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The Six Essential Steps to Having Your Business Achieve Its Goals

Written by: Andrew Neitlich

Article Overview: It has become stale at this point to discuss goals and achieving goals. Everyone knows what it takes to set and achieve goals, and there is no shortage of acronyms (e.g. GOALPOST) to help managers remember that goals are time bound, measurable, significant, etc. This begs the question of why – if everyone knows how to set and keep goals – so many businesses fail to achieve their objectives. Goal setting is sort of like New Year’s resolutions: easy to make, hard to achieve. A business coach and advisor can help ensure that you and your leadership team set appropriately aggressive goals and achieve them. There are six steps to the process.

The Six Essential Steps to Having Your Business Achieve Its Goals

The Six Essential Steps to Having Your Business Achieve Its Goals

By Andrew Neitlich

It has become stale at this point to discuss goals and achieving goals. Everyone knows what it takes to set and achieve goals, and there is no shortage of acronyms (e.g. GOALPOST) to help managers remember that goals are time bound, measurable, significant, etc.

This begs the question of why – if everyone knows how to set and keep goals – so many businesses fail to achieve their objectives. Goal setting is sort of like New Year’s resolutions: easy to make, hard to achieve.

A business coach and advisor can help ensure that you and your leadership team set appropriately aggressive goals and achieve them. There are six steps to the process:

First, set the right goals, based on a strategic plan that sets the most important priorities for the business to succeed and be dominant in its marketplace. Goals follow from a solid, elegant strategy for success.

Second, launch a plan to achieve the goals. It is not enough to set goals in a vacuum and expect them to somehow be reached. The business needs to develop a clear plan of action, resource needs, roles and responsibilities, organizational structure, and commitment in order to put substance on how goals will be met. The goals need to be broken down into manageable chunks of time and tasks, with specific people responsible. For instance, if a business wants to generate 200 more leads per month, then it needs a plan of action to generate those leads, and that plan of action should break down further into specific action steps by specific people every single day.

Third, create a dashboard of metrics to track goals over time and make mid-course corrections. Every executive should have a dashboard to track where progress is acceptable and where intervention is required.

Fourth, hold specific people accountable for achievement of the goals. Develop a recruitment and retention system to have the right people in the right places in the organization – people that the leadership team trusts to get the job done. The business should constantly recruit for talent, and have a process to develop, reward, and retain top performers in the context of business goals.

Fifth, have a process to track progress and make any necessary corrections. The leadership team should agree to meet regularly to track and discuss progress – and bring in other personnel as needed.

Finally, know how to have conversations for accountability. It is up to the leadership team to hold everyone in the business accountable for results. The conversations required to hold people accountable vary depending on the situation and performance. Sometimes the manager needs to be directive, sometimes he or she needs to coach, and sometimes he or she needs to provide training and support. There are also explicit conversations required to set (or reset) expectations, acknowledge results, and provide incentives for performance.

Again and again we find managers who wonder why their people aren’t accountable for results. In our experience, the issue resides with the manager, not the people. You get what you tolerate in business. If you aren’t setting and tracking the right goals and putting in place processes and conversations to manage by goals, you shouldn’t point the finger for poor performance at anyone but yourself!

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Article Tags: achieving goals, action resource, action steps, aggressive goals, business coach, dashboard, goal setting, launch, leadership team, manageable chunks, metrics, organizational structure, recruitment and retention, resolutions, retention system, roles and responsibilities, single day, six steps, strategic plan, vacuum



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Re: Drop out Billionaire - I reveived Bill Bartmann's DVD "9 Steps To Achieve Any Goal" as part of my monthly pack from Success University a few months back. It is a great presentation. I've watched it several times but not for a while so I'll view it again in the coming week. He is one of the greats. Like the best success mentors, he speaks with authority because he has come through much tribulation. His program sounds like a great bargain at $100 a year.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - Thanks GT! This is still the right post for Alexa Goals but everything else can go to Kevin's Mastermind post! Cheers!
Exclusive: Interview with Results - Hi Forum Members, I'm helping start up a Business Coaching and Consulting company here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a Subsidiary of RSC Business in Los Angeles). As a Research and Development Intern I am required to practice my listening and interview skills by surveying Small and Medium Businesses on thier Business. This Survey is designed by RSC Business to also assist the Business being interviewed more insight into their own business. I am looking to interview about 30 businesses across North America over the span of 3 months. At the end of these interviews I will be publishing a report of the results and they will be made available for free to the Interviewees. The Report data will include responses from a minimum of 100 interviews. I would like to extend this opportunity to members of the Forum. If you would like to have this short 20-30 minute interview conducted on your Business and you reside in North America please send me an email or PM. Please contact me at andy[at]jvprosperity[dot]com to arrange our interview and to get free access to the results when they are published.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - Hi Timothy, It's good to see a new "competitor" on our Alexa Ranking Goals list. Good luck in your efforts to improve your website Alexa rankings. David


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