Proof: frequent progress reviews boost success

Organizations worldwide are struggling to achieve their goals. Studies show that up to 90% of companies fail to achieve the goals they’ve set themselves.*

We carried out a large study and found that companies — regardless of size, industry, and geography — updating and reviewing their goals’ progress more frequently are more likely to achieve their goals.

Correlation between updating progress and achieving goals

To explore the correlation between updating / reviewing goal progress and achieving goals, we evaluated a randomized sample of 250 companies with over 15.000 employees who had defined over 150.000 goals, representing small-, medium-, and large-sized organizations from 50 different countries.

We found that employees who updated progress on their goals 2.5 times as often as others, achieved on average 2 times more of those goals.

Here’s how we found out: we split up the companies into two camps—those with a high percentage of goals achieved and those with a low percentage of goals achieved.  It didn’t matter where you drew the line between high and low: the companies with a high percentage of goals achieved consistently updated progress on those goals 1.5 to 2 times more often.

Perdoo Check-ins: Save 1 working day per employee per year while achieving 2 times more business goals

To make frequent goal updates effortless and turn reviewing goals’ progress into a simple weekly habit, we released our Check-ins feature!

With Check-ins, companies define how often goals should be updated in the organization and when (for example, every Friday at 5 PM). Automated Check-in reminders are sent to everyone involved via the Perdoo web app, mobile app, or Slack. Team members can update all their goals at once — without leaving their work environment! And Check-in reports make it easy to review progress.

To find out how the feature is received in practice, we surveyed over 600 customers. Here are the results:

• 86% of respondents stated that the Check-ins helped them save time.
• 85% said Check-ins helped them stay on top of their own as well as their direct reports’ goals.
• On average, the respondents saved 12 minutes per working week, which translates into 10 hours, or more than one working day per year.

Henrik-Jan van der Pol, CEO and founder of Perdoo:

“It’s commonly known that the number one reason why organizations fail to achieve their goals is setting them at the beginning of a quarter and then forgetting about them. Our data analysis clearly shows that more frequent goal progress updates help organizations to achieve up to twice as many company goals. Perdoo’s Check-in feature makes updating and reviewing goal progress easier and less time consuming, enabling users to update and review their goals more frequently and achieve a higher share of their company and team goals.”

Sources:

*David Norton and Robert Kaplan: The Balanced Scorecard