Goals

Overview

Goals are where WeMatter moves from understanding into action. They take the context gathered elsewhere in the platform and turn it into development work that can be tracked, discussed, and refined over time.

The ongoing part is the real point. Goals are not just an output created after a good conversation. A useful goal stays active across weeks or months, gathers updates as work happens, and gives people a clearer sense of whether progress is real, stalled, or at risk.

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Where goals fit in WeMatter

Goals sit at the far end of the wider WeMatter development flow.

Foundation gives personal context. Competency frameworks define the capability model. Scorecards gather reflection, feedback, and alignment. Goals then turn that combined picture into an ongoing development path.

That does not mean goals are only relevant once everything else is finished. They become the live thread that carries the work forward. Foundation, frameworks, and scorecards help explain why the goal matters. The goal is the part that stays active afterwards.

In practical terms, goals are where WeMatter starts asking different questions:

• What should actually happen next?
• How will progress be made visible?
• Which parts of the work need tracking, discussion, or support?

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Where people find goals

People usually encounter goals in three places.

They may work with them in the main Goals area, where they can view and manage the goals they have access to. They may open them from a person's profile, especially when setting or generating a goal for that person. And after the WeMatter stage of a scorecard, they may be invited to generate a goal directly from that review outcome.

So although goals have their own area in the product, they are also deeply connected to the rest of the WeMatter journey.

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The goals hierarchy

One of the most important things to understand about the goals area is that it is deliberately hierarchical.

This hierarchy is important because it stops a goal from becoming a vague single sentence. The goal gives direction. Objectives define the major milestones. Achievables make the work concrete. Updates keep the whole thing alive.

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Access and participation

Goals are collaborative, but not everyone interacts with them in the same way.

The owner remains the primary person the goal belongs to. Editors can help manage and maintain the goal on the owner's behalf. Contributors play a more supportive role by adding updates and participating in the ongoing record of the goal's progress.

In the wider product, additional organisational roles such as relevant WeMatter leads, admins, and RPO users may also have edit-level access where the product rules allow it. But the goal page itself is still organised around the simpler owner, editor, and contributor model.

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Goal status and what it means

Goals can appear as On Track, At Risk, Achieved, or Overdue.

Some of those states are set directly. Others are inferred from timing. A goal may be marked as on track or at risk whilst it is still active. It becomes overdue when the deadline passes without completion. And it becomes achieved once the goal has genuinely been completed.

So status is not only cosmetic. It changes how the goal is read and how urgently people are likely to respond to it.

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Updates make goals ongoing

It is easy to miss this once the goal has been written. A goal is not complete just because it reads well on the page.

The updates layer is what keeps the goal current. It gives people somewhere to record progress, context, blockers, and discussion as the work unfolds. That is what turns a goal from a static note into a living development record.

For that reason, the goals area should be read not only as a place to set goals, but as a place to continue working with them.

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AI goal generation

AI goal generation is an important part of the goals experience, not a side feature. WeMatter can generate a goal using scorecard evidence, framework context, and Foundation material where available.

That makes AI generation especially useful after a scorecard has been completed, because the platform already has a richer picture of what the person is working towards, where their development opportunity sits, and what evidence supports that conclusion.

The generated output should still be reviewed. But it gives teams a much stronger starting point than a blank page.

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Group goals

Some goals are connected to a wider group goal structure. A group goal groups several people's goals under one shared business, team, or organisational outcome, then links that shared structure to individual goals for each participant.

That connection is important. The group goal holds the shared outcome and group objectives. The individual goals show how each participant contributes through personal objectives, achievables, and updates.

Use group goals when different people's goals need to roll up to the same wider outcome, but progress still needs to be owned and understood person by person. The group workspace then rolls up weighted progress, participant progress, objective progress, and activity from the connected individual records.

For the full explanation, read Group Goals.

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