Defining effective goals after performance reviews

Why it matters

The goals defined during Performance Reviews are among the most effective tools for guiding people’s growth. A well-written goal allows individuals to perceive a clear direction, measure their progress, and set realistic expectations for themselves and for the context around them.

Helping someone formulate relevant and meaningful goals is part of the review process, turning it into a moment of development rather than just feedback.

Formulating goals, whether for oneself or for others, always requires awareness and attention, and it is one of the most challenging tasks in a professional’s life. It is something one learns over time and - like pancakes - the first one is never quite right.

This guide provides a few basic tools to avoid the most common mistakes and to improve the quality of the goals we set—both for each other and for ourselves.

Characteristics of a good goal

Ideally, the perfect goal has all these characteristics:

• It is aligned with the team’s and the company’s goals.
• It pushes outside the comfort zone without being unattainable.
• It has value primarily for the person, in addition to the team or company.
• It concretely describes an expected change, leaving the person responsible for pursuing it.
• It must be written, accessible, and visible, to avoid misunderstandings and to stimulate accountability.

It is not always possible to define goals that respect all these characteristics, and this is not a problem in itself. On the other hand, it is important not to pursue goals that substantially diverge from these points, in order to avoid frustration, confusion, or demotivation.

Guided Path

Premise

The reviewer’s task is not to hand down goals from above, but to help the person discover and formulate their own. It is a coaching activity, not an act of command. When done well, it produces motivating goals because they arise from genuine personal engagement.

For those just starting out, it may be useful to follow these steps one by one. With experience, it will become increasingly easy to formulate well-structured goals, but this path can always serve as a reference and a checklist to avoid forgetting important elements.

Step 1: Goal selection and reality check

The starting point is to understand whether the person already has a goal in mind. If yes, it should be listened to and evaluated: is it relevant, concrete, useful? If not, the reviewer can help bring clarity.

The performance review itself is a tool that should always be kept in mind to verify the soundness of an idea: it often already contains elements to reflect on, such as strengths or areas for improvement. However, the goal does not always need to originate from there. Sometimes the person has personal interests (e.g., growth in transversal skills) that do not emerge in the review, but remain valid and relevant.

Example: a colleague would like to develop skills in functional analysis. The reviewer may notice that no particular technical gaps emerged from the reviews, but that this personal aspiration is consistent with the future prospects of the role.

Step 2: Expected impact

A goal only makes sense if it generates a clear impact. Here the questions are:

• What change does it support?
• What can I learn by pursuing it?
• What benefit will it bring to the team, the company, my career?

Writing down the expected impact clearly is fundamental to making the effort tangible and achieving concrete results.

Example: taking on the role of functional analyst would improve the quality of the requirements the team receives daily and would be professionally valuable for the colleague, who enjoys rigorously understanding the problems to be solved.

Step 3: Growth direction

Once the impact is established, the next step is to choose the direction to move in: does the person need to learn new skills? Improve soft skills? Change an attitude? Strengthen a point of strength?

Example: to become a good functional analyst, the growth direction may be the development of communication-related soft skills: active listening, clarity of expression, and expectation management.

Step 4: Observable results

Growth happens step by step, not in sudden leaps. Especially when goals are defined as part of a Performance Review, it is useful to identify intermediate results that can be achieved by the next session (roughly within six months). This helps to put theory into practice and measure progress.

Example: if the growth direction is “improving clarity of expression,” a concrete result could be to prepare and deliver a short internal presentation to a group of colleagues. This exercise is a smaller-scale replica of client interactions.

Step 5: Obstacles and resources

Now that it is clear what the person needs to achieve, it is useful to ask (or ask oneself):

• What obstacles do you see between you and the goal (time, anxiety, lack of opportunities)?
• What resources can you count on (team support, tools, training, dedicated time budget during sprints)?

This filter allows you to understand whether the path is realistic and sustainable.

Example: the colleague fears not having enough time to prepare a presentation. The reviewer then decides to talk with the team leader to accommodate the necessary activities during project iterations or in lighter phases, discovering that it is feasible.

Step 6: SMART formulation and filter

This is a key step: a fundamentally good goal, if poorly written, can become impossible to pursue. It is important to verify that it is written in a clear and measurable way. For this purpose, SMART is a good filter to check the rigor of the formulation.

SMART is an easy-to-remember acronym that stands for:

• Small / Specific: the goal is small or specific enough to be completed by the next review
• Measurable: it is possible to objectively measure whether and to what extent the goal has been achieved
• Achievable: the goal is realistic and attainable; there are no insurmountable external obstacles, and the person has the necessary resources
• Relevant: the goal is meaningful and supports the desired impact
• Time-bound: it is possible to define a timeframe, cadence, or deadline for its completion

Example: using these properties as a filter, the vague and open-to-interpretation formulation “prepare and deliver a short internal presentation to a group of colleagues” becomes:
“Within the next two months, deliver an internal presentation of about 30 minutes, in the format of a short talk, on how the quality of requirements on our project has improved.”

It is easy to see that the goal is now much more specific in every part.

Step 7: Support and accountability

A goal becomes concrete if someone helps keep it alive. Reviewer and reviewee can agree on regular check-in moments, to establish a cadence and understand what is working, what needs adapting, and what has been learned.

If the goal involves a new and unfamiliar activity, seeking support outside one’s own team is always an option. In doubt, you can always talk to the HR point of reference.

If a goal, as initially formulated, encounters constraints along the way, instead of abandoning it, it may be useful to resize it, so as to still make a concrete and relevant step forward.

Example: despite good intentions, the timing does not allow preparing and delivering an internal talk. In this case, one could instead write a post for one of the company blogs, reporting the key takeaways from what was learned about requirements in the ongoing project.

Step 8: Summing up

At the end of the process, whether the goal has been achieved or not, it is important to reflect on what has been learned. Even partial progress consolidates skills and motivation.

Every Performance Review can begin with five minutes dedicated to celebrating success or analyzing the lack of success in pursuing goals.

Example: if the presentation was prepared but never actually delivered, the colleague will still have gained real experience and made the effort to analyze their progress in order to share it with colleagues, summarizing what was learned.

Recurring weaknesses and associated risks

Assigning effective goals is not an immediate exercise: it requires practice, sensitivity, and improves with experience. Sometimes, even with all the experience in the world, the context or timing may work against it.

Goals will not always be formulated perfectly, and this is completely normal. What matters is that they remain useful as a tool for orientation and growth.
However, there are some recurring situations that, if neglected or repeated over time, can reduce the effectiveness of performance reviews and create real risks, both for the person and for the organization.

Here are the most common ones, with the most likely visible impacts on the individual. If you notice difficulties or negative attitudes, ask yourself whether your goals might suffer from one or more of the following issues:

1. Goals that are too generic or vague

This is a frequent issue, especially for beginners: the direction is sensed, but there is no concrete path. It represents one of the highest risks in the medium to long term.

Risks: frustration due to the difficulty of translating the goal into concrete actions; growing expectations toward the company (or the team) to create the ideal conditions to pursue it; perception of paternalism from managers.

2. Lack of metrics, success criteria, or deadlines

A typical warning sign, highlighting goals that are difficult to put into practice.

Risks: inability to measure progress, divergent interpretations (or worse, perceptions of performance) between reviewer and reviewee, impression of an exercise done for its own sake.

3. Missing goals for some reviewees

This happens when a concrete and relevant goal cannot be defined. If occasional, it may be an acceptable or even functional outcome (maintaining the status quo for reasons of efficiency or balance may sometimes be beneficial both for the individual and the team). If it becomes systematic, however, it risks having a negative impact.

Risks: perception of little interest in individual growth, career stagnation, demotivation.

4. Episodic tasks or discontinuous goals

These may have positive impacts on junior profiles, who benefit from practical experience. They become critical, however, for more experienced profiles.

Risks: review experienced as a sequence of isolated tests (“obstacle race”); dependence on the reviewer with loss of personal ambition (“just tell me what to do”); lack of long-term vision; risk of gamification with expectations of immediate or frequent rewards.

5. Overly ambitious or unrealistic goals

Often similar, in substance, to goals that are too generic. They occur when the context in which the person operates is not considered, or when time horizons are set too far (beyond the semester).

Risks: confusion, procrastination, or paralysis; demotivation and sense of failure; stress and burnout; premature abandonment of the path.

6. Goals that are too easy or not challenging enough

A common trap when trying to avoid discomfort or frustration for colleagues.

Risks: perception of higher performance than reality; expectations of quick rewards; stagnation and low motivation; perception of merely formal growth. Overall, lack of real growth.

7. Goals not aligned with company values or priorities

Rare in SparkFabrik, but may arise with very curious or exploratory people who like to go off the beaten path. Not entirely to be avoided, but important to remember, if it happens, that it should remain an exception.

Risks: misalignment between individual growth and company direction; waste of resources; difficulty in leveraging results at team or business level.

8. Top-down goals imposed without the reviewee’s involvement

In some cases this may be useful, especially with confused or underperforming individuals, but it should be considered only as a last resort.

Risks: weak sense of ownership, loss of trust in reviewer and leadership, lower commitment to pursuing goals, high expectations of rewards in case of success.

9. Too many goals

Generally, it is better to set only one goal, to avoid dispersing the person’s focus beyond their already essential daily activities. Sometimes it may be worth adding one or at most two “easy wins,” but if possible, this should be avoided.

Risks: difficulty establishing priorities, feeling of a “to-do list” to complete, frustration, abandonment of some or all goals.

Examples of well-formulated goals

In case of difficulties

If obstacles arise in defining or advancing a goal, contact your HR point of reference.

For the discussion, prepare:

• A draft of the written goal
• The blocker or difficulty encountered (e.g., lack of resources, time, visibility; difficulty in finding objective metrics, formulation issues, etc.)
• At least one or two alternatives already considered