Advivo Managing Partner, Leon Stephan, provides helpful tips for setting goals to effectively boost your business.
Let’s start with some key tips that are important for setting goals that are achievable and productive across all levels of a business. The SMART Goals framework, encapsulated below, is a good principle to follow:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Relevant
T: Time based
Goal setting tips – General
- Be selective, focus on what is important, and do not have too many goals; five good goals are better than 20 mediocre goals. Too many goals lead to a loss of focus and enthusiasm. Goals should be targeted at what will have the most impact on your business.
- Set your goals based on some research to ensure they are reasonable, meaningful and important. Research will help identify what is important, being the key business drivers in your business and delivering the most impact. This will help you identify if your proposed goals are achievable based on past performance, constraints such as funding, and capacity resource requirements (including staffing and the likes of production equipment, office/factory space). Do not just pluck figures from the air – like ‘grow sales by 30%’, or ‘double profitability’ – if you do not know all the constraints and influencing factors that are needed to ensure you can execute the delivery of the goal.
- For a goal to be meaningful, it must be written down. Most goals that fail to be achieved are not because the goal was not achievable, but because of the omission of an execution plan. Usually, how to achieve the goal was not thought through, or documented with key responsibilities, milestones, and review and monitoring processes documented. A fully developed execution plan for each goal is the key to success.
- Break your goals into short-term and long-term categories. This approach allows the team to celebrate short-term wins and stay motivated, even if long-term goals are not yet fully realised. Starting with small, achievable goals is also a good strategy.
Below are tips specific to setting goals within a business.
- Involve your team in goal setting. This provides input from all relevant sections of the team, avoids bias and achieves greater buy-in.
- Ensure all short-term goals and actions align with long-term objectives. For example, if an objective is to exit the business in 10 years, all goals must be finalised before that date and support that objective.
- Ensure KPIs are developed and monitored to track progress and share with the team. Celebrate wins, and be quick to pivot on KPIs that are not tracking too well.
- Avoid complication and complexity. Too often we see goals being overly complex when they can often be broken down into simple, easier-to-understand and achieve smaller pieces that will have a greater chance of success and buy-in.
- Ensure your goals are specific and focus on the actions required to achieve the desired outcome. For example, if I want to increase sales by 30%, I might have three specific goals, employ an additional salesperson, engage a proven SEO marketing advisor, and update the website.
- Make sure you have the documented systems, processes, skills, people and other resources required before you start to avoid failure and damage to your team culture.
If you follow these steps your goals will be achievable and productive and as a by-product, you will build a positive and involved team culture.
