Goals

Set a few quarterly goals and track them against the real work — outcome progress beside execution health.

Vision is easy to set and easy to lose by February. Goals keep a handful of clear, shared objectives in front of everyone and tie each one to the work actually driving it — so you can see, at a glance, whether you're making real progress or just staying busy.

Goals are available for church organizations on a plan that includes project management. If you don't see Goals in your sidebar, your organization may not have it enabled.

What a goal is

A goal is a single quarterly objective written as "From X → To Y · By When · And Why." It can be measurable, backed by projects, or both — only a name and a why are required. That lets a goal be any of:

A measurable target with the work behind it — "Grow weekend attendance from 320 to 400 by June, because we have room to invite our neighbors."
A bucket of projects with no number, just an objective they share.
A pure outcome you check in on each week, with no projects attached yet.

Goals are visible to your whole workspace — there are no private goals. Each goal has one owner for accountability.

The two signals

Every goal shows two numbers side by side, and Cadence deliberately never blends them into one:

Outcome progress — how far your metric has moved from its start toward its target. You update this by hand at the weekly check-in.
Execution health — On track, At risk, or Behind, calculated automatically by rolling up the health of the projects linked to the goal.

The gap between the two is the part leadership wants to see:

Outcome behind but execution green → you're busy on the wrong bets — rethink the approach.
Execution red but the number's still moving → the work is thrashing even though results are coming.
Both green → real, earned progress.

Create a goal

Open Goals from the sidebar and choose New goal.

Give it a name and a why — the reason it's worth pursuing. Both are required.

Optionally tie it to a mission area (the church goals on your organization profile) and set a quarter and/or target date.

Optionally add a first outcome metric to track progress against a number — or skip this and add metrics later from the goal's page.

Create. New goals start as Planned; mark one Active when you begin working it.

You can also create a goal from anywhere using the g shortcut — see Quick create.

Outcome metrics

An outcome metric (sometimes called a measure or sub-goal) is the number that tells you whether the goal succeeded. Each goal can have one or more metrics.

Each metric has:

Label — what you're measuring (e.g., "Weekend attendance")
Unit — what the number represents (e.g., "people", "%", "$")
Start value — where you are today
Target value — where you want to be
Current value — updated at each check-in

Outcome progress is calculated as: (current − start) ÷ (target − start).

You can add, rename, and remove metrics from the goal's page at any time. When a goal has multiple metrics, each is shown as a separate row with its own progress bar.

Link the work

A goal earns its execution health by connecting to projects. On the goal's page, link any project that drives it — a goal can pull from several projects, and a project can serve several goals. As soon as a linked project's health changes, the goal's execution health recomputes on its own.

Every linked project shows a "Part of: {goal}" badge on its overview, so anyone working that project can see how their work ladders up to the mission.

A goal with no linked projects falls back to the health you pick at the weekly check-in — useful for a pure-outcome goal you're tracking before any projects exist.

The weekly check-in

Goals run on a weekly rhythm. Each week the owner posts a check-in:

Pick the current health — On track, At risk, or Behind.

Write a short update on what moved.

If the goal has a metric, enter the current value — it updates the outcome progress bar.

Check-ins build a history on the goal's page, so you can see how the story changed over the quarter. The owner gets a weekly reminder to post one, and can turn that reminder off in notification settings.

You can also post a check-in from the c shortcut anywhere in the app.

Goal lifecycle

Goals move through four states:

Status	Meaning
Planned	Created but not yet started
Active	Being worked; shows on the main portfolio
Complete	Marked done — you choose a result
Archived	Hidden from the default view

When you mark a goal Complete, Cadence asks for a result:

Accomplished — you hit the objective. 🎉
Missed — the goal ran its course without being achieved.

Completing a goal triggers a celebration animation for the team — a nice moment of shared recognition before you move on to what's next.

Campus mode

For multi-campus organizations, a goal can track progress per campus. When a goal is set to campus mode, each campus gets its own target and current value for each metric. Totals roll up to the organization-level goal automatically.

To enable campus mode, open the goal and toggle Track by campus. You'll then allocate targets to each campus individually.

Campus mode is available for organizations with multiple campuses configured. If you don't see the option, contact your administrator.

Staying focused

The whole point is focus, so Cadence nudges you toward three active goals at a time. Go past three and you'll see a gentle warning — but it never blocks you. The discipline is yours; the tool just keeps it visible.