Tracking your objectives

Who can use this: Employees only. The employee portal must be enabled by your org admin, and the Employee Objectives feature must be turned on under Settings → Organization → Features.

An objective is a goal you are working toward — a deliverable, a skill to develop, a measurable outcome. Performance Blocks treats objectives as first-class records that you (the employee) can own, your manager approves, and you both update over time. When the period ends, your objectives feed directly into your summary.

This article covers how to create personal objectives, get them approved, update progress, and understand what happens when an objective is closed, missed, or exceeded.

Where objectives come from

Objectives can originate in three places:

• Org-level objectives. Set by your org admin. Visible to everyone they apply to. Useful for company-wide goals (for example, "All engineers complete the new security training by end of Q2").
• Manager-assigned objectives. Created by your manager and assigned to you. These cover the work your manager wants you to focus on.
• Personal objectives. Created by you, then sent to your manager for approval. These are how you propose your own development goals or stretch projects.

This article focuses primarily on personal objectives — the ones you create yourself — but the lifecycle (approval, progress, close-out) is the same regardless of who created the objective.

Anatomy of an objective

Every objective has the following fields:

• Title — a short statement of the goal ("Ship the analytics revamp by end of Q2").
• Description — a longer explanation of what success looks like, why it matters, and any context.
• Owner — the person responsible. For personal objectives, that is you.
• Approver — your manager. They must approve the objective before it becomes active.
• Period — the time window for the objective (often a quarter or half).
• Target date — the deadline.
• Success criteria — how completion will be measured. Numeric (a target metric) or qualitative (a clear definition of done).
• Status — Draft, Pending approval, Active, Completed, Missed, Exceeded, or Closed.
• Progress — a percentage from 0 to 100, plus a health chip (On track, At risk, Behind, Blocked).
• Linked attributes (optional) — competency tags this objective develops.
• Notes — a running log of updates you and your manager add over time.

Once an objective is active, you update progress regularly. When the period closes, the final status (Completed, Missed, Exceeded) is recorded.

Creating a personal objective

To create a new personal objective:

1. Open the Objectives page from the left navigation rail.
2. Click New objective.
3. Fill in the form:
   • Title — one sentence, action-oriented.
   • Description — context and what success looks like.
   • Period — pick from the available periods set by your org admin (for example "Q2 2026").
   • Target date — when the work should be complete.
   • Success criteria — specific, measurable, time-bound.
   • Linked attributes (optional) — pick from the org's attribute list.
4. Click Save as draft if you want to keep working on it, or Send for approval if it is ready.

Drafts are private to you. Nothing is shared with your manager until you click Send for approval.

Writing a good objective

The best objectives share a few traits:

• Specific. "Improve cross-functional collaboration" is too vague. "Lead a monthly sync with the design team and ship two joint experiments by end of Q2" is concrete.
• Measurable. Either numeric ("hit 95% on-time delivery for sprint commitments") or with a clear definition of done ("documentation page published and linked from the team handbook").
• Within your control. The outcome should largely depend on your own actions. "Increase company revenue by 10%" is rarely a realistic individual objective; "ship the three experiments on the roadmap that the revenue team has prioritized" usually is.
• Time-bound. Tied to a period and a target date.
• Honest about ambition. A stretch objective is fine; flag it as a stretch in the description so your manager knows the bar.

The approval flow

When you click Send for approval, the objective changes status to Pending approval and your manager is notified.

Your manager will:

• Approve — the objective becomes Active. You can start logging progress.
• Request changes — they leave a comment with what they want adjusted. The objective returns to Draft for you to edit and resubmit.
• Decline — the objective is rejected with a comment explaining why. You can edit and resend or archive it.

You will be notified of the decision in-app and (if enabled) by email.

What managers look for

Managers typically approve quickly when an objective is clearly written and aligned with team priorities. Common reasons for "request changes":

• The success criteria are too vague to measure later.
• The scope is too large for the period (try splitting it into two objectives).
• The objective overlaps with one your manager was about to assign you (consolidation).
• It is not a great fit for the period and would be better next period.

Treat these as a normal back-and-forth, not a setback. Most personal objectives go through one round of feedback before approval.

Updating progress

Once an objective is Active, update progress at least every two weeks. Frequent, small updates are far more useful than one big update at the end of the period.

To update an objective:

1. Open it from the Objectives page or your dashboard sidebar.
2. Click Update progress.
3. Set the new progress percentage (0–100).
4. Set the health chip:
   • On track — you expect to hit the target by the deadline.
   • At risk — you may not hit the target unless something changes.
   • Behind — you have already slipped meaningfully against the plan.
   • Blocked — something outside your control is preventing progress.
5. Add a short note describing what changed since the last update — work completed, blockers, decisions, learnings.
6. Click Save.

The update is logged with a timestamp and visible to both you and your manager. The history of updates becomes part of the objective's record.

Why notes matter

A progress percentage alone is not very informative. The note is what tells the story:

• "Demoed v1 to the design team. They flagged two UX issues I had not seen — addressing this week."
• "Blocked on platform team. Filed ticket and escalated. Estimating 1 week of slip."
• "Hit the milestone two weeks early. Stretching scope to include the customer onboarding flow."

Future-you, your manager, and your end-of-period summary all benefit when the notes tell a clear story.

Linking objectives to your work

Objectives do not exist in isolation. They show up in several places throughout the app:

• Your dashboard sidebar — every active objective with progress and health.
• Conversations — you can reference an objective in a 1:1 thread to discuss progress, blockers, or pivots.
• Summaries — at the end of the period, your manager pulls completed objectives into your summary, with their final status and commentary.

You can also surface an objective from any other context using the Link to objective action where it appears (in the conversation composer, for example).

Statuses at a glance

Status	Meaning	Who sets it
Draft	You are still writing the objective; not visible to your manager.	You
Pending approval	Sent to your manager; awaiting decision.	You (by clicking Send for approval)
Active	Approved and in progress.	Your manager (on approval)
Completed	You met the success criteria by the target date.	You or your manager (on close-out)
Exceeded	You significantly surpassed the success criteria.	Your manager (on close-out)
Missed	You did not meet the success criteria by the target date.	Your manager (on close-out)
Closed	Closed early without a Completed/Missed/Exceeded outcome (for example: scope changed, project cancelled, no longer relevant).	You or your manager

Closed objectives are not failures. They are a clean way to retire something that no longer makes sense to pursue.

End-of-period close-out

As the period nears its end, your manager will close out each active objective. The close-out involves:

1. Setting the final status — Completed, Missed, Exceeded, or Closed.
2. Adding a final note — what actually happened, what you learned, what to do differently next time.
3. Linking to the period summary — the closed objective appears in the Objectives section of your next summary, with the final status and your manager's commentary.

You can preview how an objective will appear in a summary from the objective detail page (look for the Summary preview card).

After close-out, the objective becomes read-only. Notes and history are preserved permanently.

Editing an active objective

You can edit non-structural fields on an active objective at any time:

• Description (add context, update success criteria as your understanding sharpens).
• Linked attributes.
• Notes (you can always add new notes; you cannot delete past ones).

Structural changes — title, period, target date, success criteria themselves — require manager approval. Click Request change on the objective to send a proposed edit. This is the same flow as initial approval and produces an audit trail of why the change happened.

When an objective should be split, merged, or cancelled

Sometimes the right move is not to push through an objective but to restructure it:

• Split — if the objective has grown into two distinct workstreams, it is usually clearer to close the original and create two new ones.
• Merge — if you have two objectives that have collapsed into a single piece of work, propose merging them.
• Cancel — if the underlying project has been cancelled or significantly deprioritized, mark the objective Closed and add a note explaining why.

All of these changes go through the same approval/close-out flow as a normal objective. The audit trail makes it clear what happened and why, which matters at summary time.

Objectives in your summary

When your manager writes your end-of-period summary, the Objectives section is auto-populated from the objectives that closed during the period. For each objective you will see:

• The title and final status (Completed, Missed, Exceeded, Closed).
• Your manager's commentary on the result.
• Optionally, the linked attributes.

This is where consistent progress notes pay off. Objectives that have been updated regularly produce richer commentary; objectives that were silent until close-out tend to get a thinner write-up.

For more on summaries, see Viewing your summaries.

Notifications

By default, you are notified when:

• Your manager approves, requests changes on, or declines an objective you submitted.
• Your manager assigns you a new objective.
• An active objective has had no update for more than two weeks.
• An objective is closed by your manager.

Adjust delivery channels in Profile → Notifications → Objectives.

Privacy

• Personal objectives in Draft are visible only to you.
• Pending, Active, Completed, Missed, Exceeded, and Closed objectives are visible to you and your manager.
• Org-level objectives are visible to everyone they apply to.
• Skip-level managers and org admins can see your active and completed objectives for organizational reporting and review purposes. Drafts remain private to you.
• Other employees cannot see your objectives unless your org admin has explicitly enabled cross-team visibility (rare; off by default).

Tips for using objectives well

• Have fewer, better objectives. Three or four meaningful objectives per period beats eight thin ones. The conversation about each gets richer when there are fewer.
• Update on a schedule. Pick a day every other week — Friday afternoon is a common choice — and walk through every active objective. Five minutes per objective is plenty.
• Use the notes as your working journal. The notes field becomes the most useful artifact when summary time comes. Write to your future self.
• Tie objectives back to growth areas. If your last summary identified a growth area, propose an objective that targets it. The loop from feedback → goal → result → next summary is what makes the system work.
• Close things out cleanly. A messy backlog of stale objectives erodes the signal. If something is no longer real, close it.

Where to go next

• Viewing your summaries — where completed objectives end up.
• Conversations with your manager — the right place to talk through blockers and pivots.
• Your dashboard — where active objectives are surfaced day-to-day.

If the Employee Objectives feature is not enabled in your org, only org-level and manager-assigned objectives will be visible to you, and the New objective button will be hidden. Ask your org admin if you would like the feature turned on.