You're Using AI for Goals Wrong

Let's talk about some goals. All right, picture this. It's the start of a new quarter. Your team's goals are set. Everyone's aligned. Things feel pretty good. Fast forward 6 weeks. Someone asks you how things are going. And there's just a pause, a long awkward pause. Most teams don't struggle with setting goals. They struggle with setting the right ones. They'll spend time obsessing over how they'll cascade or which fancy framework to use. AI can help you cut through the confusion.

Goals tend to fail for a few predictable reasons. First, they can be vague things like improve customer experience. — Huh? — But improve by how or by when. Next, they can be misaligned. Moving in a direction that actually doesn't connect with what the company cares about or needs. Bad goals can't be measured. Have a recordbreaking sales quarter sounds inspiring until somebody asks what record you're actually breaking. Lastly, bad goals can also just be unrealistic. Ambitious enough to look good on paper, demoralizing enough to tank by February. And here's the kicker. Frameworks don't automatically fix this. You can use smart goals, OKRs, V2 moms, whatever your favorite acronym is, and still end up with goals that check all the boxes but move none of the needles. That's

where AI comes in. Not to replace your strategic thinking, but to sharpen it. Let's talk about what AI can actually do here. First, it turns vague ideas into specific goals. So if you have a rough direction but you don't know how to articulate it, try dropping it into an AI tool like maybe lattice and ask it to rewrite it using an OKR format or make it more outcome driven. Bottom line, the more context you give it, the better the output. Second, AI can recommend metrics. So if you don't know how to quantify success, AI can suggest some KPIs. A marketing team trying to improve demand genen might get recommendations around cost per click, conversion rates or campaign volume. Suddenly that goal of improving demand genen has hard numbers attached to it.

Now I say this with love. AI is not magic. — What? — Don't accept the first output. If the first goal seems generic, add more context. Be a little bit more specific about what's missing. Second, don't mistake polished for relevant. AI can write a beautifully structured goal that has nothing to do with what your company actually needs to accomplish. The best way to think about AI and goal setting is as a thought partner, not a replacement. You bring the strategy and the judgment.

If you want to go deeper on all of this, including specific prompt examples that you can steal right now, we've got a full article on it. And if you want to see this in action inside an actual performance management platform, check out Lattis Goals and OKRs. Links in the description. Let's go.