Goal Cadence Differs by Company Stage

Molly Graham's Six Rules for Creating Clear Goals and Alignment

Molly Graham's framework for goal-setting focuses on clarity, ownership, and prioritization to drive alignment in high-growth environments. Goals serve primarily as communication tools that help everyone understand what matters most.

The Six Rules for Effective Goals

1. No company needs more than three company goals

   • Even Facebook operated with just three goals during its hypergrowth phase: growth (MAUs), engagement, and revenue
   • If a business as complex as Facebook can operate with three goals, any business can
   • More goals create confusion rather than clarity
   • Goals should be a communication tool that creates focus

2. One goal needs to win in a fight

   • When priorities conflict, everyone should know which goal takes precedence
   • Example: At Facebook, engagement was the top priority over pure user growth
   • This clarity helps people make daily decisions without constant management input
   • "If you had to prioritize something, you prioritized engagement. That goal won in the fight."

3. Goals should be understandable to everyone

   • "An intern that started on Monday should be able to look at your goals and understand them"
   • Avoid jargon, unexplained acronyms, and complex metrics
   • If goals aren't easily understood, they fail as communication tools
   • The simpler the language, the more effective the alignment

4. Strategy should hurt

   • If your goal-setting process isn't painful, you're not prioritizing enough
   • Make clear trade-offs about what you're NOT going to do
   • "If you're not making trade-offs that are painful, you are not actually helping people prioritize"
   • Either you choose what doesn't get done, or your team will choose for you

5. One goal has one owner

   • Every goal needs a single person accountable for its success
   • "Two people owning a goal is no one owning a goal"
   • The owner should not be the CEO but someone who reports to leadership
   • Clear ownership creates clarity and drives accountability

6. Goals by themselves are not enough

   • "Winners and losers have the same goal" (James Clear)
   • You need a process to follow up, hold people accountable, and learn
   • Goals without follow-through create false confidence
   • The learning that comes from pursuing goals is as valuable as achieving them

Implementation Principles

• Match goal cycles to company stage: Seed-stage teams should set goals every two months, whereas mature businesses can use annual cycles
• Goals are a communication tool first: Their primary purpose is creating clarity, not measurement
• Start with business drivers: Identify the 3 core drivers of your business before creating detailed metrics
• Simplify over time: Many companies start with complex OKR spreadsheets but need to simplify to be effective
• Revisit and adjust: Goals should evolve as you learn what it takes to move key metrics

The framework emphasizes that goals exist to create clarity and alignment, not complexity. When people understand what matters most, they can make better decisions independently, allowing the organization to move faster with less management overhead.