3. Bring Goals And Strategy Together
Setting goals, and creating a strategy to get there, might be the most challenging step. It’s no secret that people often struggle to achieve their goals, but people and businesses that take a proactive approach to setting and following through with their goals are more likely to be successful. According to a study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University of California, 70 percent of people who shared their goals and set up regular progress checks were successful compared to 35 percent who kept their goals private.
Here are some examples of goals:
- Bring in $250K revenue in Q1.
- Earn 50 new customers in 2020.
- Drive 50% of leads from Facebook in Q3.
Your goals are your business objectives. So ask yourself: Why do I want to accomplish that? And then, how can I turn that into an actionable and specific goal?
After setting your goals, it’s important to be transparent with your employees about what you hope to achieve, which requires a clear strategy that you and your team will use to reach them. Your strategies aren’t set in stone and may change all the time, in small steps or radical revisions. That’s critical to understand because business conditions, markets, competition, consumer preferences and a wide range of other factors are constantly in flux. If your strategy remains fixed, your business will struggle to compete.
Remember that creating a sound strategy also means choosing what not to do. You can’t do it all, so you have to use your core values to stay focused on what’s important. Think of your strategy like the roadmap you use to achieve your vision and reach your goals, guided by the GPS of your values.
Once your values, vision, goals and strategies are outlined, you can use them together to grow a successful business.