Tag: Goals

A New Year, New Business Goals?

Many businesses have had to face some serious lessons throughout the last eighteen months or so, often being forced to rethink their strategies in some detail. Quite a few of those valuable lessons anticipate being carried forward into 2022, and whilst some will have been tough to learn, often they’ve involved a process of reflection and analysis.

In many cases those insights have gradually been accepted and appreciated for the revised priorities and perspective they’ve brought into life.

How are you looking forward to 2022, what will your focus be?

The year ahead promises to be a time of greater flexibility, with quicker thinking, adaptability and receptivity at the forefront of any planning. Being ready with quick responses to new opportunities or prepared to adapt when the situation yet again shifts has been an important acquired skill, learned as many of the old ways of doing business have changed.

A positive approach to new ideas and methods of working has been a fundamental component to survival and any eventual success throughout this time. Being able to quickly jump onto a request and, for example, deliver online courses or reroute the direction of products, goods and services, as happened with farmers diverting supplies from hospitality to supermarkets, or adapting business meetings to be held online instead of in person, has meant that some businesses have thrived and had unexpected success.

Staff wellbeing has to be very much considered, with the implications of many staff returning from furlough or having worked very different hours, often from home. Many staff will have had to juggle home schooling, the stress of being distanced from family members or had financial or health concerns throughout this time. No one has been unaffected mentally, physically or financially.

Returning to work requires some sensitivity, as staff get used to dealing with things they may have never given much thought to before. Travelling for work, deciding how to dress, coping with the varying demands of each day; things that have never been issues may now surface as issues as the return to work has to be faced.

Some co-workers may have found their priorities to be quite different from the last time you were together and some may prefer continuing carrying out some duties from home. It can require a period of negotiation between staff and the demands of the business to find a solution that accommodates all.

Extended home working involves checking that the appropriate software is installed, with data security, staff training and capabilities all important priorities. Continued investment in staff relationships is important, so that all feel part of the team, as well as measuring performance and accountability. It’s important to maintain a team dynamic, especially when working from home.

Staff support may include regular meetings, updates, training sessions and an open door policy where you listen to what they have to say. Staff are a major asset and overhead in many businesses and may have valuable suggestions and ideas to contribute. Giving them responsibility for implementing their ideas may re-inspire their commitment to work.

Team building is an important consideration, but whilst some teams enjoy group activities others many prefer a more softly, softly approach. Even socialising together may have to be carefully managed, with some staff preferring a convivial, more restrained restaurant meal, whilst others want drinks and a party vibe. Being aware of each other’s wants and preferences is an important step in listening and supporting your staff whilst rebuilding your business’s vision for the coming year.

Customers may also have different priorities, demands and expectations. In hospitality customers may prefer to continue with table service rather than queue at the bar to order. Customers may, in general, adopt a more cautious approach and prefer a less noisy atmosphere, want healthier options, a more environmentally friendly approach to business, less plastic packaging. Some may prefer the convenience of trading and communicating online.

Where do you feature on your list? If you neglect yourself and become unwell, who will be the person to replace you at the helm? If you don’t look after you who will? Taking care of yourself must be at the top of your list of priorities, because you may well be both the business and the brand, the vision behind it all and most certainly have a presence that’s important to your customer base.

This coming year promises to be a year where enthusiasm and flexibility succeed. People still want and need to trade and do business, especially with providers who listen to them and provide excellent client care. Adapting and finding your new normal gives you the opportunity to reflect on what works well for you in every way, as you look forward to a positive new year ahead.

What Are SMART Goals?

Each year many work teams set goals for the coming year and leadership teams determine their objectives for their organizations. During the goal and objective setting process, the term SMART goal is often used without much thought as to what it may mean as an overall working plan. SMART goals are a way to not only decide what to do, but how to do it in a way that can easily be tracked to determine whether or not progress is made and know when the goals are met. In this type of goal, the acronym in SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

Specific describes the details of what is to be accomplished in a clear and simple way. The goal must be easy to understand and well defined in order to make achieving it possible. Unclear goals are easily misunderstood and therefore typically do not accomplish the desired results. Being specific answers the question of what has to be done so that appropriate actions can be taken.

Measurable uses quantifiable terms in order to compare where the goal is in reaching the desired target. Establishing performance criteria for measuring the goal will allow for changes during the goal period in order to manage the process and stay on track to meeting the target. Utilizing a definite tracking method shows how much will be gained by accomplishing the goal and encourages continued improvement.

Attainable means the goal is within the ability and capability of those involved while stretching their collective talents to reach the most desirable target. It means that the defined goal is both possible and realistic while still being challenging for the organization and its people. Having a goal that stretches people and allows for growth opportunity often leads to very worthwhile business results.

Relevant indicates the goal is not only within reach of skill levels but also has meaning and relates directly to the purpose or vision of those who are responsible for meeting the goal. Relevancy means everyone involved can understand how they influence the goal and how it affects them. When a goal is relevant to those involved it increases commitment and makes meeting the goal a highly motivational tool.

Time-based defines a period for meeting the measurements in the goal or a deadline date for accomplishing the overall target goal. Having a time frame established allows a frequency for monitoring progress, staying on track, making adjustments to meet the overall goal, and gaining momentum with each accomplishment along the goal path. Without a time-based element to the goal, it will be impossible to make a targeted plan.

Use the acronym SMART to establish goals that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. SMART goals may be used as an effective way to decide what to do in the coming year and where to make changes if the tracked goals are not progressing as desired. During the yearly goal or objective setting process, be sure to use the SMART goal definition when working on a plan for the future of a team or organization.

Personal Goals Achieved Easier For A Better Life

Having measurable planning with goals and objectives are so very essential to living a life of purpose and passion. Far too often in life when we are ambitious to reach a dream, perhaps it’s setting goals at work, or other personal goals, we reach far too high too quickly.

I’m going to share a quick scenario I heard told at a recent transformation conference that one of the other speakers talked about in his discussion about objectives of planning.

Before a commercial plane takes off, the pilot has a really clear location in mind, and a flight plan to get there successfully.

The plane leaves at a particular time, and begins towards a specific destination.

The plane is off track, though, at least much of the time, while climate conditions, turbulence and other factors trigger this.

Feedback is given to the pilot constantly.

The inertial guidance system of the aircraft continuously assists the pilot to revise the airplane and examines the position to reach the anticipated destination on time.

The plane takes off on time, shows up on time, and yet is off course 90% of the time, but the passengers never realize this.

Now envision you are the airplane, and do you have measurable goals and objectives?

Exactly what is your destination, and do you have a flight strategy?

One of the common qualities of highly effective people all over the globe is that they are extreme at having measurable goals and objectives.

Effective individuals understand where it is that they wish to be in life, and they have a clear strategy to get there.

Their “destination” is the list of personal goals that they have actually jotted down, and their “flight strategy” is the measurable goals and objectives.

It’s how successful people grow!

I do a lot of discussion with my readers and listeners about the objectives of planning, and often get feedback concerning the successes and obstacles in setting and attaining goals.

The concern that I am most often asked in this area is “How do I set measurable goals and objectives if I have no idea exactly what I want to do?”

In response to this concern, here are a few personal objectives and goals where you may want to chart some objectives of planning.

– Setting goals at work or career

The late Wayne Dyer was high recognized for telling us that, “What we think about we get more of.”

Preferably, you are positioned on a positive career course, leading to increased chances and raises.

Hopefully, you also eagerly anticipate going to work virtually every day, and your incomes are commensurate with the effort you take into your job.

You invest a great deal of hours into your work, so it’s essential that you are doing something you are happy with.

The Course in Miracles states, “You can not be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you can not change this because it is immutable.

– Self-Growth and Personal Transformation

The world is growing more intelligent and changing faster than ever, so in order to prosper, we should transform along with it.

The method for personal transformation is by self-growth individually. Read every day in your decided passion.

Next, pay attention to audio tapes, CD’s, watch videos, and get a hold of all the self-growth material you can.

Attend or take classes lectures and workshops, perhaps join a master mind group.

Establish a support structure to hold you responsible for the measurable goals and objectives that you are dedicated to in your life.

Working with a personal coach is a great method to do this.

– Financial freedom

In its most basic kind, financial liberty means having freedom from financial tension of any kind in your life.

Practical methods to get to this point, if you aren’t there currently, consist of saving a percentage of your earnings, having a reserve of six months living expenditures in the bank, and so-forth.

It’s a huge challenge for some, but a worthwhile personal goal.

In a previous discussion I went deep into how to attract wealth and financial success involving spiritual metaphysical principles.

– Have right-minded Relationships

How are your relationships with your family (kids, partner, dads and moms, siblings)?

Do you have a close circle of personal friends?

Don’t forget relationships within your professional network (lawyer, accounting professional and yes, it’s good to know a handy man for around the house.).

– Health/Physical fitness.

Health is exceptionally crucial, and yet we seem not to put much emphasis there, but we need to do so.

Exercise at least 3 times per week, even if that suggests bicycling or walking for 15 or 20 minutes. Get plenty of sleep each night.

Be kind to yourself, don’t crucify or self-criticize yourself for errors, as humans we must learn from our mistakes and move forward in life.

The Course in Miracles asks us in one of its many spiritual metaphysical principles, “Would you join in the crucifixion or the resurrection.”.

– Spiritual or mindfulness peace.

There is no substitute for peace of mind, and the way to obtain this is through a relationship with God, or the spiritual equivalent for you.

Be involved in ongoing spiritual growth. Contribute both time and kindness of heart to charitable associations and/or your formal place of worship.

– Setting Goals at Work and for Fun, too.

It’s great that you have measurable goals and objectives for your career and/or job, but be sure to do the same for having fun and relaxation.

This is about requiring time on your own, enjoying whatever it is that you prefer to do.

Regularly take weekends, holidays and evenings off.

Take a vacation or two, or three, or more, every year, to refresh/energize/nourish yourself. Yes, I mean be 100% committed to relaxation.

While this time may appear unproductive to some, it will cause higher performance in the long run. And it will be more enjoyable, too!

(I also invite you to look further at other sessions I’ve had on steps to achieve goals and accomplishing your dreams regardless of the naysayers.)

To meeting your personal goals!

Rules to Setting Business Goals and Objectives: Why and How to be SMART

We all know that nothing runs without a plan, and a plan cannot run without having its objectives set.

That applies to any kind of plan, whether we’re talking business or personal finances, university degrees or NGO programs, website promotion or weight loss.

Setting objectives and milestones is of crucial importance for any planning activity and is the core of its success, or failure.

Knowing how to set objectives is not exactly rocket science in terms of complexity, but any strategist should know the basic rules of how to formulate and propose objectives. We will see in this article why objectives play such a major role within a company’s planning and strategic activities, how they influence all business processes, and we will review some guidelines of setting objectives.

The Importance of Setting Objectives

One might wonder why we need to establish objectives in the first place, why not let the company or a specific activity just run smoothly into the future and see where it gets. That would be the case only if we really do not care whether the activity in discussion will be successful or not: but then, to use a popular saying, “if something deserves to be performed, then it deserves to be performed well”. In other words, if we don’t care for the results, we should not proceed with the action at all.

Setting objectives before taking any action is the only right thing to do, for several reasons:

– it gives a target to aim to, therefore all actions and efforts will be focused on attaining the objective instead of being inefficiently used;

– gives participants a sense of direction, a glimpse of where they’re going to;

– motivates the leaders and their teams, since it is quite the custom of establishing some sort of reward once the team successfully completed a project;

– offers the support in evaluating the success of an action or project.

The 5 Rules of Setting Objectives: Be SMART!

I am sure most managers and leaders know what SMART stands for, well, at least when it comes of establishing objectives. However, I have seen some of them who cannot fully explain the five characteristics of a good-established objective – things are somehow blurry and confused in their minds. Since they can’t explain in details what SMART objectives really are, it is highly doubtful that they will always be able to formulate such objectives.

It is still unclear from where the confusion comes: perhaps there are too many sources of information, each of them with a slightly different approach upon what a SMART objective really is; or perhaps most people only briefly “heard” about it and they never get to reach the substance behind the packaging.

Either way, let us try to uncover the meaning of the SMART acronym and see how we can formulate efficient objectives.

SMART illustrates the 5 characteristics of an efficient objective; it stands for Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely.

1. Be SPECIFIC!

When it comes of business planning, “specific” illustrates a situation that is easily identified and understood. It is usually linked to some mathematical determinant that imprints a specific character to a given action: most common determinants are numbers, ratios and fractions, percentages, frequencies. In this case, being “specific” means being “precise”.

Example: when you tell your team “I need this report in several copies”, you did not provide the team with a specific instruction. It is unclear what the determinant “several” means: for some it can be three, for some can be a hundred. A much better instruction would sound like “I need this report in 5 copies” – your team will know exactly what you expect and will have less chances to fail in delivering the desired result.

2. Be MEASURABLE!

When we say that an objective, a goal, must be measurable, we mean there is a stringent need to have the possibility to measure, to track the action(s) associated with the given objective.

We must set up a distinct system or establish clear procedures of how the actions will be monitored, measured and recorded. If an objective and the actions pertaining to it cannot be quantified, it is most likely that the objective is wrongly formulated and we should reconsider it.

Example: “our business must grow” is an obscure, non-measurable objective. What exactly should we measure in order to find out if the objective was met? But if we change it to “our business must grow in sales volume with 20%”, we’ve got one measurable objective: the measure being the percentage sales rise from present moment to the given moment in the future. We can calculate this very easy, based on the recorded sales figures.

3. Be ATTAINABLE!

Some use the term “achievable” instead of “attainable”, which you will see it is merely a synonym and we should not get stuck in analyzing which one is correct. Both are.

It is understood that each leader will want his company / unit to give outstanding performances; this is the spirit of competition and such thinking is much needed. However, when setting objectives, one should deeply analyze first the factors determining the success or failure of these objectives. Think of your team, of your capacities, of motivation: are they sufficient in order for the objectives to be met? Do you have the means and capabilities to achieve them?

Think it through and be honest and realistic to yourself: are you really capable of attaining the goals you’ve set or are you most likely headed to disappointment? Always set objectives that have a fair chance to be met: of course, they don’t need to be “easily” attained, you’re entitled to set difficult ones as long as they’re realistic and not futile.

Example: you own a newborn movers company and you set the objective of “becoming no. 1 movers within the state”. The problem is you only have 3 trucks available, while all your competitors have 10 and up. Your goal is not attainable; try instead a more realistic one, such as “reaching the Top 5 fastest growing movers company in the state”.

4. Be RELEVANT!

This notion is a little more difficult to be perceived in its full meaning; therefore we will start explaining it by using an example in the first place.

Imagine yourself going to the IT department and telling them they need to increase the profit to revenue ratio by 5%. They will probably look at you in astonishment and mumble something undistinguished about managers and the way they mess up with people’s minds.

Can you tell what is wrong with the objective above? Of course! The IT department has no idea what you were talking about and there’s nothing they can do about it – their job is to develop and maintain your computerized infrastructure, not to understand your economic speech. What you can do it setting an objective that the IT department can have an impact upon, and which will eventually lead to the increase you wanted in the first place. What about asking them to reduce expenditures for hardware and software by 10% monthly and be more cautious with the consumables within their department by not exceeding the allocated budget? They will surely understand what they need to do because the objective is relevant for their group.

Therefore, the quality of an objective to be “relevant” refers to setting appropriate objectives for a given individual or team: you need to think if they can truly do something about it or is it irrelevant for the job they perform.

5. Be TIMELY!

No much to discuss about this aspect, since it is probably the easiest to be understood and applied.

Any usable and performable objective must have a clear timeframe of when it should start and/or when it should end. Without having a timeframe specified, it is practically impossible to say if the objective is met or not.

For example, if you just say “we need to raise profit by 500000 units”, you will never be able to tell if the objective was achieved or not, one can always say “well, we’ll do it next year”. Instead, if you say “we need to raise profit by 500000 units within 6 months from now”, anyone can see in 6 months if the goal was attained or not. Without a clear, distinct timeframe, no objective is any good.

How to Set Goals For Your Business Plan

What are the goals for your business? It’s a fundamental question every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves. Why are you in business? What do you hope to accomplish and when? Goals can be defined as what you want your business to be when it grows up. Set a reasonable number of goals, one is probably not enough and twenty would be way too many. The goals relate to a time period as well, a year, or perhaps six months, is a good target. One way of setting goals is to describe your company one year from now.

Goals, objectives, and strategies are incorporated in a business plan that is used for internal purposes rather than raising capital. It’s an important exercise for management to go through and then incorporate the results in a working business plan.

It’s a good idea to complete the Historical background of the company the Industry and Economic Review and the Product section before tackling goals, objectives and strategies. Looking at where you’ve been and where you are is the starting point for where you want to go.

Brainstorming is a good way to get started on goals. Make a list of all the achievements you could make in the upcoming year. Just list them. Don’t make any value judgments on whether they’re achievable. Now rate each goal in five different categories: effort, money required, like and dislike, talent required, and payoff.

Effort is simply the amount of energy and time that will be expended to achieve the goal.

Money required is the investment that will be made. For example if staffing will have to be hired or outsourcing will be utilized that means it will be necessary to invest money in the business to pay for the employees or the outsourcing. Nearly all businesses require some investment of capital, if nothing else for Internet access and phone lines. Use ballpark figures.

Liking or disliking the tasks required to achieve the goal has an impact on whether the goal will be achieved successfully. If you like to write then it won’t be a problem establishing a ghostwriting service, but if writing is the last thing you’d choose to do, you probably won’t be a success at ghostwriting.

Talent means whether you have the abilities required. If you have no artistic talent then graphic design isn’t for you, unless you have such great contacts for clients that it makes sense to outsource the design function.

Payoff is the reasonable amount of money that can be earned. This is a guestimate of what you believe will be the payoff if the other factors – effort, investment, like or dislike, and talent hold true.

This is a simplistic way of rating the goals. It may turn out that the goal with the highest score also requires the most money to accomplish and that just doesn’t fit in with your budget. Or perhaps the lowest rated goals are the goals you have the most talent for and require the least effort. The point is rating the goals gives you a starting point.

Strategic Planning Using Strategic Filters and Wildly Important Goals

Abstract

The strategic planning process can take many paths. It can require months of preparatory analysis or simply use the collective knowledge of the management team. Either method requires that the company make decisions on its future course. In this paper we will show how to use Strategic Filters as a way to sift through the data and make the best decisions. Then, we will focus these decisions into a few Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) that will be resourced and completed.

Strategic Planning: Strategic Filters & Wildly Important Goals

  • Driving Force Filter – The Competitive Advantage you can Prove
  • Emerging Trend Filter
  • Customer Filter
  • Wildly Important Goals
  • Strategy Map

Driving Force Filter

The driving force is the key differentiator or competitive advantage of the company. The most important element of the driving force is the proof. If you want your employees and your customers to believe it, then you must find the data that backs up your claim.

Here is a list of things that are NOT acceptable examples of driving force:

  • Knowledgeable employees
  • Customer Service
  • Quality
  • Trust
  • Responsiveness
  • Reputation
  • Innovation
  • Etc.

The reason these are not good examples is that any company can claim these and everyone is saying it. If everyone is saying it, then no one will believe it.

Here are some driving force examples that the marketplace can believe are real differentiators:

  • Innovation / Experience – We invented surgical-adhesive to replace sutures. The use of surgical-adhesive reduces surgical time by 20 – 90% with lower risk of infection.
  • Speed – We will produce any custom product in 2 weeks or less versus our competitors who are at 6 weeks or more.
  • Rugged – We produce the most rugged portable power generation equipment for military use. Our mean-time-between-failure is 10,000 + hours.
  • Customer Service / Training – We trained 1580 customer-mechanics in service/repair techniques last year and have two mechanics dedicated to assisting customer-mechanics over the phone.
  • Product Leadership – We are the only Consulting Firm in the Midwest with experience applying quantitative process improvement tools to streamline sales and marketing; reducing costs and growing sales.

Once you know and agree on the Driving Force for your company, you can use this to understand:

  • What you did to be the best
  • The core competencies that support your Driving Force
  • How you stay the best

Emerging Trend Filter

Emerging trends are outside forces that you cannot control and may impact your business. These may include:

  • Economic/monetary trends
  • Political/regulatory trends
  • Social/demographic trends
  • Market conditions
  • Customer attributes/habits
  • Competitor profiles/mix
  • Technology evolution
  • Manufacturing capabilities
  • Product design/content
  • Sales & marketing methods
  • Distribution methods/systems
  • Resources – natural/human/financial

We want these to be a strategic filter because they may require you to change your business model beyond internal competencies and customer requirements. They will impact how you:

  • Sell
  • Distribute
  • Purchase
  • Plan acquisitions
  • Develop new products and services

We have lived during a time of great external disruption. Books and newspapers are a great example. Amazon changed book buying by making almost every book ever published available, either new through its warehouses or used via used-book partners. Instead of buying just what is in the bookstore you can buy whatever you want, get recommendations for new books based on what you previously bought and read comments from other consumers before you buy.

Then Amazon changed again by offering the Kindle E-reader linked to its online bookstore. Now you can have thousands of books 1 minute after you, buy delivered wirelessly over cell networks. Newspapers and magazines are delivered to your Kindle every night at 3 AM. No ink, no printing, no late or missing delivery service, no problem when you travel. Instead, you get perfect service.

Now we now have the iPad from Apple, which promises to embed graphics and videos within books, magazines and newspapers. This will incorporate the e-delivery features of the Kindle and make the reading experience completely different.

Printers and Publishers needed to see these trends coming, to survive and thrive. These developments can shut down huge companies and make others clear winners.

Other trends of note are environmental/clean-tech, monetary/interest rates and global markets/supply chains.

Customer Filter

Understanding your customers completes the filter-puzzle and will allow you to make the best decisions on your strategic plan. A significant time is spent understanding who are your best customers. We recommend a quantitative approach of choosing the key measureable characteristics that are important to your organization and then using Pareto Analysis to sort your customers from best to worst based on these measures.

Once you know who your best customers are you can determine the characteristics that they share. Communicating through the sales force or directly with these customers you need to ask two critical questions:

  • Why do they buy from you?
  • What pain do they have?

At the end of the Customer-Filter session you will know:

  • Who your best customer are
  • The characteristics of the best (what differentiates them from everyone else)
  • Why customers buy from you
  • What pain customers have that you may be able to solve (with special emphasis put on the best customers

Wildly Important Goals (WIGs)

With all the preparatory work complete you can now create your strategic plan. The best companies always focus on achieving a few wildly important goals. Everyone in your organization is working on the important things every day. Serving customers, delivering product, coaching employees, buying, etc. are all important and need to happen every day, week and month. Strategic Planning looks out on a longer time horizon. Therefore we need to go above the important and focus on a few (3 or less) Wildly Important Goals that will take longer but will create breakthrough results for your organization.

This focus gives the plan a sense of reality. Lots of organizations try to do too many things and end up either not getting most done or doing an average job. You want to be great!

These WIGs can include:

  • Acquisitions or divestitures
  • Major capital expenditures
  • Product development
  • Geographic expansions
  • Entire new businesses or brands
  • Marketing campaigns
  • Globalize the supply chain
  • Internal process improvement efforts (Lean Six Sigma)
  • Implementing new information technology systems
  • And endless other ideas

Strategy Map

The last step is too align the organization with the Wildly Important Goals. A Strategy Map is a simple tool to visually show how each department is going to support each WIG.

To view an example of a Strategy Map go to http://supplyvelocity.com/whitepapers.asp.

The example you will see is of a medical technology company whose Wildly Important Goals was to dramatically ramp-up new product development. The map shows how Marketing, Research, Development/Engineering and Manufacturing all support this strategy.

Business Planning – Setting SMART Goals For Your Business

Getting your business off the ground requires a great deal of planning. You cannot reach your destination without the roads you will take being well mapped out. This is the same with your business.

In order to know where you would like your business to go, you will not only need to know what you want to achieve, but also what steps will be necessary to get there. In this case, you are wise to use the SMART goal setting system. SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

Let’s take a look at these 5 steps for business planning success:

  1. Be Specific: When you are setting your goals, you need to be as specific as possible in order to really plan them out effectively. Avoid using broad or generics when setting your objectives. For example, if your goal is to generate more sales, put a number to it. This gives you a much better target to hit. If it is 10% more sales, then calculate exactly how many dollars that represents.
  2. You Have To Be Able To Measure It. Setting an objective for your business is no good if you cannot monitor your progress to see if you are on target. Using the example above of increased sales, you can easily measure month-to month if you are meeting your goals or if you need to ramp it up a bit in order to meet your objective.
  3. Can You Achieve Your Goal? Being hopeful is all well and good, but having unrealistic goals is just being a dreamer. If you have a big plan, break it down into smaller, attainable increments. You will still get there in time, but you will not feel overwhelmed in the meantime. Your goals need to be realistic, setting the bar too high is setting yourself up for failure. Setting the bar too low and you will not reach your full potential. Finding the right balance can be difficult, but not impossible. Start small and work hard to meet your self-demands. If you find you reach them easily, then set the bar a little higher the next time.
  4. Make it Relevant to Each Person Involved. Communicating the objective to the various people who will be involved with implementing the action should be specific to their role within your business. Telling your staff that the company’s goal is a 10% increase in sales will mean absolutely nothing to them. Telling your sales staff that they each need to sell 2 more units per month or your production manager that they need to produce an additional 100 units each month is relevant and understandable and measurable to them. It gives everyone concrete objectives that they will have to put in place in order for you to attain the desired outcome.
  5. Set a Time-line. One of the surest ways to fail is to leave an open-ended time to achieve your goals. You have a tendency to want to do this because you are not accountable if you have all the time in the world to meet a goal. Set a date for the completion of your objective. This ties into the measurability of the goal. It also makes you work harder to achieve it if you know you only have a specific amount of time to do it in. Another reason you might be tempted to not set a deadline is if you believe your goal is unattainable. If you can’t bring yourself to set a date for completion, then perhaps you need to revisit the steps above and set more realistic objectives.

By having to set a deadline for completion, you can sit down on that date and review whether to objective was met or if you missed the mark. If it was met, then pat yourself on the back for a job well done and start the process over again with your next set of SMART goals.

If, however, you did not meet your objectives, this gives you time to reflect on where you went wrong in the planning process. Did you set your goals too high? What happened during the process that made it unattainable? Is there something you could have done differently?

It is only through this process of reviewing the outcome at the deadline that you can improve your business and push it to the next level. Without this analysis and review, your business will continue to operate without direction.

This whole process of setting business goals is the only smart way to push your business beyond what it is today. Making sure you set objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely will keep you focused on success.

How To Create a Yearly Business Plan And Achieve Your Goals

As entrepreneurs, most of us have prepared a well-thought out business plan. It is essential if you are looking for any sort of financial assistance when starting up and will keep you focused while building your business. Having a plan to follow will also increase your chances of success. However, a few years into your business, is your original business plan still relevant? Probably not.

A yearly plan for an established business is an essential organizational tool if:

* you’re looking to grow your business

* there is a lot of activity going on in your business every day and you tend to bumble-bee, jumping from “flower to flower” not knowing where to focus your time

* you don’t have a clear plan and consider different options every day

While there are many templates and varieties of business plans available on the web, your yearly plan does not need to go into as much depth as your original. Here are the 5 main areas you will need to cover when planning for the year ahead:

1. Where are you now? List the services that you are providing, the products that you are selling, the number of hours you work in your business, and the number of hours you work on your business.

2. What are your goals? List the goals you wish to attain. We all have a financial goal so write your specific money goal for the year and the top 2 or 3 priorities that will get you there.

3. How are you going to get there? Work backwards from your financial goal and identify the steps necessary to achieve it. For example, if your goal is to make $75,000 for the year, how many clients do you need, how many products do you need to sell, how many workshops do you need to conduct and what do you need to charge for these things? Break these goals down monthly and then weekly and tweak until you have reached a realistic and attainable financial goal and plan that sync.

4. When are you going to do what’s needed to achieve your goals? Take your monthly and weekly goals to create your action plan. This will determine the number of clients you will work with and when, what products and programs you will create, how many you need to sell and when etc. The action plan can be transferred over to your weekly schedule.

5. Who do I need help from to achieve my goals? List what tasks you can no longer continue to handle. Consider outsourcing things like your accounting to a bookkeeper and your technical and administrative tasks to a Virtual Assistant to free up your time for the profit generating tasks.

Going through this process helps you to identify your intentions and forces you to paint a realistic big picture plan for the year. Each small step taking you towards your bigger goal. This strategy may be the one business activity that helps your business to grow more than any other.

Exit mobile version