Change Agent Part 2: Set Clear and Definable Objectives
This is the second step in this series. Click here to start at Step One.
Setting clear and definable objectives is essential to any campaign. It is almost impossible to succeed if you get this step wrong.
The broad mission is to solve the the problem you’re working on. Objectives are the way you get there.
Solving the problem that you’re working on is your mission. You will need to set and complete multiple objectives in order for you to achieve the overall mission. That process starts with setting your first objective.
There is no magic to setting good objectives, but there are a few tricks to keep in mind.
Objectives must be clearly defined to make a tangible difference in the problem you’re working on.
Look at the different facets of the problem. Where is the best place to start? It has to be important enough to your overall mission to draw supporters, yet specific and reasonable to complete.
As an example, our family lost my step-brother Chris Dana to post-traumatic stress disorder after he returned from a tour in Iraq with the Montana National Guard. In meeting after Chris’s death, our family decided that we would like to make a difference to help save other servicemembers from losing their lives to the hidden wounds of war.
The large problem was massive and multi-layered. We talked about many of the issues and complexities, but kept coming back to the lack of individual screening for mental health conditions after the return from a combat deployment.
Chris arrived back home from deployment in October of 2005. According to Chris, his unit conducted a brief group screening at Fort Lewis before being sent home to Montana. Basically, “Is everyone okay? Is anyone having mental health problems?”
To say that group mental health screenings were not an effective way to help our men and women returning home from combat is an understatement.
The objective we chose to address that part of the overall issue was to “Require each returning service member of the Montana National Guard to attend a mandatory counseling session after coming back from deployment.”
That objective was clearly defined and tangible. While there was significant debate about whether it was the right policy decision, there was little to no debate asking what that objective meant.
It was also reasonable for us to accomplish it because it just required the Commander and Chief of the Montana National Guard to give the order.
Here is the initial Op-Ed that demanded that change.
Objectives should only be one sentence long.
I don’t care what you’re working on. I don’t care how complex it is. You need to be able to describe your overall objective in a single sentence.
This sentence will allow potential allies and supporters to know exactly what they are being asked to support. This single-sentence should be able to draw enough interest that you’ll be able to gauge whether the objective you’ve chosen has the ability to gain traction among stakeholders and the public.
This single sentence will also allow you and your supporters to know whether this phase of your campaign has been successful.
To make a metaphor to start-up businesses and venture capital, your initial objective is your Minimum Viable Product. By sharing this product with friends and potential allies, you should be able to tell whether your objective can find “Product-Market Fit” among potential supporters and allies.
Just like the world of startups and product market fit, it can be really hard to come up with an actionable objective to help make a tangible step forward on a large, real-world problem.
Scrapping an objective that isn’t gaining traction and replacing it with something different, yet targeted towards the same mission is a regular part of the process.
Here are some examples of objectives of issues that I’ve work on it the last few year. Some of them have been accomplished to a degree. Others are works in progress.
- Establish a precision mental health program for veterans that will help more veterans get the right care at the right time for their mental health condition.
- Establish mental health peer support as service in Montana that can be billed to Medicaid.
- Deliver research-proven suicide prevention programs to Montana’s youth.
- Automate the process of writing clinical case notes to reduce undue stress on mental health clinicians and improve care.
You’ll see that all of these objectives are single sentences that start with a verb.
While their might be some debate about what it would take to completely achieve this objective, there should be little debate about what it would take to complete the basic requirement of the objective.
Objectives provide a starting point, but they will need to be adjusted based upon changing support and challenges.
Every single successful objective that I have set has had to be adjusted after being released and reacted to by the outside world, supporters, opponents, etc.
Human beings are complicated and complex. Our ability to predict how problems amongst humans will be resolved is limited, but we do need a general direction and a starting point. That is what you initial objective provides.
To use the example from above of our family’s initial objective after my stepbrother’s death.
Require each returning service member of the Montana National Guard to attend a mandatory counseling session after coming back from deployment.
This objective was successful enough that a task force was created to analyze how to improve the Montana National Guard’s redeployment process. That Task Force supported our broad objective, but they changed its nomenclature and scope.
Instead of calling for “Mandatory Counseling,” the Task Force required screening by a mental health therapist. They also wanted this screening to happen repeatedly over time, not just after redeploying home because post traumatic stress injuries can develop over time. A single screening would miss many of the servicemembers in need.
These were great changes to the objective. That updated objective was successful enough in gathering support that we were able to work with Senator Max Baucus to develop it as federal legislation — the Post-Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009. A modified version of that legislation was passed in the Defense Authorization Act of 2010 and signed into law in late October 2009.
As that bill developed on the federal level, policymakers added a pre-deployment screening and lost one of the post-deployment screenings. One of these changes improved the objective and the other was necessary to get the Department of Defense to support it.
The overall series of mental health screenings required under the statute aligned to our family’s original mission to “help save other servicemembers from losing their lives to the hidden wounds of war.”
This was only a small objective in a massive and complicated problem, but it was a tangible step forward on the issue. That step forward gave us momentum that was critical in building supporter and allies around the country. It also led to the next objective, “Establish a precision mental health program for veterans that will help more veterans get the right care at the right time for their mental health condition.”
That next objective was not accomplished until the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act was signed into law roughly ten years later on October 17, 2020.
We are still working on finalizing that objective, specifically working with the Veterans Administration and Congress to design and roll-out that precision mental health initiative. It is a long process and we have to get it right.
It is too early to determine what the next objective will be for that mission, but I know that it will be a single sentence that starts with a verb.
What objective do you want to accomplish to take a tangible step forward in the problem that you’re working on?
