How to make engineers aware that they contribute to the company’s objectives?

Problem

"My company holds planning meetings at the start of every quarter. Keeping company-wide metrics in mind, each team writes up their goals for the quarter and submits them to the E-team, and the rest of the company, for comment. A few quarters ago we had a planning meeting that seemed to go really well. We ended up with a list of goals with well-defined metrics, which were well received by the rest of the company. However, over the next few weeks, I realized that even though everyone was excited by what they were working on, some of the engineers were struggling to see how their day-to-day work impacted on larger company-wide goals and metrics."

Actions taken

"After I noticed the disconnect, I decided to address it during our team meeting. We talked about people's concerns and worked on drawing the lines from individual projects to team metrics. We then discussed the impact of team metrics on the larger, company-wide goals. After discussing this during the team meeting, I continued the conversation during our regular one-on-ones and gathered feedback from the team. Over time, people felt a lot better about their goals for the quarter."

Lessons learned

"The big lesson for me was that during our original goal planning meeting we did not spend enough time connecting the dots between individual goals and company-wide metrics. Company-wide metrics, like revenue, depend on multiple factors, some of which are outside of the realm of the engineering team, like sales and marketing. Helping engineers see how their day-to-day work contributes to the big picture enables them to be fully bought into the mission of the company, and to truly feel the impact of their work."