Staying in sync on projects

Steady’s Smart check-ins keep individual teams in tight sync, but what about multiple teams? What about long-term plans or big-picture progress? That’s where Live Goals come in.

We call them “live” goals because they work like focused, short-lived blogs. Every few weeks, goal owners get reminders to write quick updates. Those updates get delivered automatically to all the teams and contributors who need to be informed, and added to the profiles of teams and people working on the goal. That gives you 3 things:

1. 🔁 Automatic cross-team coordination.
2. ✈️ A 30,000ft source of truth for shared vision and up-to-date progress.
3. 📓 Single-page, start-to-finish stories of progress for every goal.

What to expect when you're assigned a Live Goal

Goals in Steady are as much about communication as they are alignment. Every goal is essentially a short-lived micro-blog. When you're made an owner of a Live Goal, the expectation is that you'll write regular updates to share progress. You'll receive weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly reminders and you'll also see action items on your Daily Digest page.

You can also provide an update at any time by selecting the goal and the "Post update" button.

The cadence and day of the week can be customized by editing the goal. To edit a goal, click on the name of the goal and select from the "..." menu to the right of the goal name.

To set the day of the week that you received reminders, change the start date to that day of the week.

Writing good updates

When posting an update, enter the highlight or big takeaway as the Summary. Use the body to provide more context. Remember to start with the key points, getting into more detail as you go and following the principles of the inverted pyramid.

Ask yourself, what does my team need to know, and what can't be seen already from connected activity? You want your updates to get read, so try to make it interesting and keep your audience in mind.

If your goal has child goals, you can use Quick Fill to instantly summarize the updates from the child goals to include with your update.

Once you've written your update, select whether the status is "On track", "At risk", or "Off track" and provide an indication of the % complete.

When the update is published, members of the involved teams will receive it by email, on their digest, and through other connected channels, like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

With a quick 5-minute update, you can eliminate tedious status meetings and get time back for the actual work.

Creating your own Live Goals

The smallest unit of measure should be “project sized”.

Live Goals are about the big picture over periods of time, not granular tasks. With that in mind, the smallest unit of measure for a goal should be “project-sized”. Keep in mind that every goal assumes that whoever “owns” the goal will provide updates on it. Don’t make a goal for it if you don’t want to report on it! Roll it up with a similar goal into a broader objective instead.

Creating effective Live Goals

Goals come in infinite flavors, but you should ask yourself two questions before creating a goal in Steady:

1. Will this be helpful for me to see every day? Live Goals in Steady show up on your daily check-in sidebar. Ideally, you want a goal that’ll help you maintain focus on the kind of progress you want to make.
2. Do I want to write about this? Remember that Live Goals in Steady are essentially short-lived micro-blogs about a particular subject. If you don’t want to write about it or don’t think you’d have anything to say, consider a different goal.

Keep it focused

Live Goals exist to create focus. Creating too many is inherently counterproductive. You should own one to two max. It keeps focus high and “alignment effort” low.

Live Goals are great for team professional development too

No one’s stopping you if you want to make a “Let’s improve our accessibility” goal that you use to share, learn, discuss, and reflect.