In the age of AI and automation, small teams can achieve more – and faster – than ever before. But speed now depends less on technology – and more on decision-making.
Big companies want to move at startup speed, but most can’t. Why?
Because their decision-making is too slow. Managers become bottlenecks. Employees aren’t trusted, or they make poor decisions because the goals are unclear.
The solution is enabling people at every level to make good decisions. Only when all employees are empowered to make good and effective decisions, can the organization move steadily and fast.
And good decisions start with good goals.
👣 The HUMAN framework for strategic goals
At Portfoleon, we have created a simple standard for strategic goals. We call it HUMAN.
You’ve probably seen SMART goals before – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. SMART is great for execution.
But execution is not the whole game. Today, organizations need much more: making sure that everyone contributes, and the whole organization moves quickly.
That’s where HUMAN comes in. It’s a foundation layer that makes sure it’s not only clear what to do, but also what is the essence of the goal, why it matters, why it’s possible, and why it’s worth doing.
The HUMAN system makes organizations move faster in a steady and sustainable way.
HUMAN goal system
Honest
The goals are only effective if they are executed on. Doubts, gossip, or ridicule will erode the team spirit, and make excellent strategy execution impossible.
Distill the essence of every strategic goal and avoid contaminating it with redundant and artificial details. These include superficial reasoning, artificially set deadlines, or populism in any form.
It’s tempting to phrase everything in mission-driven terms. But if your actual goal is to grow revenue or gain market share, say so. Pretending otherwise can backfire. If people misunderstand your intent, they may act in ways that feel noble – but don’t help your business.
Examples of honest goals:
- Cut operational costs by 2.5% (open about the real intention)
- Enable customers to integrate their own reporting systems (free of solution details)
Honesty builds alignment and prevents surprise. It’s not always pretty, but it always pays off.
Once there’s no chance for doubt, your next step is making sure that everyone is on the same page.
Understood
To ensure swift implementation, your team must understand the goal well. This isn’t just about writing goals clearly. It’s about making the effort to help others absorb them.
A good strategist doesn’t just announce goals – they check for understanding. They repeat, rephrase, give examples, ask questions, use visuals, and seek feedback. They make goals palpable, not abstract.
Understanding is the gateway to alignment. And alignment is the gateway to speed.
Meaningful
The essence of a strategy is a choice.
But not just any choice. A good strategic direction chooses between viable alternatives.
One way to illustrate the principle of Meaningfulness is an exercise that we call “reverse-to-nonsense”. Take a goal, and reverse it to get the opposite of that goal. If you get a nonsensical goal, the original goal was not offering a meaningful choice.
For example, “we will constantly improve quality” when reversed produces “we will constantly reduce quality”. The new goal does not make much sense, which means that neither does the original.
Compare to:
- Open an office in Brazil in Q2 (a viable alternative – open an office or not)
- Replace the legacy web application with a mobile application (another viable option – keep developing the web application)
The strategy paradox states that a strategy that can result in success can also result in failure. In other words, a good strategy cannot be determined upfront to be successful.
The next step is making sure the strategy is fit for the team.
Ambitious
Strategic direction must be clear, meaningful, and honest so that the team can find solutions and get the work done. What’s important now is that you make it possible to achieve the goal without burning out or boring out the team.
SMART suggests to make goals achievable – but that’s not enough. In HUMAN, this is replaced with Ambitious – achievable and engaging.
The right level of stretch depends on the context. For a mature organization, ambition might mean bold transformation. For a startup, it could mean launching something radically fast.
Ambition gives people a reason to bring their best – especially when the goal matters.
Noble
“A goal worth fighting for looks different to everyone – but it matters to all.”
“Noble” can mean many things: doing good in the world, solving something no one’s solved before, making something that inspires pride, or boldly going into the unknown.
It’s not about being altruistic, rather it’s about having a reason bigger than routine – a reason someone can connect to personally.
Call it “noble,” “bold,” or “purposeful” – the point is: it has to matter to someone.
A few examples:
- Win a tender against Acme Inc., a competitor 50x bigger than us (David vs. Goliath)
- Reduce the shipment lead time to one day (achieve what is thought to be impossible)
✅ What HUMAN goals unlock
When your goals are HUMAN, you get:
- Faster decisions at all levels
- Stronger alignment across teams
- More trust and ownership
- Clearer planning and prioritization
- Less management overload
🤖 But what about AI?
Yes, the AI revolution is real – and it’s changing how work gets done.
In the near future, it’s likely that task management, project decomposition, even parts of coordination will be handled – partly or entirely – by AI. Smaller, self-directed pods will take on work. Some tasks will flow straight from input to completion with little or no human involvement.
As execution becomes easier, alignment becomes harder – and more important. That’s exactly why strategy needs to be clear, shared, and visible – not locked in someone’s head or buried in a PowerPoint.
Whether it’s employees, autonomous teams, or AI agents doing the work, they all need to understand the same thing: Where are we going? What matters most? What trade-offs have we made?
This is where HUMAN goals become even more important. Not just for buy-in – but for coherence across systems.
We’re building Portfoleon with that future in mind.
💡 Want to try it?
We prepared a printable HUMAN goals canvas for you. There are two versions for you to download.
The Light version is pretty much what you can expect from a canvas document. It’s clean, structured, and ready to be used in the meeting room. You can download it right here:
The Dark version on the other hand is the unfiltered brutal truth.
📚 Research and practice
Our thinking has been shaped by many sources – including the work of 🇧🇪 strategy execution expert Jeroen De Flander, IASP (International Association for Strategy Professionals), and scientific research in the “Strategy as Practice” field.
🧠 Strategy is a human thing
Software can help – but only if it supports how people think and work. Portfoleon is designed to help teams create and work toward HUMAN goals.
Ready to see how?