Strategic Success: Mastering the Art of Setting and Achieving Business Goals
Strategic Success: Mastering the Art of Setting and Achieving Business Goals
Goals propel change and growth. For a company, having goals in place means you have a focus to work towards and an opportunity to know where to invest your time and energy. Goals are powerful, influencing your motivation and increasing productivity, efficiency, and bottom line margins as well. The key here is to understand these goals as well as how to put in place those that will maximize the best outcome for your business.
What are business goals?
It seems simple enough, but many companies don’t have business goals in place, and if they do, they lack any real focus or clarity on how to achieve those goals.
A business goal, whether short-term or long-term, is designed to put a timeframe on achieving a specific task and how to do so. They can be high-level or very focused, but they should always be:
- Detailed and explicitly defined
- Measurable
- Actionable
Your company’s mission statement is a good starting point for an overreaching goal because it defines what you believe is going to make your company a success. Every decision your company makes needs to align with this goal. If it does not do so, it may be the wrong decision.
Why is setting business goals important?
A mission statement is a good starting point, but it’s not enough to create actionable strategies that allow you to build your company. Business goals need to provide specific details about what you plan to do to achieve those goals. For example, look at metrics about sales, leads, or traffic to your site. Create actual figures you hope to work towards.
By taking steps like this, it is possible for a company to not only know where they are going but also to know where they are in the process.
Difference between long term vs short term goals
Both short-term and long-term goals are beneficial and necessary, but they differ in what they are set to achieve and how they work.
Short-term goals typically:
- Can be completed within the set shorter period of time (generally under a year, though they can be so short they only span a few hours)
- They focus on strategies that are built towards larger and longer-term goals
- They tend to have an impact on your company’s short-term success
Long-term goals typically:
- Should be completed within a longer period, as long as 10 years or indefinitely
- They are bigger objectives of what you want your company to accomplish
- They set up the stage for the shorter-term goals you need to achieve
Tips for setting measurable and reasonable goals and defining your goals
Setting measurable and reasonable goals means truly understanding where your company is right now and then working to create a plan for achieving the best outcome. Consider these tips:
- Connect with your team. Make sure they offer ideas and support about how such goals can be achieved
- Connect goals to each other. How will one support the other?
- Write them down, educate others about them, and stick with them
Taking these steps can help your company to do a better job when it comes to establishing objectives.
Kate Cross, Director of Marketing at Consumer Choice Award
