Objectives in general are specific to a person, either created by them or created for them directly by their manager.
However, sometimes a manager wants to assign a common goal to multiple team members, perhaps even making edits after bulk assigning, to tailor the “shared” goal to each report’s responsibilities. “Bulk assigning” in Small Improvements, is Cloning.
Cloning an objective
Note that cloning will duplicate an objective within the same cycle. If you’d like to duplicate an objective into a different cycle, skip down to the Copying section.
Select the objective to clone
In cases where many people need to have the same objectives, managers can use the “clone objectives” feature and duplicate any objective that is visible to them in their org branch.
The most common use case is a manager will draft and publish objective for themselves, and then clone it to any reports they have ability to populate objectives for, down the hierarchy. Then all those reports own an identical objective.
To get to the cloning page, you select the action “Clone To Users” on the objective you want to clone.
Note: The clone button is only available if the objective cycle would also allow the “cloner” to create new objectives. You can’t clone an objective in closed cycles, or if the deadline to create and edit objectives has passed.
Cloning an objective will duplicate all the information in the objective itself: title, description, status, key results, etc. Comments on that objective will not be cloned.
Cloning the objective
Cloning permissions depend on your role:
- HR Admins can clone the objective to anyone in the company.
- Managers (without the HR Admin role) can clone to their direct and indirect reports (their org branch).
Select exactly who you want to clone it to in the user picker. After you have selected the employees, click “Select # Users.”
This will expand the “Next Step: Confirm” dialogue box, with a little more information about what you are doing. Once you read it, you can initiate the cloning by pressing “Clone Objective To # Users”.
Once an objective is cloned, the new objectives are no longer connected to the original objective. Changes to the original objective will not change the copies.
Shared objectives
A question we hear a lot about is how to create team or department goals. I.e. a goal that doesn’t belong to a person, but rather a group. Strictly speaking, this is not possible. Objectives are always owned by a user in Small Improvements, whether they were created by the owner- Or created by their manager.
However, an approach to creating shared objectives is to use cloning.
For example:
Let’s say Maria the manager has five reports. She has a big project her team is working on in the next quarter, and she needs everyone but the new intern to work on this Objective collaboratively. She could assign them all individual goals that have commonality- Making sure the whole team has visibility into each others goals that relate to this project..
Or she could Clone, taking these steps:
- She drafts the “Shared” goal with 11 key results, and publishes it for herself, including everyone but the intern on the visibility.
- She then uses the cloning steps to clone to all of her reports (minus the intern).
- Then quickly spends a few minutes tailoring the key results to each team member. Say, one report gets three of the key results, another gets two, etc.
- She leaves a message on each goal where she tags the whole group, including a few words of motivational fire about the challenges they’ll all tackle together!
- Each team member works on the piece of the goal they own, using the comments field as a way to communicate with everyone about their respective efforts.
Copying objectives
Copying an objective will make a duplicate in a different cycle. In the end, you’ll have two objectives.
Note that the destination cycle must be active and in the time period to create new objectives. You can copy objectives from a closed cycle.
To copy an objective, select the Actions button on the objective:
Moving objectives
When you move an objective, it is removed from the original cycle and added to a new cycle. It retains all the original details, including the due date.
Nothing will change on the objective except the cycle it belongs to. The employee will be able to continue editing or updating the objective based on the new cycle’s timeline dates.
Note that the origin and destination cycles must be active and in the time period to create new objectives.
To move an objective, select the Actions button on the objective:
