Setting Specific Goals
A specific goal is a clearly defined goal, one that includes an action plan outlining how you will achieve the goal and a performance metric that tells you whether you are successful or not. This is the formula for goal-setting to ensure you set a specific goal: “I will (goal + performance metric) by (specific actions).” The performance metric in the goal is often a date or time frame, but it can be any objective criterion you can use to determine whether you’ve achieved the specific goal you’ve set. Let’s say your goal is to lose weight. An example of a specific goal that helps you achieve this is: “I will lose 10 pounds in two months by running on the treadmill for half an hour six days a week.”
Goal Setting for Business Success
Before you can set specific goals designed to increase the success of your business, you need to understand what success means to you. Success means enjoying what you do, so your work energizes you and creates happiness that spills over into your personal life. But what does “increasing business success” mean to you? Perhaps it’s about starting a home-based business to improve your work-life balance and gain more time to spend with your family, or gaining more energy to handle the many demands you face. Is it about becoming more professional and developing more confidence so you can sell your product or service more successfully, or trying something new? Or is it making your business more environmentally friendly or improving customer service?
Examples of Specific Goals for Success
Depending on the purpose of your goal-setting exercise, you may decide to set specific goals such as: To improve your work-life balance: “After a month from now, I will spend whole weekends with my family by reorganizing my work schedule and learning how to delegate tasks.” To secure a loan to start your small business: “I will develop enough confidence to present my business plan to the bank by diligently completing every task in the business success program.” To actively promote your business: “I will implement low-cost methods to promote my business, including creating a social media plan.” To improve the net profits of your small business (and increase profit): “I will reduce my business costs by 10% this quarter.”
Tips for Setting Goals
Business success is not just a matter of a healthy bank account; think about what you want to achieve, no matter how strange it may seem at first, and set your specific goals accordingly. (Think of Elon Musk, for example, and his goal of creating a human settlement on Mars. It sounds strange now, but he set goals and is working to achieve them.) Writing a vision statement will help you achieve long-term success. A goal does not have to be enormous to be valuable; small goals are worth working on too because they can lead to significant changes. For instance, “After a month from now, I will work three hours less per week by organizing myself better” is a perfectly acceptable specific goal. Use this same specific goal-setting formula across all aspects of your business, and you will quickly see an increase in the number of goals you achieve – and more success!
Homework
Practice setting specific goals by determining how you want your work schedule to be different a month from now. Look at your weekly activity log from the first week and evaluate your work schedule. Are there activities you feel you spend too much time on, or activities missing because you didn’t have time to do them? These are important cues for potential changes you may want to make to enhance the success of your business. Think about what business success truly means to you and what you hope to achieve four weeks from now. Then write two specific goals, according to the formula provided above, starting with “After a month from now, I will…” You can create more than two goals if you wish, but if you do, choose only two of the specific goals you’ve created to focus on over the next four weeks. Multiple goals will distract you.
Source:
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/set-specific-goals-to-increase-business-success-2947282
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