With a rich commercial past, Marja Beks joined Treams. A conscious choice. In the past, she worked in organizations where the focus was to a lesser extent on the future. "Management was mainly concerned with the here and now. Because it was so busy, at the moment that was what you could best invest your time in," Marja says. "The economy is doing well, companies are busy, and that's a good excuse for many to focus (only) on everyday tasks instead of development goals and what you're going to do in the future. Time that, for example, you could also put into winning a new client." Sin! At Treams, Marja is constantly setting development goals for the future. But why is it actually so important to set goals? We spoke to her about why it is important to set personal development goals and what it can actually achieve.
Development goals and conversations.
"At the organizations where I have worked in the past, we usually had a conversation at the beginning of the year to set our goals. These were often rock-hard revenue goals. There was less focus on where you yourself wanted to go and how you wanted to develop yourself," Marja says. As manager of her team, she did this herself. She talked to her employees and tried to get them to decide which direction they wanted to go; do they want to go deeper into a particular field or grow into a managerial position? "The will to change was often there at those organizations," Marja continues. "Hey sessions were organized. We sat together in a cottage for 24 hours and brainstormed about where we want to be in 10 years. Super good that was! We had figured out what kind of organization we wanted to become and how we were going to get there. Once back in the office, everyone went back to their daily business and the plans for the future were not actively discussed."
Why is it so important to set goals?
But then why is it so important to be concerned with the future and to set personal development goals? "Setting (development) goals gives you a good idea of where you want to go as an organization, team and employee. When you know what the mission and goals of the organization are, you can link your personal development goals to them," says Marja. "Organizations that don't do this keep running into the same problems. So not only do you miss the development of your employees, you are also constantly putting out fires because you don't know what you are working toward together. And because you don't know what you're working toward together, employees don't know what they still need to develop. Eventually, you'll often find that employees start to walk. Jobs are up for grabs, and just a nice name or a good salary really isn't enough anymore. People want to be able to work on their development. If you as an employer provide opportunities for that, you will win over the rest."
E-book: Setting Goals
How can you set goals in the best way? What kinds of goals are there? And what does goal setting yield? In this e-book, we give you tips&tricks and tools.
Being intentional about setting personal development goals
Standing still is going backwards, and you can't afford that in this rapidly changing world. "I am now for the first time within an organization where they are very conscious about setting (personal) development goals. At Treams, we work in quarters. We know what the organizational goal is and based on that goal we set both development and personal goals every quarter. Per team and per person. At the end of the quarter we evaluate these goals together and make a start for the new quarter. In addition, once every two weeks we have a sprint session where we work towards our goals in small steps and give each other feedback on our development during the quarter. I do believe in having a continuous conversation with each other about this. That really doesn't always have to be an hour, it can also just be in between. For example, you can look at your progress and what you still have to do to achieve a certain goal in your goal overview in Treams, or you can talk about it in the car or at lunch. The important thing is to stop and think about it regularly."
Helping other organizations
"It's cool that I get to help other organizations go through this change. You can want something as management or HR, but your employees also have to get behind it. For them it's a super big change to go from one or two conversations a year to continuous dialogue or asking and giving feedback. A tool like Treams can certainly help them with that, but the offline part is also important. After all, a tool is a means, not the end in itself. Because if you want to make your employees enthusiastic to actually use the tool, you also have to activate it offline. We do this through games, workshops and training sessions, for example. I like to take up that challenge with companies and help them shape their new cycle."