When my son and his friends return from “dawn patrol” – a sunrise surf session – they’re famished.

One of my great pleasures in life is preparing a hearty post-surfing breakfast for them.

What makes it so enjoyable is that I have two goals. One goal is to cook up stacks of golden brown pancakes. The other goal is to hang out and have fun with the kids.

There’s a secret here. A secret many teams miss causing their projects to crash and burn.
All teams need two kinds of goals.
One kind of goal is an end goal.
In my breakfast example, the end goal is to produce four plates of steaming pancakes swimming in butter and glistening with syrup. It’s a clear, compelling description of what I want to achieve. (Writing this is making me hungry.)

But, it’s not enough to just know what I want to create as the end goal. I need another kind of goal to insure that the breakfast (project) is totally successful.

I need process goals.
Process goals are focused on how I want to be during the process of achieving the end goal. How do I want to communicate and interact with the kids through the process of producing the breakfast?
All team and projects need both types of goals.

End goals gives the team a shared focus.
A specific target to work towards. Having a well defined end goal defines the tangible result the team wants to achieve and helps the team:
•    Measure success in a specific and tangible way
•    Divide up the work
•    Allocate budgets & other resources
The end goal establishes time frames and focuses team member attention on what they’re suposed to do.

Process goals structure relationships.
Process goals define the ways that team members choose to interact with each other.  Process goals describe how team members want to be with each other moment-to-moment. Process goals answer such questions as:
•    How do we want to communicate?
•    How will we deal with conflict?
•    How will we make decisions?
Notice that key word – how. Process goals are about the how we work together. End goals are about what we create.
Process goals gives the team another way (an in-the-moment way) of assessing  progress and measuring  success.

You need both kinds of goals to create results and build powerful team relationships – at the same time. But, there’s a tendency for teams to over-focus on only one type of goal. And that hurts the team.

There’s a cost if you over-focus on one type of goal.
If you over-focus on end goals without attending to process goals, you may complete the project successfully – from an end goal perspective.

In other words, you may complete the report, install the system, or release the product. But, with a huge cost to the team; with a lot of “collateral damage” along the way. Think back on your own experience with projects that were run to completion without considering process goals. What relationships were damaged? What trusts broken? What agreements unfulfilled?

Getting to the end result is good, but not good enough.
Even when the end result is fulfilled, looking at the process side of the ledger – the costs can be quite high. Ignoring process goals comes back to bite those leaders who charge ahead towards the what with little concern for the how. The next time they have to pull the team together or begin a new project it will be that much harder. People will be gun-shy and hesitant to fully engage.

When people pull away and hunker down to protect themselves, it makes it harder to pursue end results successfully.
On the other hand, if you over-focus on process goals without sufficiently committing to end goals, you may have a lot of connection and interaction – but precious little action.

Team members can get to understand each other very deeply and explore all the nuances of their thoughts and feelings. But, all the while, nothing tangible is getting done. This over-focusing on process goals is less common than over-focusing on end goals – although it does happen.

Over-focusing on process causes people to circle round-and-round their thoughts and feelings.
Without an end goal to focus on, all this processing leads nowhere. too much processing ends up destroying the team’s momentum. People get lost in naval-gazing and lose track of the business purpose that the team is meant to fulfill.

A successful team – like a great breakfast – needs both kinds of goals.
Great teams pay attention to both end goals and process goals. They focus intensely on what they want to accomplish and on how they are working together moment-to-moment.

With this dual focus, teams learn to create meaningful results while building relationships of trust and respect.
Even when projects fail or get cancelled (as some inevitably will), teams with this dual what/how commitment will be able to work through the disappointments in a way that strengthens relationships, harvests real learning, and generates optimism about future team success.

So, take time to define your end goals and your process goals. It’s a key to keeping your team from crashing and burning. There’s nothing worse. Except for burnt pancakes, of course.

Questions for Reflection & Action:
Pick a project you are working on.

What are the end goals you are focused on?
How clear & committed are all the team members to those end goals?

What are the process goals that you are focused on?
How clear & committed are all the team members to those process goals?

What does this suggest?

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