Stop Mistaking Financial Targets for Objectives
A 20% growth target isn’t a strategy.
It’s not even an objective.
It’s a scoreboard number pretending to be a plan.
That confusion is why execution falls apart, because people can’t play toward a number without knowing what game they’re in.
The Problem: Scoreboards don’t create clarity
A target tells you what outcome you want, but not what you must become or improve to achieve it.
Yes, teams can act on “grow revenue.” But those actions will fragment—each group doing what makes sense in their lane. One team discounts. Another raises prices. Marketing adds promos. Ops tightens costs.
Everyone’s rowing, but not in the same direction.
It’s like a coach walking in and saying, “Go score 100 points tonight.” The intent is clear. The plan isn’t.
When everything starts and ends with a number, two things happen:
Teams chase short-term wins instead of building durable systems.
Everyone focuses on results instead of the drivers that produce them.
That’s how you get dashboards full of motion and quarters full of excuses.
The Fix: Define meaningful objectives
A meaningful objective describes a capability you want to build or a behavior you want to change. It’s something that leads to better results over time.
Objective: Strengthen our customer growth engine so revenue becomes repeatable and resilient.
Key Results:
– $500M in annual revenue
– +15% customer retention
– +20% AOV
– +10 points in customer satisfaction
Initiatives:
– Launch referral program
– Expand mid-market pricing tier
– Improve onboarding experience
If you use OKRs, you’ll recognize this structure. The Objective is what you’re trying to become, the Key Results are how you’ll know you’ve succeeded, and the Initiatives are how you’ll make it happen.
Now you’ve linked intent to proof to action.
The Shift
Instead of saying,
“Our objective is to hit $500M in revenue,”
say,
“Our objective is to build a stronger growth engine that earns $500M in revenue.”
That one shift turns the number from a destination into evidence of progress.
It moves the conversation from “Did we hit the goal?” to “Are we becoming the kind of company that can consistently hit goals like this?
Why it matters
When objectives describe what you’re building, not just what you’re chasing, three good things happen:
You clarify what to focus on.
You connect effort to impact.
You make success repeatable, especially across multiple people and teams
Financial targets still matter. They just belong on the scoreboard and not in the objective.
So next time someone says,
“Our objective is to hit $50 million,”
ask,
“OK. And what do we have to become or improve to make that happen?”
That’s where real execution begins.
