Best Practices To Set Successful Business Goals For A Productive New Year
As the year comes to a close, we are all busy tying loose ends and jotting down goals on our New Year's resolutions list. It takes a certain amount of dedication and focus to accomplish your goals for the new year, but it is feasible. For this reason, we are sharing 6 best practices to help you set successful business goals that will make a meaningful change in your business in the new year.
6 Tips To Accomplish Your New Year's Business Resolutions
1. Know What You Don't Want
When setting business goals, everyone thinks the first step is knowing what you want to achieve. Although there is truth in that, goal setting is often too focused on what we want and not at all on what we don't, when, in fact, this can provide us with many valuable insights. But how can you know that unless you ask? All you have to do is write down anything negative that happened in your business in the previous year. Identifying what you don't wish to repeat will actually highlight problem areas that damage your business without you realizing it and lead the way toward the desired outcome.
2. Know Your Whys
While writing down goals is the first step in the right direction, it's certainly not the only thing it takes to achieve their accomplishment. What is equally, if not more, important is understanding why what we're doing doesn't work and what the change we want to see is. This will not only clarify the steps you need to take to ensure meaningful change but also act as a great motivator down the line. It will give you a clearer picture of the end result, which will act as your reminder to stick to your resolution and make the necessary moves to see it through.
3. Set Realistic Goals
The reason many of us fail to accomplish our New Year's resolutions is that we don't make them achievable to begin with. Maybe we overestimate our abilities or completely disregard what the expected time frame is for the goal we've set. If you don't want to lose steam sooner than desired or jeopardize your work-life balance, make sure to set business goals that can be completed without stretching your time or resources too thin. You can do that by describing in detail not just the end result but also the individual milestones, deadlines, and progress-measuring techniques you will utilize. All these will make your goals more manageable and, ultimately, easier to conquer.
4. Schedule Regular Check-Ins
A successful business goal is one that you keep in mind at all times rather than set and forget until the end of next year. Therefore, take some steps to ensure accountability by setting deliverables every two or three months that will keep your goal progressing. Pair these with regular meetings where you will discuss which steps have been completed, how many are left, and which actions need to be taken moving forward. These strategizing meetings will also help you catch slip-ups before it's too late and take the necessary measures to get back on track.
5. Focus On Habits, Not Goals
One of the secrets to making a business goal stick is viewing it as a habit instead of a faraway objective. In other words, it's better to focus on the execution and the small steps that will take you there. For example, it shouldn't be all about wanting to increase your revenue but also about the everyday changes that will eventually lead to that end result. These changes can include anything from making check-ins more often to committing to a different way of keeping track of progress. These new habits or strategies will make you more productive in the long run and pave the way for more successful goal setting.
6. Don't Be Discouraged By Bad Days
We often give up on our New Year's resolutions because we miss a step along the way. However, having a bad day or missing a deadline doesn't automatically signify that your goal is a lost cause. On the contrary, it is more than expected. When you have a whole set of tasks and responsibilities to attend to, it only makes sense that your goal might be left on the back burner for a little while. When that happens, it's important not to be so hard on yourself and not to fixate on the bad days. Instead, take some time to regroup and give yourself a healthy dose of motivation to get back on track.
Conclusion
The beginning of the year is the best time to set New Year's resolutions to change your organization for the better. The refreshing energy of the holidays has us all filled with creative ideas and the willingness to make them work. Don't let bad planning get in the way of this productivity boost. Follow the tips we shared in this article to set successful business goals and make your organization more efficient in the new year.
