5 Simple Steps for Setting Goals
“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” –Zig Ziglar
2020 signals the start of a new year and a new decade. It’s a perfect time to stop and set goals for your organization (or even for yourself personally). However, you truly don’t need to wait for the end of a year or the beginning of a new year to set goals. Life is about setting and achieving goals and you can start today…right now. Before diving into how to set goals, let’s look at the value of goal-setting.
Benefits of Setting Goals
In a previous blog post, I talked about how important it is to define your organization’s mission, vision, values, and beliefs. I contend that they are the anchors for your organization that keep your team in alignment. If you buy into the concept that your mission, vision, values, and beliefs are your anchors, then your goals are the compass that keeps your organization from moving around aimlessly. They keep your organization moving with forward momentum. Goals are how an organization can strategically accomplish initiatives to deliver on its mission and achieve its vision as well as live out its values and beliefs.
When organization goals are documented, shared throughout the organization, and updated on a regular cadence, the organization has clear priorities and can move forward as a united team.
How to Set Goals
Typically, in a small organization, the executive or leadership team should set the strategic direction of the company and goals. Then, the leadership team should share the goals across the organization and review progress against these goals regularly. Individual employee’s performance objectives should be tied to these goals as well.
For a larger organization, goals should be set for each division or unit in addition to the larger company goals. The rest of this blog post focuses on setting goals within a smaller organization, but all of the content still applies to individuals and larger organizations as well.
Step 1: Schedule a workshop
Reserve at least two hours of uninterrupted time for a goal-setting workshop (though you may need a longer session or follow-up sessions, depending on how talkative your group is and how much brainstorming happens). Whoever is leading the workshop should follow proper meeting etiquette (see my blog post on meetings). It’s especially important to ensure that you have the right organization leaders in the room and that everyone’s voice is heard. Sometimes, it can be very helpful to have a third-party facilitator run the workshop (goal-setting workshops are one of my favorite workshops to facilitate).
Step 2: Reflect on the past
Goals are all about moving forward, but to set them properly, you must start by reflecting on the past.
Questions to ask yourself and the group during the workshop:
What worked well this past year, or over the past few months?
What didn’t work well?
What were your greatest successes or achievements?
What were your biggest challenges or learning moments?
Now is also a good time to look at your financial data, especially expenses, from previous years and notice trends.
Questions to ask yourself and the group during the workshop:
Are there areas where you can reduce expenses next year?
Where do you need to plan for new expenses in the next year (for example, new hires or additional marketing expenses)?
Where do you want to focus on growing your organization and what are the financial implications?
Step 3: Set a target
Every organization should have a revenue target: How much money do you want to come in next year? How much do you want to sell? Make sure that this target revenue is realistic but not too easy to reach. There’s no reason to have a compass (that is, your goals) if you don’t have a destination or target that you’re trying to reach in mind.
Questions to ask yourself and the group during the workshop:
Is it feasible to hit this target with your current staff, or the staff you plan to hire in the next year
Is it feasible to hit this target with the current systems and process you have in place, or plan to put in place next year?
Is it feasible to hit this target with the current services or products you’re offering, or plan to offer next year?
Remember that this can be a moving target. If major unforeseen circumstances arise, like an economic slump, you can adjust this target accordingly. But it’s important to set a target—your goals and efforts throughout the year will align back to this target and get you to the bullseye…or at least as close as possible.
Bonus Points for Step 3:
Another concept related to setting a target is setting what author Jim Collins calls a “BHAG”, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal. You can read more about this concept in his book, Built to Last, or check out an excerpt online. A “BHAG” is a long-term, audacious goal that an entire company can rally behind. Collins uses the great example of JFK setting the BHAG of landing a man on the moon.
Step 4: Brainstorm, discuss and document your goals
After gathering the right group of people together to reflect and set the revenue target, you can set your organization’s goals. To get the brainstorming started, you may want to discuss and try to answer some of the questions called out above. Here are a few more questions to ask yourself and the group:
Are you planning to launch a new service or product?
Are you looking to cut expenses (or perhaps just keep better track of expenses)?
Do you need to focus on increasing your brand awareness through marketing?
Do you need to set a goal around hiring?
Should you revamp your recruiting or onboarding processes?
How are you going to deliver even more value to your clients this year?
Do you have tools or processes that need to be established or refined?
A good tool to use to define and document your goals is the “SMART” tool. All goals that you document should be SMART:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-based
Specific
Don’t make vague statements; instead, use action words and numbers when possible. Instead of saying your personal goal is to “Work out more”, a specific goal would be: “Attend a yoga class 3 times a week.”
You also want to assign accountability for a goal. The owner of the company should NOT be accountable for all of the goals…they should be delegated to the appropriate individuals or departments (for example, sales, marketing, operations, finance, etc.).
Measurable
Part of making a goal specific ensures that the goal is measurable. If you just say “I’m going to work out more”, it is very subjective to know whether or not you’re achieving this goal. Whereas, if you say that your goal is to “Attend a yoga class 3 times a week”, then it’s very easy at the end of each week to know whether or not you’ve achieved this goal.
When possible, it’s great to be able to pull in metrics when you can to measure goals. For example, a goal that could include metrics would be: “Increase our website users by 10% (to 100,000) by the end of the year.” In this instance, you could use Google Analytics (or whatever analytics program you use) to see how you’re tracking against this goal.
A key way to measure your progress against goals is using the terminology “meeting expectations”, “exceeding expectations”, or “not meeting expectations”. If you are consistently not meeting expectations on a goal, you should likely revisit it and adjust accordingly.
Attainable
Similar to the target, goals should be kept within the realm of possibility. While goals should be attainable, it is okay if a goal is not achieved by the set date. That’s why these goals are measured and should be reviewed on at least a quarterly basis.
Relevant
The best way to ensure goals are relevant is to be able to answer the following question: How does this tie to our overall revenue target and our organization anchors (mission/vision/values)? If you can’t answer this question, you shouldn’t be setting this goal.
Time-based
Similar to specific, you want to make sure that all goals have some sort of time structure (for example, by the end of Q1, by the end of the year).
Important Caveat About SMART goals: The Harvard Business Review notes: “A goal can easily be SMART without being wise.” This is absolutely true…the goal must be created to help the organization reach its target and fulfill its mission. “SMART” is merely a tool to ensure that the goal uses the proper language to be understood across the organization and tracked effectively.
Potential pitfalls to watch out for during Step 4
Remember to make your goals SMART as you start to document them. If you aren’t working with a third-party facilitator, it’s a good idea to assign someone to continually ask the question: “That’s a great idea, but how can we make this a SMART goal?”
Don’t come up with too many goals for yourself to accomplish…remember, each goal should be attainable, but so should your set of goals. Don’t give your organization 30 goals next year…focus on the top 5-10 priorities.
Don’t get too hung up with defining exactly how you are going to accomplish your goal. The point is to set the goals…the action plans and implementation tactics come after everyone agrees on the goals.
See attached for an easy goal-setting template you can use to ensure that your goals are SMART. I find that it’s helpful to take notes while your team is brainstorming and discussing. Then you can refine the language and share this chart with your team.
Step 5: Share Your Goals Across the Organization
Similar to your organization anchors, once your goals are established, do NOT hide them away in a drawer and forget about them. Even if a well-defined goal is halfway achieved, it’s still only halfway achieved…you have to do the work to achieve the goal. Make sure you and those who are accountable create action plans to achieve the goal. And then review your goals and progress against these goals on a regular cadence (I recommend at least quarterly). During these reviews, you can always adjust the goals, as needed. And don’t forget to reset your goals each year—December or January is an ideal time to do this. However, as noted above, you can set goals at any time.
What are your goals for the upcoming year? Do you need help defining your goals or creating action plans to achieve your goals? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to contact me.
Additional Resources for Goal-Setting
BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) Excerpt from Built to Last by Jim Collins
3 Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid, Harvard Business Review
How To Set Goals (And Why You Should Write Them Down), Forbes