Goals are important to serve as a compass so you know where and how to steer your boat. Without goals, your boat (or team) will set sail with no direction and with no goals to reach.

A lot of organizations are adopting Google’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) methodology to set goals. I find this method helpful and have used it in my own work.

Objectives: The process begins by setting high-level objectives. Set a few goals, two, maybe three, for your esports organization. Separate them by department, team, or game. The idea is that every player, team, manager, and volunteer knows which goals they are working toward in order to know when and how successful they are.

Ideally, your objectives should align with your vision statement. While objectives are high level, they shouldn’t be too vague. For example, avoid saying, “Have the best team ever” or, “Create a better website.” Here are some good examples:

• Add a social media manager to our team
• Open our headquarters at X location
• Increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by 30%

Key Results: Key results are the other half of your OKRs. These are the tactics you engage in to meet your objectives. They need to be measurable  so you know if and when you have achieved your goal/objective. Do not write too many, three or four should be good enough. Here are some examples of key results that would be connected to the first objective, “Add a social media manager to our team.”

• Attend one hiring fair this quarter
• Create one blog post about hiring
• Use LinkedIn to reach out to five potential candidates

You will want your OKRs to be transparent. This may feel odd if it is your first time using OKRs, but this is where their strength lies. Everyone will be on the same page and understand what each other is working on and more importantly, why they are doing it. It also helps you to align your goals  with your core values and your vision statement.

One final word of advice. During the strategic planning phase, make sure to include a diverse group of employees in the process. In other words, don’t limit these planning sessions to just your executive team. When different levels of employees are involved in this process, they see the workplace as “theirs” as opposed to it belonging to management. It’s a win-win for everyone.

All in all, if this is too technical or overwhelming, think of goals this way:

You are a person, you want to go sailing. You go to the harbor, and jump on a boat. Unless you set a goal, you will just be sailing around, not going anywhere; at worst, you will crash and have to swim back to land. Goals will help you and your organization move towards finding success and creating a profitable business. (Source: https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/steps/introduction/)

Your job now, go set goals for your esports organization