When Quarterly Goals Exist, but Daily Execution Doesn’t
Why aren’t we hitting our goals when everyone is working hard?
Quarterly strategic planning matters, but if you’re not seeing consistent progress, then it might be time to look at what happens between the planning sessions.
Even when quarterly goals are clearly defined, somewhere between the rollout and the middle of the workweek, priorities seem to slip. Teams are busy on client work as the actions that move the quarter forward get postponed.
Why does this happen? As meetings stack up and issues compete for attention, the work that was supposed to define the quarter becomes one more item among many. Unless leaders deliberately reinforce that priority every week, execution defaults to whatever feels most urgent in the moment.
This is when leaders start looking for answers:
How do we actually execute our strategic plan?
Why aren’t we hitting our goals when everyone is working hard?
The answer is not to add new goals. It’s almost always due to missing habits.
Below are the execution habits high-performing companies use to keep quarterly priorities front and center in daily work and drive real growth in their organizations.
Habit 1: Start the Week With a Clear Direction
High-performing companies don’t begin leadership weeks by reviewing every task completed the prior week. They begin by restating what matters this week.
Reaffirming the quarterly priority early in the week does something important: it establishes a decision filter before calendars fill up. Leaders and managers are more likely to protect the work that advances the goal because they’ve named it before reacting to everything else.
This idea is explored in Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage, where he emphasizes that leaders must continually reinforce what matters most because competing demands never stop. The key takeaway is to create clarity before complexity takes over.
A standing weekly meeting where teams report on the tasks required to maintain progress will help provide clear direction from the start.
Habit 2: Explicitly Connect This Week’s Actions to the Quarterly Goal
Usually, teams know the quarterly goal, but they struggle to see how today’s work supports it, especially when issues pile up.
That gap creates execution drift.
High-performing teams close it by making the connection explicit in the weekly action plan. Leaders ask their teams to spell out:
- Which actions this week will advance the quarterly goal
- Which work should come secondary to the priority tasks
And they help identify which tasks feel productive but don’t move the goal at all.
Over time, this builds confidence throughout the organization. Teams stop escalating every prioritization decision because they understand how to evaluate incoming work against the goal on their own.
Habit 3: Reduce the Number of Goals
In most firms, client work consumes the bulk of attention, energy, and calendar space. Growth priorities like process improvements, cross-team coordination, and strategic initiatives are constantly at odds with revenue-producing activities.
When firms carry too many internal goals, the initiatives lose every daily tradeoff. Not because the team disagrees with them, but because there’s no practical way to protect time for all of them at once while still performing client work.
Reducing the number of goals changes how the team prioritizes work. With fewer priorities in play:
- Managers confidently allocate time to non-billable work without feeling irresponsible
- Teams feel like they can pause client-related tasks temporarily
- When deadlines collide, leaders have a clear choice in priority
This approach opens space for execution to take hold. Fewer goals don’t limit progress; they concentrate it. Goals only move forward when it’s clear which outcomes deserve protection, especially in a client-driven environment.
Habit 4: Make Progress Visible
As firms grow, internal updates tend to expand while progress gets less clear.
People report the number of meetings attended, the number of documents reviewed, and the hours invested. What’s harder to see is whether any of that activity advanced the priority that the firm agreed mattered this quarter.
When progress isn’t visible or consistently shared, teams compensate by explaining their efforts. That’s a rational response, but it’s ineffective when a company is trying to grow.
Progress becomes easier to assess when two things are consistently true:
- Each priority has one clearly identified owner responsible for guiding it forward
- Progress is reviewed against simple indicators of movement with the whole team
This requires short, regular check-ins focused on what moved (and what didn’t) to keep progress visible. The effect is an organization that shares, celebrates, and consistently advances goals.
Keeping the Quarter on Track
The companies that consistently hit their goals reinforce the same priority, week after week, until the quarter ends.
They install habits into their daily operating rhythm that keep their team focused on progress:
- Habit 1: Start the Week With a Clear Direction
- Habit 2: Explicitly Connect This Week’s Actions to the Quarterly Goal
- Habit 3: Reduce the Number of Goals
- Habit 4: Make Progress Visible
That’s how strategic plans survive the workweek—and how quarterly goals actually get done.
If your team needs support installing strong execution habits, book a consultation to see how Align makes strategy survive the workweek.
Make Small Changes Today for Big Wins Tomorrow.
