I have been around awhile. I’ve seen things. I’ve heard things. Honestly, I think I’ve seen and heard too much. At least, I think I’ve heard the following phrase too many times: “If your business doesn’t have goals, it will probably fail.” What a waste of breath.
This is like saying. “If you don’t breathe on a regular basis, you will die.” Of course a business must have goals. I have never seen a business without at least one goal. Usually, it is to make money. Could be to provide help for people who really need it. Maybe it is to keep someone’s mind engaged. Whatever it is, whatever combination of goals, it is important, sure. But are all goals for business good? Do they even make sense for the particular business. Were they thought out with purpose, or were they words or phrases borrowed from an MBA somewhere because you thought that would help you define what success is. The truth is, how you determine your business goals is EASILY as important, if not more important, as having business goals at all.
I can hear some of the people reading this right now. “Huh? How can not having goals be better than not having well thought out goals?” I’ll let them ponder that while I make my point to the rest of you. Having a goal is nice. It’s useful. But if it is a general goal, and not a well thought out goal with an ability to be tracked and measured, it does not have the same effect. Reaching the goal is not really helping if you don’t know how you got there, or how to maintain or improve it.
Let’s look at an example that happens often. Every January in America, a lot of people decide on a new goal for a new year. Weight loss. The same old cliche. New Year, New Me. I am sure you or someone you know has probably done this. After the holidays they set a goal to lose weight, or get in shape, or get healthier. Then, they go read a bunch of articles online from “experts” in exercise, or dieting, and they start trying to workout daily, or eat more spinach, less bread, etc. Some even have what they term as success, or meeting their goal. They lose some pounds, or workout more and start to feel better. But did they REALLY set a goal, and then achieve it? Did they get what they wanted from this goal? I doubt it.
Why, you ask? Because the “goal” was not defined in a way to measure the success of the goal, nor determine what actions worked to reach the goal and what actions did not. Nor did it define WHY the goal was the GOAL!!! Lose weight? That’s not a goal. Not unless you know WHY you want to lose weight. Why is that the goal? Is it to lose a specific amount of weight? What time period would be needed to reach the goal? Why? What do you get out of reaching the goal? Would it be bad to overachieve? What if I lose weight too fast? What if I lose half my bodyweight in 6 months without gaining some muscle mass? What effect does this have on my health? How do I know? Are there other goals that should work in conjunction with my primary goal? Is this getting so complex that eventually I decide to cancel this goal?
Yeah, I get it. Now you’re feeling a little put off. A little uncomfortable. You just wanted to lose some weight an feel better about yourself, but this is too much. I don’t want the detail, I just want to get to work. Sound familiar? We’re all human. We have enough going on that takes our attention. We don’t want to go down the rabbit hole to create detailed support systems for our goals, or spend time on tracking progress. But for your business goals, that is exactly what is needed if you want to succeed on purpose, instead of by accident. If you are waiting to succeed by accident, you will probably still be waiting when success passes you by.
So what do you do about it? Define your business goals with PURPOSE. Make them measurable at many levels. Track every action or choice designed to achieve your goals so that you can determine their effectiveness. Drop those that do not move you closer to your goals, if you can. Increase frequency on things that move you closer to your goals. Set timelines with interim goals. Define CLEARLY what success looks like for these goals. Constantly improve your processes so that success can be duplicated.
That’s what we at Altacentric do for our clients. We use our expertise in all types of business goals to help our clients define what goals lead to success for them. Then we help them with the tools and infrastructure that fits those definitions. We teach them how create processes and measure the success or failures of the processes to constantly improve their businesses and achieve the success that they want.
Do you want to learn more? Click here for more information.
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