Alternate ways to view your team's goals - Goal Tree & Goal Cards – Mesh.ai

Managers need more than one type of way to view goals because their role requires a comprehensive understanding of both individual and team performance. They need to oversee their team members’ goals, ensuring alignment with overarching objectives while balancing workload and work distribution. This necessitates the ability to view goals from multiple perspectives: by individual, by specific goals, and by contributions to the main goal. Additionally, managers must identify blockers and compare team members' performance both individually and collectively. A multifaceted approach to goal viewing enables managers to effectively manage, track progress, and optimize team productivity.

Mesh provides managers and skip managers with a basic goal list as well as several alternate views to help managers in their multiple tasks around goal management.

These are:

Goal List View (This is the default view)
Goal List with Hierarchical View
List by Individuals first
Goal Card View
Goal Tree View

The default view of Goal List has been discussed at length in another article ‘Managing your team's performance’. Let’s explore the other views, their purpose and features.

Goal List View with Hierarchical View

Step 1: To go to your goals, from the left navigation panel hover on Team and then click on Direct Team or Skip Team and click on Goals under the Portfolio section. You will land on the ‘I want to manage goals’ page for your team.

Step 2: From the ‘Layout’ filter on the manage goal page select ‘Hierarchical View’

The Goal List view only shows goals owned by team members, while the Hierarchical view displays goals owned by individuals and their parent objectives up to the highest level, even if not owned by the team members. The Hierarchical view is beneficial for managers who need a detailed overview of the goal hierarchy, including parent objectives leading up to the highest level, usually a company goal.

Note: Goal List with Hierarchical view is only available for ‘Group by: Goal’ not for ‘Group by: Individuals’

Goal List View by Individuals

Step 2: From the ‘Group By’ filter on the manage goal page select ‘Individuals’

This view allows the manager to first view their team members with an overview of their goal insights and status and additionally allows the manager to deep-dive into their individual goal pages. Hence, giving managers the ability to reviews and take actions while focussing on an individual team member.

Let’s walk through some of the key features on this page and what you can do to manage your team member’s goals.

The page comprises:

Filters & search to help refine your focus and find individuals
Visual representation of goal creation & check-in distributions across the team
Cards that highlight critical metrics around goal setting and check-ins for the team
List view of team members with details of their goal creation and check-in status
Multiple actions at an overall and goal level

Filter & Search

The main panel has 3 filters:

Layout & Group By filters are used to switch the views of the manage page. In this case you can switch back to group by goals
The timeline filter will help you select any timeline (as set up by your organization) and view the relevant goals

Visual representation

In the view for Group by Individuals there are two graphs:

Goal Ownership Distribution - this graphs shows the distribution of how many team members own what number of key results in the current timeline. This helps a manager identify -
1. individuals who are still yet to create goals vs those with too many
2. the distribution of workload based on the goal distribution
Goal Check-in Distribution - this graph shows the distribution of how many employee have checked and in what frequency on their goals. This helps a manager identify -
1. how many individuals are actively sharing updates by checking in

Actions you can take :

You can download the image of this graph
You can also view it in an expanded view
You can change the timeline to see the goal progress distribution for another timeline
You can run filters on the list to also filter the data on the graph (e.g. filter by name of a particular team member)

Viewing Metrics

The metric cards for group by individuals include:

Total no. of individuals - total number of team members (direct or otherwise based on the view)
Individuals who have no key results - number of individuals who have not even one key result which they own for the current timeline
Individuals who’ve never checked-in - number of individuals who own goals but have not even checked-in once to the key result which they own for the current timeline
Average progress - the overall average of achieved vs target percentage based on the check-ins done on goals for the current timeline.

The cards also reflect the same goals as seen in the list below. If you run a filter on the list it will also filter these cards.

Actions you can take :

You can change the timeline to see the data for another timeline
You can run filters on the list to also filter the data on the graph

Viewing Individuals in the List

Key highlights of the Individual list view

The table includes the names of team members and detail fields displayed as columns. Some details such as number of goals, last check-in, average progress, goal status etc as displayed on the table. This view is great to get a birds eye view of the team’s status on goal creation and check-in progress. You can add and alter the columns based on your needs using the column selector on the right side of the table.
All columns have filters and sorting to help you change the view. You can also use the search bar at the top of the list to find specific goal owners.
By clicking on any Individual you will be taken to that person’s individual goal page (similar to the manage page for ‘Me’)

Actions you can do

a. On the Top panel of the page and to the right of the ‘I want to manage goals’ dropdown you will see a kebab menu.

- Refresh List - this allows you to manually refresh the list to ensure the data on the page is the latest
- Download report - this enables you to download the list of goals for all team members in a .csv report.

b. On the top of the list there is an ‘Add+’ button with a dropdown (based on your access to create you will be able to see all to none of the options)

- Add Objective - this will open up a create objective panel
- Add Key Result - this will open up a create key result panel

c. Against individual by clicking on the kebab menu on the right you can click on ‘View Details’ which takes you to the individual’s goal page

Goal Card View

Step 2: From the ‘Layout’ filter on the manage goal page select ‘Card View’

The Card section also lists down all the Objectives but it does so in a card-like format.

Each card here is dedicated to an employee and lists down only those goals (objectives and key results) that the said employee is an owner of.

By clicking on any goal, you will see the goal details panel open up from the bottom right of the page. You will be able to view and act on goals (based on your access level).

You can also add a key result to be owned by an employee by simply clicking on the + icon which would open the "Add Key Result" screen.

Similar to other layouts, to delete a particular goal, simply click on the Ellipsis icon and choose Delete.

This is very helpful when, say, you’re a manager, and you wish to look at the deliverables and corresponding progress of your team members individually. It also helps you determine the number of goals owned by each employee comparatively, thus helping you plan the workload better in terms of distributing tasks among your team.

Goal Tree View

Step 2: From the ‘Layout’ filter on the manage goal page select ‘Tree View’

The tree section enables you to view the hierarchy of goals visually. You can see the relationship between the parent goal and contributing child goals. You can drill down further to the last goal or move up to see the top most goal the child goal aligns with.

With a tree-like format, this visual branches out to show the entire flow of Objectives, down to their very last Key Results. This visual representation makes it super easy for anyone to understand which Key Results have a direct impact on which Objectives.

Go into further detail by clicking on a particular branch of the tree to get a visual representation of the hierarchy of goals of that particular branch.

You can use the Add Objective or Add Key Result icons to add an objective or key result at that particular level respectively.