Every business, no matter how big or small, needs to have an established set of goals to strive towards. Why? Because setting business goals helps your employees stay motivated and excited about celebrating shared achievements.
But, what’s the best way to set effective and achievable goals for your team? We take a look…
1. Identify your areas of improvement
First thing’s first: which areas of your business need improving? When you’re thinking about this, be sure to really think about it. By this, we mean taking off your rose-coloured glasses and stepping out of your CEO shoes for a minute. As a business owner, it’s easy to turn a blind eye to all of your problems and convince yourself that they’re not there. But if you want to achieve something you’ve never had, then you’ve got to think about things differently.
Here are a few key ways to evaluate and reflect upon this:
-
- Team brainstorming – design a questionnaire to stimulate discussion among your employees and discover what aspects of their daily work they find difficult or challenging, and how this can be resolved or improved.
- Benchmarking – research other businesses similar to your own to see where they’re at in the industry. How did they get there? Recognise similar trends and how your business can improve through adopting similar paths or heeding common mistakes.
Market and content research – research current trends in your industry and pinpoint where there is demand for a product or a service. How can you incorporate this into your business model and will it increase your revenue/notoriety?
2. Setting achievable goals
When setting goals, you need to be optimistic but also realistic. If you want to increase your revenue, set goals in gradual increments rather than assigning a lump sum to a specific date.
Delegating subtasks
Every goal needs steps in order to reach achievement, and every member of your team will have different strengths, so why not put these to good use? Delegating subtasks according to strengths ensures that everyone is responsible for a certain step. Once you have achieved your business goal, all members of the business will feel as though it’s their victory too.
3. Working within a time frame
Always plan subtasks with completion dates. Often steps will need to be completed consecutively, so it’s important to give your tasks deadlines that will allow the next person to take over and complete their part of the overall goal. This will optimise the teamwork within your business and also inspire your employees with a sense of responsibility.
4. Evaluating and measuring successful achievements
So, once you’ve achieved your goal, how do you measure its success? Firstly, celebrate! Celebrating milestones within your team is important to create a positive working environment. Then, once the cake has been eaten and the champagne has been popped, you can sit down and evaluate the outcome.
A few reflective questions you might like to ask include:
- How has this changed our business model?
- Has achieving this goal gained us more clients, customers, wider spread recognition, increased revenue or improved workplace dynamics? List all the positives.
- Did we achieve this goal by the deadline? If not, what slowed us down? How can we change this for our next goal-setting process?
So what are you waiting for? Get out there kick some goals!
Need a hand getting started? Give us a call today to find out how we can help you smash your business goals in 2017.
