Have you established goals for your business in 2020? If not, you already set yourself up for failure this year. Organizations and individuals alike require goals to facilitate hard work, productivity, and consistent direction. A company without goals meanders through various activity and lacks a sense of direction or purpose. These businesses often waste resources and fall short of their full potential. Fortunately, it is still early in 2020, so you still have time to set 2020 goals for your organization.
When setting goals, remember to set SMART goals, or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time based. Following this goal setting strategy helps create reasonable and focused goals that encourage organizational success.
Specific – Creating vague goals only leads to organizational confusion. Setting specific goals identifies the purpose of the goal. Communicating the specific purpose of your goal unifies your company. A goal without a purpose leads to out of sync company functionality.
Measurable – Measurable goals serve two purposes, to hold the organization accountable and to measure their progress. If we say, we want to increase Sales at Example Corp this year, this explains what we want but provides no standard to measure success against. A one-dollar increase fulfills the goal, or hundred-thousand-dollar increase fulfills the goal. A better goal for Example Corp identifies the measurement of the sales increase. For instance, Example Corps wants to see a five percent increase in sales by the end of 2020. This provides a measurement that holds the company accountable to seeing five percent sales increase and allows them to track their progress throughout the year.
Attainable – Set goals that challenge your business to grow but understand your company’s limitations. Keep the goal reasonable for your current organizational structure and resources. Knowing your company’s strengths and weaknesses helps you to create attainable goals. Overextending resources or lacking the resources to complete a goal pressures your business and decreases morale. Challenge your organization to perform to the best of its ability but remain reasonable with your expectations.
Relevant – Keep your goals relevant to your business and expertise. Say Origami Technology Group set a goal to start offering nutritional advice and services to our clients. Our company lacks the knowledge, resources, and creditability to succeed in that goal. Our clients come to us for our expert IT and marketing services, not for nutritional issues. This goal wastes our time and spreads us to thin across a completely different industry. Creating goals that pertain to your business and industry encourage profitability and success.
Time based – Goal require deadlines whether short term or long term. Deadlines act as the motivator for the goal. Setting the goal helps unite the company and set them in the same direction but the time-based deadline acts as the catalyst for completion. Time based goals also help with measurement. Time helps see progression and allows for adjustments to ensure attainable goals and organizational success.
To encourage organizational growth for small businesses set a couple company long term goals and a few shorter-term goals that focus on assisting with completing the long-term goal. Set multiple goals for your company. Create some lofty yet attainable goals and set other easier goals that still require your company to challenge themselves. Communicate your goals with your entire organization. Provide incentives like bonuses and prizes for completion of individual or department goals. Completing goals together as an organization bolsters company morale.
It is essential to create goals using your analytics. Analytics provide insight into ensuring the attainability of your goal. Goals created without data to back them usually become unattainable and cause issues throughout the organization, so your analytics team is essential to creating goals for your company.
You want organizational growth and success in 2020? It all starts with goal setting. Set SMART goals based off your analytics and then encourage your organization to strive for those goals. Nothing feels better than checking off a goal from your list, knowing you worked hard for it. If you need help setting goals for your company, Origami Technology Group offers business strategy advice for your company. Feel free to contact us at info@origamitg.com and we can discuss your organization and how to create goals for you to grow. As always, like our Facebook page and follow us on LinkedIn to remain up to date on our latest content.
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