Six Rules for Goals and Alignment
Goals are a communication tool: three max, one that wins, intern-legible, painful, single-owned, and followed up.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 96%
Six rules for setting company goals that actually create clarity, treating goals as a communication tool rather than a spreadsheet. Use it when goals feel like an unreadable 100-line OKR sheet, or when a team lacks a clear sense of priorities. Match cadence to stage (every two months at seed, annual for established businesses).
Origin
Molly Graham drew this from Facebook, which she says was very good at goals, holding just three company goals (growth/MAU, engagement, revenue) for the five years she was there. Rules four and six borrow phrases from Claire Hughes Johnson ('strategy should hurt') and James Clear ('winners and losers have the same goal').
Core principles
- 01Goals are a communication tool designed to create clarity, not a scorecard
- 02Match goal cadence to company stage; annual goals waste early-stage companies' time
- 03Fewer, clearer, owned goals beat comprehensive, unreadable ones
How to run it
- 1
No more than three company goals
Limit the company to three top goals so people know what matters most. Facebook governed with growth, engagement, and revenue for five years.
Pro tip If you can govern Facebook with three goals, you can govern any business with three goals.
- 2
One goal must win in a fight
Rank them so people know what to prioritize when goals conflict on a given day. At Facebook, engagement beat raw user growth.
Pro tip You could buy bots to add MAU, but engagement was always the tiebreaker because it drives revenue.
- 3
Explain it to me like I'm five
An intern who started Monday should be able to read and understand the goals. Spell out acronyms and use numbers ordinary people grasp.
Watch out If the goals need decoding, they fail as a communication tool.
- 4
Strategy should hurt
Make painful trade-offs explicit; be as clear about what you won't do as what you will. If goal-setting isn't painful, you're not prioritizing.
Pro tip If you have 10 goals, six won't get done; either you pick the four or your team picks for you.
- 5
One goal, one owner
Every number gets exactly one name next to it, and it's not the CEO. Two owners means no owner.
Pro tip Someone's ass has to be on the line for the goal; that alone is a powerful motivator.
Watch out Co-ownership feels easier but kills accountability and clarity.
- 6
Build a follow-up process
Goals by themselves aren't enough; add a system to follow up, hold people accountable, and learn how hard it is to move each number.
Pro tip Winners and losers have the same goal; the process is what separates them.
In the wild
Facebook ran on exactly three goals (growth measured as MAU, engagement, revenue) the entire five years Molly was there, despite being a complex marketplace, social network, and ad business.
→ The simplicity governed an enormously complex business and became Molly's template for advising founders.
Common mistakes
The 100-line OKR spreadsheet
A goal sheet 'written in Greek' with a hundred lines creates clarity for no one and defeats the purpose of goals.
Setting goals and stopping
Founders who set goals and then do nothing to follow up wonder why nothing works; the goal alone is not enough.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and leaders whose teams lack clear priorities or drown in an unreadable OKR list
Not ideal for
Contexts demanding many tracked metrics for compliance or reporting where three top goals can't capture the need
From the transcript
“no company needs more than three company goals”
“one goal needs to win in a fight”
“strategy should hurt”
“Two people owning a goal is no one owning a goal.”
“winners and losers have the same goal”
From the episode
The high-growth handbook: Molly Graham’s frameworks for leading through chaos, change, and scale