Key takeaways
- Goals live in decks. The work that moves them lives in email, chat and meetings.
- The aim is to show which priorities are slipping and what is holding them back, while there is time to act.
- Each at-risk goal is designed to reach one owner with one date.
- In pilot today: shaped with design partners and not yet a finished capability.
The problem
Most companies set priorities at the start of a quarter and review them at the end. In between, progress is reported by whoever is asked, in whatever form they choose. Delays surface late, because the work that moves a goal is spread across many teams and threads.
An executive sees a green status line in a review while the actual work has been waiting on a vendor for two weeks. The person who wrote the status was not lying. They were reporting their own part, which was on track. The part that was stuck belonged to another team, or to a partner outside the company, and nobody was asked about it.
Picture the third week of a quarter at a company with five priorities. Each priority has a slide, a sponsor and a monthly check-in. The work that decides whether those priorities land is a lease review in legal, a hiring decision in one team, a supplier agreement waiting for a signature and a product change that slipped a sprint. None of these items mentions the goal it affects. So the goal looks healthy until the month-end review, when there are six weeks left and fewer options.
Goal tools and scorecards hold the targets. They rarely hold the daily signals that show a target drifting, because those signals sit in email, chat and meeting notes that nobody has time to read through for every goal.
What GeniOS is designed to surface
We are building this with design partners. GeniOS is designed to give an executive intelligence that ties day-to-day work back to the goals the company has set, drawn from email, calendar, chat and the business tools already in use. Each piece is meant to name one situation, what to do, why it matters, one owner and a date.
- Slowing priorities. Priorities where the work has slowed or stopped.
- Shared blockers. Blockers that hold up more than one goal, such as one approval two projects are waiting on.
- Unowned goals. Goals with no clear owner or no recent activity.
- Dates at risk. Early signs that a target date is at risk, with one owner and a date to act.
As with all GeniOS intelligence, a person stays in charge: nothing is sent or changed until someone approves it. The owner answers Delegate, Done, Later or Not relevant. When the blocker sits between departments, the same thinking applies as in Cross-Functional Execution Visibility, and the most important items would appear in Executive Visibility.
A worked example
Example at a generic company. Names, dates and numbers are made up to explain the idea.
An online retailer sets a goal to open delivery in two new cities this quarter. The goal appears in the board deck and in a planning meeting. Six weeks in, the warehouse lease for one city is still waiting on legal review, and the delivery partner has not returned the signed agreement. The weekly operations report shows both cities as on track, because hiring and marketing plans are moving.
Here is how it would look: the head of operations receives one note saying the goal for that city is at risk, the lease review has waited eleven days, and legal needs to decide by Friday. The note explains why the date matters. The warehouse needs four weeks of setup after signing, so a lease signed later than next week pushes the launch past the quarter. It also points out that the delivery partner's agreement is waiting on the same lease address.
The head of operations delegates a reminder to the legal lead with the Friday date and approves it before it goes out. Legal replies with two questions on the lease, which are answered the same day. Once the signed lease appears in the shared documents, the note would close, and the remaining open item, the delivery partner's agreement, would get its own owner and date.
The second city, which really is on track, would generate no note at all.
How teams use it day to day
The aim is a short weekly habit for executives and goal owners, with no extra reporting for teams.
- Confirm the goals once
Leaders check the goals GeniOS has formed from the company's own decks, emails and meetings, and correct anything that is out of date.
- Read only the exceptions
Each week, goal owners see the few goals where the work has slowed, with the reason and a date.
- Act on the blocker
Delegate the follow-up to the person who can clear it, and approve anything before it is sent.
- Review risk before the review
Use the open notes as the agenda for the monthly goal meeting, instead of collecting status slides.
- Close on proof
A blocker is closed when the signed document, sent reply or changed record appears.
Where it applies
These are application areas where this use case can apply, not a list of current deployments. Our design partner work so far is in manufacturing, with Vaultex.
It applies to any company with a few clear priorities and many people moving them: market launches in e-commerce and retail, new sites in hospitality and travel, product goals in software, capacity goals in manufacturing and growth targets in financial services. Executive offices, operations, sales and product teams are the main users.
- Domains: Executive Office, Operations, Sales, Product & Engineering
- Industries: SaaS & Technology, E-commerce & Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Hospitality & Travel
- Roles: Executives
Status
Pilot We are shaping this use case with design partners now, and it is not yet a finished part of the product. If this is a problem you have, talk to us about shaping it with us. Pilot partners help decide what an at-risk goal note should contain before we call it finished.