part two · goals & objectives

Goals & Objectives

Translating vision into measurable bets.

A goal is a measurable bet about what would be true if the vision were even partly real. A goal that is not measurable is not a goal. A goal that has no time horizon is not a goal. A goal that has no person whose life would change is not a goal — it is a metric.

Three properties

1. Time-bound. In twelve months — and a date the leadership commits to revisiting.
2. Measurable. A specific signal, defined in the same place the goal is written. Active grading sessions per week, of any length, on the new flow is measurable. Improved grading experience is not.
3. Anchored to a named person. Goals that don't trace to someone whose life is changing decay into vanity metrics within two cycles.

Goals vs objectives vs predictions

Three levels of resolution. They nest.

Level	Time	Owner	Example
Goal	12 months	Leadership	Within 12 months, 80% of grading is done in under 15 minutes.
Objective	1 quarter	PO	Q3: ship the new grading flow to 30% of graders, hit <20-min median.
Prediction	1 cycle	PO + Trio	Gal completes the grading cycle in under 15 minutes — checked 2026-06-01.

Each is the next-most-granular check on the one above. A prediction is the chain's smallest claim. A goal is the chain's largest. They are connected by what would have to be true at each level for the next one up to be true.

How few goals

As few as possible. A team with twelve goals has no goals. A team with three goals has three. A team with one goal that is being honestly held has the cleanest chain.

The corpus default: three goals at the leadership level, no more than six objectives across the team at any time.

How goals fail

Three common shapes.

1. The goal becomes a target. Goodhart's Law. The team starts gaming the measurement. The fix is structural — the goal should be the leading signal, not the lagging one. Use grading sessions completed in under 15 minutes (causal) rather than user satisfaction score with grading (post-hoc).
2. The goal stops being read. It was set in January and no one has looked at it since. Quarterly portfolio review (Volume V Part 9) is the answer.
3. The goal is not connected to a person. Increase MRR by 12% is real, but it is not a goal — it is a constraint. Treat it as such, in service of a goal that names a person.

Tracing a goal to the work

A goal is connected to the chain when:

• Each objective traces to one or more initiatives (Part 3).
• Each initiative has at least one Volume II brief.
• Each brief has at least one prediction.
• Each prediction is checked.
• The cycle's check feeds the model update — and through the model update, eventually into the next goal-setting conversation.

A goal not connected like this is decorative.

What this produces for the rest of the chain

Volume	What it inherits
II	The acceptance test for whether an initiative is worth pursuing — does it move a goal?
III	The slicing constraint — does this slice move an objective by a measurable amount?
IV	The leading signals worth instrumenting.
V	The lagging signal that is read against the goal at the portfolio review.

Part 3 — Initiative Identification →