Kris Duggan, CEO and co-founder of BetterWorks, created software to help companies set goals and track their progress towards meeting them. John Doerr, a billionaire venture capitalist who was an early backer of Google, invested $15 million in the company. BetterWorks’ clients include Disney, Schneider Electric, Kroger, and Aidan and Colin.
Those last two are Duggan’s kids.
Every six months, Duggan, his wife, and their two sons (aged 11 and 13) travel somewhere—recently, it was Hawaii—and spend half a day discussing personal goals. At the “off-site,” as they call it, goals are rated, discussed, and reflected upon. New stretch-goals are set. The family measures and manages all this information the same way that Disney, Schneider Electric, or Kroger does—with BetterWorks software.
For example, Aidan, 11, recently set the following five goals:
- Master the trumpet (learn three new songs)
- Take art class (choose an inspiring art class; complete it; complete a piece of art)
- Read six books by summer
- Add two new songs on SoundCloud
- Learn 10 new magic tricks and perform them
Unsurprisingly, Duggan (the dad) is a quantified-self evangelist. “I read a long time ago that the key to happiness in life is to set stretch goals—aggressive but attainable—and then to achieve those, and then to reflect on your success and then to set the next period of goals,” he told Quartz. “Anybody who achieved ultra-success has used that philosophy.”
Performance management is in flux: big companies like Accenture,Deloitte, and GE have recently ditched the traditional annual performance review as a management tool. When Duggan was CEO of software firm Badgeville, he searched for performance-tracking software that would allow employees to identify three-to-five important things they were working on, which would then be continuously tracked and shared with others at the company. It sounds simple, but he couldn’t find anything suitable, so he built his own software, incorporating the latest thinking on productivity and measurement.
For example, individuals are 42% more likely to achieve their goals by writing them down, and there’s a 78% increase in achievement when sharing weekly progress with a friend, according to research by the Dominican University of California. FitBit users take 43% more steps than non Fitbit users, according to Fitbit, and companies that have their employees revise or review their goals on a monthly basis are 50% more likely to score in the top quartile of business performance, according to Deloitte.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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