Here, we feature a guest post by Sandra Torres. She shows us how to leverage a company's annual report to set performance goals.
Annual Performance Reviews. Quarterly Company Goals. Weekly Goals. However you want to call it and however you want to break it down, most of us end up developing our individual performance goals based on big picture company goals. This post shows you how to manage up by leveraging your company’s annual report to set your performance goals.
Use the annual report to set performance goals - a strategy for managing up
If you are fortunate, you may receive clear direction and a detailed plan on how to set your performance goals at work. However, the stars don’t usually align this way for most people--especially if you are part of smaller to mid-size organizations.
If you are in a position where direction is unclear and/or have a very busy or disengaged supervisor, your best bet is to “manage up” when it comes to goal setting. Instead of riding a wave of ambiguity, you can take the driver’s seat to ensure that both you and your supervisor are working towards a common objective and that expectations are clear. This is especially critical in remote settings where communications may be asynchronous with remotely distributed teams across the globe.
Instead of just taking directions and executing, setting your individual performance goals based on the company’s goals will require you to do some heavy-lifting up-front. However, this work will ultimately help you establish a more robust relationship with your supervisor (and team at large). Plus, doing this gives you more control in today’s increasingly evolving and ambiguous work environments.
A key document that can provide a critical starting point is your company’s Annual Report. This document might also be called the Annual Financial Report, Annual Shareholder’s Report, etc.. The information in annual reports can be incredibly powerful for employees. That is because you can leverage it in your “managing up” strategy.
Getting started with managing up
It’s important to consider this question first: what do you hope to achieve by managing up?
For example, let’s say that you have the following key priorities to establish with your supervisor:
- Receive feedback and establish priority levels for goals/tasks
- Anticipate needs
- Adapt to evolving communication styles
- Timing: What, How, When
How do you leverage the information in annual reports to set performance goals?
To find your company’s latest annual report, just google [Company Name] and [XXXX (year) Annual Report], or [Company Name] and [XXXX (year) Form 10-K]. For example, search for “Pfizer 2020 Annual Report” or “Pfizer 2020 Form 10-K.” It should be relatively easy to find as it is a publicly available document. Once you have it, download it and begin analyzing!
Receiving feedback and establishing priority levels for goals/tasks
Every annual report will have a summary of the previous year’s accomplishments and major goals for the current year. Usually, you can find this information under “Management Report,” “Executive Summary,” or “CEO Review,” headings. This is almost always towards the beginning of the document.
Depending on your role, you may have strictly quantitative goals. For example, Sales/Business Development will have clear revenue or partnership goals, and Finance might have clear expenses/savings goals to hit. By contract, your goals might be more qualitative in nature. For example, R&D might be tasked with developing a competing technology or drug against an established player. With this in mind, find the company details relevant for you, and connect your day-to-day responsibilities to those goals. This will be your guideline for developing your base goals for the year.
A specific example - Using a company goal in annual report to set high priority performance goals
Company goal: Start X number of phase 3 clinical trials for drug candidates in the company’s pipeline.
Your role: Quality control analyst on the commercial side of the business
Performance goals based on annual report: While your role may seem unrelated to the preclinical stage of drug development (like this clinical trial), you can highlight:
- how evaluating the quality of raw materials, finished goods, etc. saves the company money (by avoiding recalls due to contaminations), which can then be allocated towards budgets for patient recruitment for clinical trials, and other costs associated with the clinical trials.
- how the SOPs you develop for QA/QC purposes will apply to drugs that complete clinical trials and move towards approval and manufacturing.
Once you’ve gotten your “first draft” of performance goals, the next step is to ask your supervisor for clear feedback. Your supervisor may also provide suggestions for how to rank them by priority. In your one-on-one meetings with your supervisor (or team meetings if you don’t have established one-on-ones), lead the conversation to establish a two-way dialogue and communicate your goals and priorities with regular frequency.
It may take several tries if you are managing up, but persistence is key. By actively communicating your performance goals and the progress you’re making towards them throughout the year, you’ll be able to spot obstacles much quicker and be able to course-correct before it’s too late. Which leads to...
Anticipate Needs
Annual reports will very clearly call out “risks” to the business. Here is an example:
*Pfizer 2020 Annual Report
You can leverage this information when developing your individual goals. By clearly connecting your goal/solution to a specific risk to the business, you will train your thinking and problem solving towards anticipating needs throughout the year. It also re-contextualizes the goals your supervisor may have been tasked with too. Therefore, you can tailor your own goals to align with your supervisor’s goals. What is your supervisor trying to accomplish, and how does your role play into those plans? Managing up in this way will position you favorably to anticipate needs or challenges in the future.
A specific example - Using a business risk in annual report to set highly needed performance goals
Let's say that you work on the clinical trials team at Pfizer. One of the risks called out in the Pfizer Annual Report was the inability to meet anticipated clinical endpoints. Therefore, one of your goals may be to build in more robustness in the clinical trial design process to meet clinical endpoints on your projects. Such strategies may help the company avoid this risk. In turn, your goal could feed into your supervisor’s goal of incorporating new strategies across all clinical trial projects.
By not only presenting your individual goal to your supervisor, connecting it to your supervisor’s own broader strategic goals means taking a step toward more effectively managing up and adding clarity to ambiguity.
Adapt to evolving communication styles
Depending on how quickly things may change at your company or your team, certain communication styles may be more favorable than others at different points in the year.
If you and your supervisor are located in significantly different time zones, asynchronous written communications might convey your point better than other means of communication. If you encounter an obstacle, have a solution, and just need approval to execute, then a quick 10-min phone call or text might be most effective.
Annual reports can clue you in on what objectives are more time sensitive than others. For example, any tasks related to the marketing/launch of a new drug might be more important than analyzing a possible expansion of manufacturing space on the production of a low-margin already generic drug. Therefore, factor this into your communication strategy with your supervisor. Adjusting your communication style throughout the year to your supervisor’s preferences and the urgency level of the task/goal will help add clarity to your own goals and help you progress towards them.
Timing: What, How, When
At any point in your managing up strategy, establishing these three elements (what, how, when) to your ask or communication will help avoid a lot of confusion down the road. Knowing when and how to discuss problems or challenges with your supervisor is key to keeping a steady pace towards your goals. When a difficult situation arises or you have to communicate bad news, letting problems fester will not help. However, presenting them in a polite and helpful manner (preferably with recommendations) can go a long way.
Be clear and concise in addressing the situation through this framework:
- What exactly is the problem/challenge preventing you from achieving the goal, and what is the solution?
- How did we get to this point, and how can your supervisor help/what do you need from them?
- When do you need this done to solve the problem at hand (set a hard date/timeline)?
By addressing the situation through this framework, you can become a well-rounded resource for help, even when challenges happen. Precision is even more critical in remote work environments when trying to problem-solve. This is especially true because the consequence of not being precise can cause a lot of unnecessary re-dos and inefficiencies.
Final word on using an annual report to set performance goals
Ultimately, managing up requires a very personalized approach. While not ideal in all situations, defining your own performance goals is an opportunity to take direct control over your career development. Leveraging the data and information in an annual report can provide multiple ways to tackle your goals. Small organizations that are private/not publicly traded may not have a public document like the Annual Report readily available. Therefore, asking your finance team, or senior leadership team, for similar details will go a long way towards adding direction to your career.
Thank you, Sandra, for illustrating how to use a company's annual report to set performance goals!
More about our guest author
Sandra Torres has more than 10 years of business development and partnership building experience in pharma, biotech, and the life sciences. She received her bachelor's degree in biology at Grinnell College and is in the process of completing an MBA program at the Gies College of Business. She currently leads the Supplier Success team at ZAGENO, connecting vendors and suppliers all over the world to research scientists in need of critical supplies to continue their life-changing research. Sandra is also an active mentor with the Women in Bio Chicago chapter and a brand ambassador for Women of Color in Pharma. She is based out of the Chicago suburbs, and she enjoys traveling and hiking in her free time.