts
- Tag goals with cycles (quarter, half, etc.) or keep them free-floating
- Specify one or more metrics for each goal (quant or qual)
- Track confidence intervals and trend lines over time
- Attach OKR-style targets to any goal and link them to metrics
- View beautiful goal dashboards—with graphs, link maps, and live data
- Surface inherited goals from upstream opportunities or strategies
Goal Taxonomy
Overarching/Primary Goal
Overarching/Primary Goals are long-term, descriptive, compelling, and paint broad brushstrokes. They must be specific enough to draw a reasonable box around the effort without forcing premature convergence and solutioning. These map to "objectives" in textbook OKRs.
"Maintain a healthy goal weight through sustainable habits, feeling strong, energized, and confident in my body while fostering a positive relationship with food and exercise."
"Expand and strengthen the Local Advocate Program to build a grassroots network of passionate beekeepers who promote our products, share insights, and foster community engagement."
Target Goals
Target Goals emphasize hitting a target or threshold by a certain date. Hitting this target should be a big moment and cause for celebration instead of a transient milestone. Yes, you might enter a new phase—for example, trying to keep a metric below a threshold—but the target is more than just a stepping stone.
"Hit 150 lbs by June 1st."
"Increase 90-day retention rate from 60% to 75% by December 31st, focusing on improved onboarding experiences and proactive customer support during the first month."
Anti-goals (aka NOKRs)
Anti-goals (aka NOKRs) explicitly state what you aren't trying to do. They help set expectations and clarify your strategy. A good exercise for setting anti-goals is to ask, "What might someone reasonably assume might happen because of our work that will likely NOT happen?"
"No diet plans that eliminate entire food groups (e.g., no-carb diets)."
"We are not going to attempt to shift our in-person community events to online events, despite their higher costs, because the in-person format fosters deeper connections and trust that are critical for our beekeeper community."
Continuous, Progress-Oriented Goals
Continuous, Progress-Oriented Goals are helpful when you are chipping away at something and want to ensure regular progress. They are time-based and use a consistent period.
"Lose an average of 1 lb per week over the next 3 months."
"Refactor and update 10 legacy UI components per month to align with the Nectar design system, prioritizing high-traffic and customer-facing features. Assess impact after six months."
Milestone-Oriented Goals
Milestone-Oriented Goals cover important points along the journey. It is important to have meaningful milestones. Teams often fall into the trap of specifying milestones that don't mean much. Instead, focus on key inflection points that signify big risk/impact profile shifts.
"Weigh 170 lbs by March 1st, representing a 10 lb weight reduction."
"Successfully onboard the 20th high-touch customer by March 15th, informing and streamlining the onboarding process and reducing risks associated with scaling to lower-touch workflows."
Process-Oriented Goals
Process-Oriented Goals focus on key habits, behaviors, and activities—the "inputs" that we hypothesize will generate the "outputs" (or outcomes) we desire. If you commit to reassessing their efficacy later, it is OK if these goals feel prescriptive and specific.
"Walk 10,000 steps daily, track meals consistently, and include a protein-rich snack to support energy levels, limit eating out to twice per week."
"Conduct at least five customer calls per week with at least two team members present on each call to promote shared learning, alignment, and deeper customer understanding."
Guardrail/Counterbalancing Goals
Guardrail/Counterbalancing Goals prevent optimizing for one outcome at the expense of something else. These goals answer, "While we are trying to achieve X, what must we ensure we don't negatively impact?"
"Keep total caloric deficit under 1,500 calories for any three-day period."
"While optimizing new customer acquisition through increased marketing spend, maintain a 90-day churn rate below 5%."
Leading/Lagging Goals
Leading/Lagging Goals are helpful when you want to be explicit about a hypothesized relationship between a leading input and a lagging output. Ideally, we want teams to focus on controllable inputs while keeping the end goal (based on the lagging metric) in view.
Leading Goal: "Increase daily protein intake to 100g and strength training sessions to 3 per week."
Lagging Metric: "Gain 5 lbs of lean muscle mass within the next 6 months."
Leading Goal: "Increase local advocate referrals by 15% by June."
Lagging Metric(s): "Increase presence in key markets by 10% through referrals by December. Improve 6-month retention for referred customers to 80%, compared to 70% for non-referred customers."
Maintenance Goals
Maintenance Goals make sure you sustain your progress and gains. They are useful for avoiding regression and making sure your wins stick. You might also think of these as perpetual counterbalancing goals.
"Maintain an average of 8 hours of sleep per night to support recovery and overall health."
"Ensure the Hive Insights Dashboard, launched earlier this year, continues to deliver value by maintaining at least 80% monthly active usage among customers with 10+ hives."
Project Goals
Project Goals cover situations where you just need to get something done. These are best for when the project is a prerequisite ("We can't achieve outcome X unless we finish Project Y first") or when the Goal is checking a box. When building something to achieve a goal, it's best to classify the project as a milestone because finishing something is a liability/risk until you've achieved the actual outcome.
"Set up a home gym by the end of the month."
"Project Honeycomb! Complete migrating from the legacy MySQL database to a scalable AWS Aurora solution by June 30th, including re-indexing all 5 million customer records."
Adaptive Goals
Adaptive Goals acknowledge that you will likely encounter a lot of unknowns. You are committing to adapt to changed circumstances—keeping some broad principles in mind—but adapting your approach within some sensible boundaries. Adaptive Goals and Counterbalancing Goals go well together, and of course, you can still have targets and milestones.
"Adjust calorie intake and exercise goals weekly based on measurable trends such as weight, energy levels, recovery times, and stress levels while accounting for real-life constraints like social events, travel, or work commitments."
"Continuously monitor and adjust ad spend, landing page performance, and keyword targeting weekly to maintain a steady lead volume of 200 qualified leads per month while ensuring a cost-per-lead below $50."
Exploratory/Learning Goals
Exploratory/Learning Goals are helpful when you know you need to learn more about something. You might have a specific decision in mind or start with a more divergent, exploratory research direction.
"Try three new types of exercise (e.g., yoga, running, weightlifting) to identify what feels most enjoyable and effective."
"Learn how commercial beekeepers assess hive health, including key metrics they prioritize and tools they currently use, to identify opportunities for integrating these metrics into our Hive Insights Dashboard."
Decision-Based Goals (including Pivot/Proceed Goals)
With Decision-Based Goals, you commit to making a decision by a certain time and ideally having a sense of your options. Setting a goal to decide something ahead of time is a great way to counteract the confirmation bias that creeps up once you are in the thick of it.
"Decide by February 1st whether to prioritize aerobic exercise or strength-based training based on fitness goals and weight-loss progress."
"Decide by April 1st whether to introduce a mid-tier pricing plan with advanced hive management features based on pilot program results, cost analysis, and projected retention impact."
Capability-building Goals
Capability-building Goals help build skills, knowledge, or, more generally, "the ability to ____________." They increase one's capacity to achieve future goals.
"Learn how to meal prep effectively and track macros to make healthy eating more efficient."
"Develop the capability to support queen breeding operations for advanced commercial beekeepers by training the support team on best practices and launching dedicated resources by April 30th."