Most goals fail for one simple reason: they never connect to the work you actually do each week. I’ll show you how to plan your 2026 goals inside Asana so that your goals don’t sit in a spreadsheet gathering dust, they become living, trackable systems that update automatically as you work.
Why Plan Your Goals in Asana?
When goals live in Word documents or spreadsheets, they’re easy to forget and hard to act on. They don’t talk to your projects, your tasks, or your team’s day-to-day work.
Asana changes that by letting you:
- Keep goals in the same place you manage tasks and projects
- Automatically update progress as work is completed
- Assign clear owners and timelines
- Visualise everything for the year in one view
Instead of “set and forget”, you end up with a system where goals are visible, measurable and directly connected to action.
Step 1: Create a Clear 2026 Goal
In Asana, head to the Goals section and create a new goal for 2026. Start simple and specific. here are the examples we used in the video:
- Launch a new revenue stream
- Grow annual recurring revenue to $250,000
- Improve company culture at [Your Company]
Set the Goal Owner
Every goal needs a single person who is ultimately responsible for it. This doesn’t mean they do all the work, but they are accountable for making sure it moves forward.
Add Members and Access
Next, add other people who should be involved or kept informed. In Asana you can choose different access levels:
- Admin – full control over the goal
- Editor – can update the goal but not delete it
- Commenter – can add comments and questions
- Viewer – can see the goal but not change anything
This is helpful if you want the whole leadership team to see the goal, but only a few people to update it.
Choose Timeframes and Privacy
Asana lets you define the time period for each goal. For 2026 planning, that might be:
- The full year (2026)
- First half (H1 2026)
- Second half (H2 2026)
- A specific quarter (Q1–Q4)
Then decide whether the goal is:
- Public – visible to everyone in your organisation (great for transparency)
- Private – visible only to the owner and members (useful for individual targets)
Step 2: Decide How You’ll Track Progress
This is where most goal systems fall over. If you don’t define how progress will be measured, you can’t objectively tell if you’re on track.
In Asana, there are four main ways to track goal progress:
1. Connect Goals to Projects
This is often the best option for execution-heavy goals like “Launch a new revenue stream”.
You might have a project called Customer Retreats with tasks and milestones. When you link that project to your goal, Asana can automatically update progress as tasks and milestones are completed.
For example, if half the tasks in the project are done, Asana can show your goal as 50% complete without you manually adjusting anything.
2. Connect Goals to Specific Tasks
In some cases only certain tasks are relevant to a goal. You can link those specific tasks instead of the whole project. As they’re completed, the goal progress bar moves.
3. Use Subgoals
For more qualitative goals like “Improve company culture”, numbers alone might not make sense. In that case, you can break the main goal into smaller subgoals such as:
- Complete an internal team survey
- Define and document core values
- Run a company retreat
Each subgoal can have its own timeframe, owner and tracking method. As subgoals are completed, the overall parent goal progress updates.
4. Manual Tracking (Perfect for Revenue Targets)
For goals with a clear numeric target (like revenue, conversion rate or subscriber count), manual tracking works well.
For example, with a goal to grow annual recurring revenue to $250,000, you can:
- Set the starting value (e.g. $150,000)
- Set the target value ($250,000)
- Choose the unit (e.g. NZD, USD or %)
- Update the number monthly
Asana can remind you to update these figures on a schedule (monthly, weekly or bi-weekly), which keeps the goal fresh without relying on memory.
Step 3: Use Strategy Maps to See the Bigger Picture
Once you’ve set up your goals and time periods, you can use Strategy Maps in Asana to see everything laid out visually.
A Strategy Map lets you:
- View all your goals for a given year in one place
- See how goals, subgoals and projects relate to each other
- Create different tabs for different years (e.g. 2025, 2026, 2027)
- Quickly understand which team is responsible for which outcome
This is especially useful if you’re doing multi-year planning or have big initiatives that depend on smaller goals being completed first.
Step 4: Keep Goals Alive with Status Updates
Setting goals is only half the job. The other half is regularly reviewing and updating them.
In Asana you can set the status of a goal as:
- On track
- At risk
- Off track
- Achieved
- Partially achieved
- Missed
- Dropped
When you post a status update, you can add a short summary of what’s happened since the last update, what’s blocking progress and what’s next. Anyone added as a member on the goal will be notified in their Asana inbox.
For manually tracked goals, you can update the status and the current value (e.g. current revenue) in the same step, which keeps everything consistent.
Step 5: Make the Most of Advanced Features
If you’re on Asana’s Advanced or Enterprise plans, there are a few extra features worth using:
- Goal graphs – see your progress over time and how status has changed
- AI suggestions – get clearer definitions of success and recommended next actions you can turn into subgoals
- Goal types – label goals as Objectives, Key Results or Individual goals (helpful if you use OKRs)
- Goal templates – standardise how your team sets goals, including default owners, update frequency and visibility
Why This Approach Actually Works
The reason this system is effective is simple: your goals are no longer separate from your work.
When goals are linked directly to projects and tasks:
- Your team just focuses on doing the work in Asana as usual
- Progress towards your goals updates in the background
- Leaders can see, at a glance, how close you are to hitting key targets
- Everyone understands how their day-to-day tasks contribute to the bigger picture
That’s the difference between “having goals” and having a goal system.
Next Steps
If you’re already using Asana for task and project management, adding goals on top is a relatively small step that can have a big impact on focus and alignment in 2026.
Start with one or two key goals, connect them to the projects you’re already running, and get into the habit of updating their status regularly. Once that’s working, you can expand into Strategy Maps, subgoals and templates.
If you’d like help setting up Asana goals, strategy maps or a full planning system for your organisation, feel free to reach out using the link under the video on this page.
If you want help getting your team set up properly in Asana or need tailored consulting, book an introductory call with our team using the link below. https://minorco.com/asana
Need help setting up Asana and optimising it for your business? Join my Master Asana program!
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