Setting effective business goals is the key to growth and progress in 2024. Here’s how you can make sure you goals are as useful as possible:
Setting Specific Goals
The worst thing you can do is set a ‘more’ or ‘less’ target. For example ‘get more customers’ or ‘spend less’. These are far too generic and therefore not very helpful. A better target would be: ‘spend at least 10% less than in 2023 on the team’s accommodation per quarter’. It might still have the word ‘less’ in, but it’s far more specific. We can help you meet that goal, by the way.
Setting Measurable Goals
You need to actually be able to keep track of your progress, in specific numbers. If your goals aren’t measurable or are a matter of opinion, then you’ll always be second guessing if you’ve met them or not, or worse; have no idea at all. A lot of the time it probably is measurable, you just don’t currently measure it. The best way to make sure your goal isn’t a matter of opinion if you’ve reached it or not, is to make sure it includes an amount. This can be an ordinary number or a percentage, whichever makes more sense.
Setting Achievable Goals
It would be really nice to triple all of your achievements from 2023, but is that possible? There’s not much point in working towards goals you are never going to reach in time and doing so can make you feel like a failure. Be honest with yourself about what you can achieve easily, what would be challenging but doable if you work hard, and what is asking far too much.
Setting Relevant Goals
It’s really important that your goals actually get you closer towards bigger targets and that achieving it will actually have an effect. It’s always tempting to make goals for vanity figures (figures that look impressive but don’t actually benefit the business) but they’re only really good for boasting about. Bottom line: your goals are only effective if they are focused on the right thing. Try setting one for January, one for the first quarter, and one for the year.
Setting Time-Bound Goals
Your goals need a deadline. This needs to be kept track of and marked on the calendar, as well as realistic. There’s no point setting a goal if it has no end point to when you should have achieved it by, you’ll never actually get around to it. The deadline needs to be fairly set in stone, otherwise you’ll just move it back every time you get close without making any progress. That defeats the point of having a goal.
You need to have a think about how long it would realistically take to reach that target and set the deadline a little before that to give you a challenge. The challenge shouldn’t be too extreme though; you’ll just give up saying it’s not possible.
Just remember your S.M.A.R.T goals!