I doubt any business will be talking about 2020 as ‘business as usual’.
As we move into 2021, reviewing the year and setting business goals should be your focus. So how will you be adapting to the ‘new normal’ and why should you be making goals for the next year? Read on for some tips…
Why Are Setting Goals Important?
What’s the point of spending time putting together some goals? If you’re going to make goals, you need to know what they’re for and why they’re important.
Goals give you the capacity to monitor your business’ progress and grow your business. It’s that simple. Without them, you may find yourself a bit lost or out of your depth. All of this confusion can be avoided by making and tracking goals.
Big goals, small goals or anywhere in between. All of them can help you grow your business, adapt it and make it a success.
Don’t make business goals like you make resolutions
The stereotypical resolutions people make in the new year tend to find them in the gym for a week in January, and then paying the gyms overheads for the next year despite being missing in action.
Keep yourself out of this business Venus Fly Trap- scenario by making sure you set your goals based on you and your actual business.
Look at your business performance, have you gained new customers or clients? Have the needs of these clients been different or more than you expected? Use a SWOT analysis to pinpoint where your successes and failures have been and play to those.
Take into consideration how the economy has behaved and what predictions have been made for the next year. This kind of research both internal and external, creates workable, concrete goals. Exactly the type of goals you want.
Be ambitious too, statistics show that these are the types of goals you are more likely to complete. It sounds counter-intuitive but think about it, but when you’re excited and challenged by a goal, you’re more likely to be committed to making them happen.
Set specific goals using Objective and Key Results (OKRs)
Visualise what you want your business to be and how you want to scale it. Be as descriptive as humanely possible. Create milestones and explain how you’ll get there, point by point. Use actual pounds, time markers, customers or clients to track your progress.
How much do you want to earn per quarter? How many more customers do you want per month? How much time do you want to spend on the admin for a project?
There are endless possibilities when it comes to how you make those plans and what parameters you use. Find something that suits you.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) can be a useful structure to put your goals into concrete and measurable terms. Essentially, this is where you can track whether you are delivering on your goals or not.
If not, you can adapt, or make a contingency plan that will keep you focussed. If you’re visual, make the goals visual. If you work better with numbers – use them.
You can also set OKRs for your company, team, and employees. Not to mention, you can use the setting of OKRs as a business-wide exercise for your team. Once you’ve decided what milestones you and your team will have, make sure to evaluate your progress as you go.
Keep your employees in mind when you set goals
You need regular meetings to evaluate our progress in a business. To avoid feeling as though these meetings are stagnating, make sure you get your team personally involved with meeting those goals. Ask your team for feedback and use their input to make the goals something that they can achieve and complete.
Find a way to keep track of your goals in way that is accessible to your entire team. If they’re accessible, they are more likely to lean on them to track those tasks themselves.
Make your OKRs visible to the whole workforce in the form of a spreadsheet or a project management tool.
Your team can then track their metrics weekly or monthly. If a particular technique of attracting new customers isn’t really working, then those metrics will show it and you can make a decision based on your own data.
Don’t forget that big and small successes are important for you and your team. Show your team that you appreciate their work by offering them recognition. It will strengthen morale when they can see the impact their work is making.
Track your progress and put steps in place to celebrate milestones
You need to make sure that you commit to the goals once you set them. If the goal isn’t moving you into action, then it may not be the right type of goal. Business goals need your commitment, just like a new diet or exercise schedule. No commitment, no results.
Celebrate the little things and the big things with the team that helped you make it happen. Keep you and your team motivated with specific celebrations that are visible as part of those goals. Even if you’re celebrating one person, make sure it involves the whole team.
View your OKRs on a regular basis so the become the base of how you organise your week and month. This way you can get a bird’s eye view on whether your making headway towards your goals by seeing regularly what you should be working on.
Keep technological innovation in mind when you make goals
Make sure you are using technology to make your reaching these goals more efficient. Project management tools that can help you track progress or make to-do lists are effective ways to see what your entire team is working on.
You might find for example your goals need you to track how much time is being spent on a task. That time directly correlates with how much you are paid.
If you’re performing large amounts of admin in order to find out whether your goal is working, than maybe you need to consider automating some of those tasks.
If you’re adapting to the new normal of remote working, then you might want to advise the types of apps that keep your staff focused or able to consistently collaborate with others despite being away.
Make 2021 the year that your business makes and achieves its goals!
