A guide to help you set goals for your business

‍If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home it will take 30 days. But if you give yourself 3 hours it will take you 3 hours. The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and plans. - Elon Musk

Let's face it, we all want our business to grow. Growth is essential for increasing your business' value and can mean many things such as increasing your revenue, sales, profit, market share, the number of employees, etc. An important component of working towards growth, that should not be neglected, is effective planning and goal setting.

This blog will touch on why goal setting is important in your business and will discuss the difference between short-term and long-term goals. Furthermore, it will guide you into goal setting and touch on some of Specno's previous goals as an example.

Goal setting can help you and your business in various ways, such as the following:

1. Goals force you to figure out what you want for your business

It’s as simple as that. When writing your goals, you will need to reflect on where your business started, where you are now, and what focus and direction you want your business to move in.

2. Goals give your business focus and direction

A clear focus and direction will ultimately guide your decision-making within your business. An example is when you know that your long-term goal is to increase sales, you will put your employees’ focus towards driving sales, whereas if your goal is to grow your team, you will most likely put a lot of focus on recruitment and having the right hiring strategy. When your business has a clear focus and direction, everyone in your team will have clear priorities, which helps when it comes to task prioritisation.

3. Goals are a great way to track your business’ progress

By writing out the goals and reflecting on them regularly, you will easily see in which areas your company is flourishing and in which areas your company needs to put a greater focus on. If your goals are SMART it will also become very easy to measure your progress.

4. Writing goals out keeps you and your employees accountable

When you share your business goals with your employees, you and your employees are accountable for reaching those goals, which leads to our fifth point.

5. Goals motivate people

Clear goals mobilize people towards actionable behaviour. Goals can also act as the driving force for employees during days when their motivation to work is low. When goals are achieved it creates a sense of accomplishment and pride, which will motivate employees to set more goals and work towards their next goal.

To start forming business goals, you will need to acknowledge that there is a difference between short and long-term goals. Short-term goals are something that you aim to complete in the near future. This can vary from one day to a week or several months. Long-term goals are something that you envision achieving within the distant future, and it can vary from having the timeframe of 5 to 10 years plus. Long-term goals are usually your company’s vision and everything you want to achieve with your business in the long run. Your business can have various short-term goals, but long-term goals should be limited. Short and long-term goals should not be seen as separate entities but as complementing each other as short-term goals should be implemented with your-long term goals in mind. Having short-term goals without any long-term goal(s) is also not an effective way when working towards business growth.

You’ve probably heard about this, but here is your reminder that your goals need to be SMART. That is, your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. If your goals are vaguely written, you might take a longer time to achieve them, or you won’t be able to achieve them as you would not be able to measure them, or worse, even know if you have successfully achieved your goals.

In a nutshell, some of Specno's long-term goals are to become a unicorn (a privately held startup worth $1 billion) and to continuously build systems and processes that truly scale.

Our short-term goals are implemented with our long-term goals in mind. As an example, a few of our goals for 2021 were to:

1. Triple our revenue

2. Triple our number of team members (which we did as we started 2021 with 12 employees and are starting 2022 with 36 employees)

3. Increase every employee's base compensation, which we did by:

• investing in a spacious office
• hiring a Specnite that cooks for the team and always having a cafeteria with food available (especially breakfast and snacks)
• investing in our office culture by adding fat sacks, scooters, etc.
• we also started investing in company events such as our company getaway and end-of-year function where we went on a sunset cruise

4. Increase individual productivity, which we did by:

• moving from desktops to laptops
• improving communication through implementing more effective systems and channels
• reducing "waste" - meaning that we reduced the hours that it took to complete phases, we put systems in place that automatically complete previous repetitive tasks, etc.
• decreasing micro-management through implementing the AAA strategy: (1) giving our Specnites authority which means that they have more decision-making power, (2) giving our Specnites the ability to do well in their positions and the autonomy to get work done, and (3) alignment: making sure that everybody in the company is on the same page and that they understand where we are heading.
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If your goals cannot be written SMART, make sure that your strategies and action plans that are put in place to reach those goals are SMART. This can be seen in our third and fourth goals.

Effective planning and goal setting are crucial to your business' growth and we cannot stress this enough. Make time for it as it will be an enormous payoff in the long term.

Happy goal(s) setting!

Source(s) that was used

8 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important for 2021 (tutsplus.com)

Why is Goal Setting Important in Business | EDKENT® Media (edkentmedia.com)