“SMART” goals, that is, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and time-bound, have their place in organizational leadership. They are certainly useful for closed-ended projects. Yet, what about an open-ended effort like a non-temporary organization? When changing conditions dictate that your organization pivots, are your pre-established SMART goals nimble enough to keep up? I skipped the SMART goals and did something else to lead my organization.
As a weather flight commander for about a dozen people, there are certainly SMART goals that would be tempting to set for my organization. Suppose I set a weather forecast accuracy goal of 90%. What if we achieved a 90% forecast accuracy, but out of those 10% incorrect forecasts, a high-profile mission failed because we did not accurately predict the weather? Can we deem that a success because we met our pre-established goal? And should my flight stop seeking to improve their forecasting skills because we achieved our goal? Or perhaps I could have set a target for all weather briefings to be completed within 2 hours. If that pilot needed her brief in only 1 hour to accomplish her mission, but we provided our briefing in 90 minutes, can we consider ourselves successful because we exceeded our goal, but the overall big picture task failed? We can answer ‘no’ to both of these scenarios. These are just a couple examples of the pitfalls of setting and relying upon SMART goals when you are leading an open-ended effort.
So instead of goals, how did I lead my weather flight? I established what I call my “vectors” and shared them with the flight exactly 30 days after I arrived on station—a technique that I found great success with in prior organizations that I have led. These vectors represent for my unit a combination of goals, priorities, vision, and a standing commander’s intent inspired by the mission command philosophy. Whereas organizations can (or at least should) eventually accomplish identified goals, the vectors will never be finished as long as I am leading the weather flight. And rather than describe an ideal future like a true vision statement, my vectors describe what the weather flight will choose to do today, providing them a framework to take initiative like a commander’s intent. To steal from one of James Altucher’s recent blog posts, these vectors represent “themes over goals.”
Here are the three vectors that have guided my weather flight:
– Proactively provide environmental service. This is the fundamental reason why my weather flight exists and why this appears as the first vector—everything else is subordinate to this. I further clarify this vector by identifying the need for support that is relevant, accurate, timely, and consistent across our products and I sum up the vector with: “own our customers’ decisions.” What would the wing commander want to know if there is a typhoon bearing down on the air base? What questions could a mission commander ask before flying training routes through the mountains? I cannot predict what our supported customers may want from us when Mother Nature throws a curveball, but I can posture my unit so that we are prepared to take the initiative to provide vital information, whatever that may be, to decision makers. In other words, my professional weather Airmen have the space to figure out on the spot how best to proactively provide environmental service.
– Comply. I will admit, this is not the sexiest of vectors, but to ensure that we can proactively provide environmental service, we must ensure our collective processes and products align with Air Force and Air Force Weather instructions. This is important so that aircrews know that they can receive the same baseline weather support no matter what base they land at or take off from, whether that information comes from my unit or any other. A failure to be in compliance serves as a distraction that prevents us from accomplishing the first vector of proactively providing environmental service.
– Innovate. This vector makes up for the lack of sexiness in the “Comply” vector and is just as important as we strive to provide far more than just the baseline weather support. I stress the finding of ways to make our processes better, faster, and/or cheaper. This vector inspired an overhaul of our flight weather briefing request form, streamlining the request process for aircrews as well as tracking for the forecasters, and a new forecast product that enables my weather flight to rapidly transition to supporting a real-world contingency or humanitarian assistance response. “Innovate” unleashes the creativity of my forecasters to solve and overcome the inevitable bottlenecks they encounter on a daily basis.
Note that these vectors are neither long-winded nor do they cover every possible contingency. The three vectors are a mere six words that describe what we will strive to do as a weather organization. Even with amplifying remarks, there are only twenty-seven words in all across the three vectors. Ultimately, they provide the framework for my Airmen to make effective decisions when they find themselves alone on the forecast counter.
But setting my vectors was not a “fire and forget” act—establishing the vectors is just the first step on the way to organizational success. Think of all the times when leaders have shared a new direction, plan, or goal, only to never mention it again. Here’s what I did to weave the vectors into the fabric of the unit:
– Identify what is right: Every month or two, we bring together the entire weather flight off random shiftwork so that we can complete group training. During these meetings, I ensure that I carve out time at the end to tell stories about how we recently proactively provided environmental service, complied with instructions and other requirements, and innovated our processes and products. Outside of these flight meetings, our daily weather discussion is a perfect forum to reinforce the vectors and I also rely on one-on-one coaching through conversations with my duty forecasters. But sometimes it is more instructive to identify what is not right. In some cases, we will review where we strayed from our vectors—a bad forecast, a missed opportunity to inform our customers about expected weather conditions, or maybe we did not complete one of our processes as documented, making us non-compliant.
– Ownership: During initial feedback sessions with those who report directly to me, one of the first topics I cover is their role in the weather flight and, more specifically, what their role is in achieving the flight’s vectors. In follow-up feedback sessions, I evaluate my direct reports on how well they have embraced the vectors through their performance as well as encouraged the vectors among our more junior personnel’s performance. Meanwhile, we have numerous visitors, some quite in high in rank and importance, who tend to stop by our forecast counter after being attracted by the large weather satellite imagery and the latest 5-day forecast. These situations are a perfect opportunity to share with the visitor the mission of the weather flight and, rather than me briefing, I often let the duty forecaster explain the vectors which, thanks to how concise they are, provide perfect talking points when they are face-to-face with a general or flag officer. In fact, one of the reasons I made the vectors so concise and down-to-earth was so that my Airmen could easily refer to them with friends and family when the “what do you do?” question arises.
– Repetition. As I mentioned above, I take every opportunity to identify occasions in which our accomplishments were aligned with the three vectors. Before I share “vector stories” with the group, I always display a slide with the three vectors to serve as a refresher. And the vectors are routinely referenced during daily weather discussions, one-on-one conversations, and on feedback worksheets. We even created a flight information card available in hard copy at the forecast counter and on our unit’s website for sharing with others and as a handy visual aid when those distinguished visitors stop by for a brief. As a result, “proactive” became a common word around the flight. And when we began hearing aircrews and commanders we support routinely use “proactive” to describe our weather services, we knew we were accomplishing our mission.
The three vectors I set for my weather flight did not merely establish a distant marker for my personnel to head towards. The vectors inculcated a particular mindset that emphasized and rewarded proactive environmental service so that our supported units could accomplish their missions. And that performance did not go unnoticed, netting my weather flight the team of the year award from our squadron (defeating five other high-performing teams) as well as the team of the year award out of our entire group (besting two other squadrons’ worth of professional teams) while garnering immeasurable praise from not only the aircrews who operate out of our base, but also aircrews who pass through the base.
Evaluate the SMART goals that your organization embraces—are they holding back your people? What type of vectors could you set for your organization to take the place of those goals and establish a framework for your team to take the initiative? Consider what your organization does on a daily basis and what you want your organization to strive to be.
The Front 