Ways To Achieve Your Goals

Goal setting is an important part of starting and doing business. Without business goals, you may find that you are running in your business without any direction. Your business goals can keep you focused on where you want to help create a plan to get there.

1) Break Down Your Company's Goals

The first step is to break your goals. Business goals are often long term and require considerable work, time and effort. By breaking down your goals into manageable action steps, it is easy to focus on what you need to do right now and not get overwhelmed by the process. A good way to break down your business goals is an action plan made up of individual tasks that each includes a clearly defined action. Thinking in terms of baby steps, it is easy to make progress and there are small achievements every day.

2) Commit to the Company's Goals

Effective goal setting requires clarity about what the goal entails, what kind of effort will be required, and the specific reasons that are important to you. It also includes a plan for how you will complete each step, and perhaps most importantly, a commitment to seeing the goal through to completion. If you are unable to commit to the goal by taking the time to develop a plan and focus on the steps that will get you closer to your goal while setting the time, then you are an unnecessarily tough challenge will face.

3) Connect projects to milestones and goals

Now it's time to learn about the details of identifying the programs and projects that you and your team will meet at their milestones. This step is important to keep your employees busy with their work. People want to know what they mean, and the best way to show them is to relate their work to higher-level goals. The move will also benefit your business: engaged employees are more likely to stay in the company, be more productive, act as effective brand ambassadors and provide a better customer experience, which helps drive sales and profitability.

Moving forward with the goal of "accelerating brand awareness", you know that you need to increase web traffic by 10% in Q1. How would you do this? Some projects within this milestone may be to "run a Valentine's Day social media campaign" and "publish three new customer stories in Q1." As a milestone, it is important to delegate to a project owner, set a deadline, and outline all the tasks that need to be done.

4) Use previous goals and results to inform your planning

Congratulation! You've completed projects, hit milestones, and accomplished goals. Since you have a record of all this information (because you are tracking it), use learning as a guide for planning your company. Move beyond a goal (has brand awareness actually increased?) Or underline new goals based on business and growth opportunities. Company goals are your destination, objectives are your map, milestones are key markers that you are heading in the right direction, and your projects and programs are your path to reach them. By tracking goals, objectives and milestones in one place, they will remain at the top, you (and everyone else) will know what progress you have made, and your team can see the impact they are making. Huh. By following these steps, we hope that they will help you stay on course and keep your team engaged in your work so that you can achieve your goals year after year.