Hello, how are you doing today?
On this episode, I'm going to be answering your burning business English questions.
This will help you know that you're using the right option and will hopefully help you feel more confident to speak, because that's what this is all about.
So let's crack on.
Welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a neuro language coach.
And my idea is that my job is to help you make your life better, whether that is to go for a new job, get a higher salary, bigger and better or more interesting responsibilities.
It could even be that you want an insurance policy for the future, because who knows what's going to happen.
It can also help you connect more with your colleagues and say yes to more opportunities rather than shying away from things.
Or perhaps for you it's just about having peace of mind, breaking that cycle of feeling very anxious and spending a lot of your mental energy speaking in English.
Whatever resonates with you, I hope that the podcast helps you in that aspect.
That is really what I'm here to do.
So let's move on and start with the episode today.
It's going to be different because I'm going to share with you some of the questions directly from professionals.
People have sent in audios to me with their questions which I'm going to answer on the show.
First up.
Then we are going to hear from Luis, who is based here in Spain, who has a really common question actually, that you might have on your mind too.
Hey, Anna.
My name is Luis.
Firstly, thanks for the podcast.
I'm actually running a marketing agency in Spain.
I have some clients in English and I have some questions.
Maybe you can help me.
I have heard people saying both cooperation and collaboration.
And I would like to know the difference between them.
Can you help me?
Thanks a lot.
Bye.
Perfect.
A wonderful question.
Thank you so much, Luis.
And if you want to be included on a future episode and you want me to read out your question on the show, follow the link in the description box to find out more.
So two very important nouns for you as a senior manager, cooperation and collaboration.
And maybe like a wish you've heard people use them and you're like, are they interchangeable?
Can I use both of them the same?
The short answer is they're in the same family, but they're not exactly the same.
How do we distinguish the two?
The question we have to ask ourselves is is it a shared goal or a separate goal that you're working alongside each other to reach?
Let's start with cooperation.
And I'm going to give you a really clear example because I think this illustrates it perfectly.
Think about the auditors.
If you're in a company, every year there will be a financial audit, an annual audit, let's say.
Now, the finance team in this case is not collaborating with the auditors.
They don't have a shared goal, but they're cooperating with the auditors by giving them documents, answering questions, clarifying figures, etc etc.
Each party has a separate objective.
It's not a shared goal.
The auditors want to complete the audit, of course, as quickly as possible.
I imagine if you're an auditor, although that never, I don't think, actually happens.
And the finance team, of course, wants to complete the audit efficiently while continuing their normal work.
So you cooperate with the auditors.
You don't collaborate with them.
Then if we compare that with collaboration, this is much more common in a work context.
And this is the one you're going to hear all the time, because it's one that we use about working together towards a shared goal.
Imagine you're working on a project now or heading up a piece of work where you have to work across different departments, finance IT operations.
Whatever it is, you've got a shared goal.
So you have to collaborate together to redesign the internal controls.
If you want to help yourself, remember, come back to that example.
You cooperate with the auditors.
You collaborate with the teams within your organization.
I remember I had a client, fantastic client, who used to work in health and safety.
Now, in his case, he had to cooperate with the local authorities.
You're not collaborating with them.
It's not a shared goal.
If you're doing a health and safety inspection, they've got their own goal.
You've got your own goal.
Your own goal is to pass the inspection.
Their goal is to ensure that the inspection is completed thoroughly.
You would cooperate with regulators, but you would collaborate with partners, internal stakeholders, perhaps with the operations team, or you collaborate with your colleagues on a strategic project.
The reason why I wanted to pick this question was because I often hear them being misused and normally people using cooperation when they should be using collaboration.
The key message I want to get across to you is, yes, they're in the same family.
It's definitely not the end of the world if you mix them up.
But that is the difference between the two.
And I imagine in most cases, unless you're dealing with the authorities regulation, you're probably going to be using the word collaborate when you're talking about your teams.
All right, let's move on.
Next question.
We're crossing the peninsula in Spain and we're going towards Central Europe to Petra.
Here is her question.
Hi, Anna.
My name is Petra and I'm an executive assistant to a GM, and I work in Slovakia for an international company.
My question is, what is the best way to use words like goal, aim and target?
Thank you.
Thanks, Petra.
Great question and so relevant for senior managers such as yourselves that have to deal with this type of vocabulary every day.
So the first thing is I'm going to expand a little bit on the options that you gave me and we're going to actually look at six different ones.
Vision, goal, aim, objective, target and KPIs because they all really feed into each other.
The first thing to say is that yes, all of these are talking about what we want to achieve, but they're different levels.
And that's where it gets a little bit confusing.
Some of them can be more interchangeable.
Some of them aren't.
So mixing them up is understandable.
It's certainly not the end of the world either.
So that's the good news.
But as you're looking here to be accurate with your vocabulary, let me walk you through what the differences are.
Now, I want you to think about an analogy here.
Now, stay with me.
You know those little dolls that you get the Russian dolls and you open up the doll and inside there's a smaller doll.
And then you open up the smaller doll, there's a doll inside, and so on and so forth.
These are called Russian dolls.
Well, it's a little bit like that.
So I want you to imagine the first doll is the visions.
Vision is the highest level of what we want to achieve.
It's the long-term direction.
It's the purpose.
It's that future state.
It's aspirational.
It gets people motivated.
So let's give you an example.
Let's say you were a company in digital payments.
Your vision could be, our vision is to become the most trusted digital payments provider in Europe.
So vision is the biggest Russian doll.
Now we're going to open it up.
And inside, what do we find?
But we find aims.
Aims are at a high level, but just below the vision.
This is where you're giving your intention or your focus.
It's what you intend to do, often in a very general and broad way.
And it focuses, this is the key thing, it focuses on purpose, not measurement.
In this example, then the vision is to become the most trusted digital payments provider in Europe.
And the aim of this initiative is to improve communication between departments, or one of the aims within that vision, because it doesn't have to just be one right.
Normally there's several different aims within that vision.
So we've opened up vision and inside we found aims.
And now we're going to open up the aims doll, and inside sitting snugly.
We've got the goals doll.
Well, that's quite hard to say actually.
Goals are still very high level.
They support the vision, they support the aims, but it gives more direction.
And the specific point here is that it's measurable.
Unlike aims, which that's not their focus.
Their focus is on intention, but not necessarily measurement.
In this case we were looking at before.
Maybe we could say our vision is to become the most digital payments provider in Europe or most trusted, sorry.
One of our aims is to improve communication between departments as a result of this process.
And our goal is to expand our European footprint.
That's something that's definitely measurable and something that can be tracked.
I would argue here that there is a little bit of crossover.
OK, so some people use aims and goals interchangeably, but there is a difference between the two.
But you know, always keep in mind that it's really not the end of the world, because again they all sit in the same family of.
What do we want to achieve?
It's just that if you use the right one, you're going to be expressing yourself more accurately.
Does that make sense?
We've got the goals doll.
Wow, that's really difficult to say actually.
So we're going to open it up and inside we've got objectives.
Objectives are specific and structured.
They define what success looks like in much more concrete terms.
Super common, right?
I'm sure you're always saying objectives this, objectives that.
You use it in planning, performance, management, government, whatever it is.
An objective in this case, for example, could be our objective is to reduce processing time by 20 within nine months.
It's even more specific and concrete than a goal.
And they feed into that goal.
They feed into the bigger machine.
I think also as well.
Goal and objective can be quite commonly interchangeable too, but that is the difference.
Now, an objective can be numerical.
It could be financial, but it doesn't have to be.
It's broader than that.
And that leads me on to the next doll.
So we've got objectives.
We're going to open it up and inside, oh, hello.
Now we're looking at targets.
There is a difference between a target and an objective.
A target is still a measurable result, but it's numerical.
A target could be, we need to bring in 1000 new clients.
As a sales team, you need to generate 2 million euros this year.
It is a target.
It is also an objective, right?
But a target is specifically for something that is numerical, or a percentage or a limit or a number right.
That's where it can sound a bit funny.
So if you mix it up and you say, okay, our target this year is to improve customer satisfaction.
Well, that sounds odd because you're not relating that to a figure or a number.
Does that make sense?
Last but not least, we're opening up our target doll, and there inside is the last little tiny doll in our sequence.
And these are KPIs.
KPIs, not cappy eyes, not keepy eyes, which is a common way of saying it.
Understandable, but it's just not quite got the right pronunciation there.
KPIs help you monitor your progress towards achieving your targets and objectives, which will help you achieve the goal.
Which helps you achieve the aim, which supports the vision.
See how they all fit into one another.
So, in a nutshell, a quick way to think about this, you start with the vision.
It's the long-term direction and the future state.
Then we get the aims.
They're broad and they're about your intentions and focus, but not focused on being measured.
Then within that, we have the goals.
These are still broad outcomes about what must be achieved, but are more measurable.
Then within that, we have our objectives, clear, concrete success criteria.
Within that or alongside that, you could say, are targets which specify exact results numbers deadlines, thresholds.
That's the kind of thing we're talking about here.
And then, alongside that, you have the KPIs, which measure your performance and the metrics that you want to track.
That brings us nicely to the end of the episode.
I hope that boosts your confidence in some way to use these words in the right way.
Petra and Luis were leading the way this week.
But if you want to be on the podcast, it's just 30 seconds.
You can record the audio note and you send it to my email and I will include it on the episode and I will answer your personal question.
Then do get in touch.
I'll leave you the details below in the description box.
Thanks very much as always for squeezing in Confident Business English into your very busy week.
I hope you enjoyed that training and I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
