Do your goals fizzle out a few months or weeks after setting them? From my experience working with trades and construction business owners, this is primarily due to their failure to self-manage and hold themselves accountable. Goal setting is much more than simply writing down what you want to achieve. It would help if you had strategic planning. It takes more time and energy to complete than writing down a bullet point list of goals, but planning out the journey is necessary to reach the destination. Here are five quick tips to help plan, execute, and review your goal to reach them quicker, using fewer resources:
Break big goals down into smaller goals
Saying you want to achieve 20% revenue growth, or open a location in a new area, is excellent, but you also need to understand what you need to do to get there. And saying “carry on doing what we’re doing” isn’t good enough.
What mini milestones do you need to hit to reach the big goal? Knowing this will help you measure progress, which allows you to track outcomes and make changes where necessary if something is holding you back.
Successful execution of all plans is what will achieve small business growth.
The plan you’ve created above – stick with it! Make some tweaks here and there, but don’t drop the program entirely. Many strategies fail within the fine-tuning phase because after tinkering, and we come up with new ways to achieve our business goals or get distracted by shiny objects.
It will ultimately lead to a failure to successfully execute our business goals because this will happen on repeat. You’ll never see a plan through to completion, and various projects need to complete to varying degrees.
Plans need to be measurable.
If we can’t measure progress or failures, then our business will not benefit from planning in the long term.
How will you know if you’ve achieved your goal? You need to understand if you’re moving forward or not. For example, you want to host or sponsor an event to find new customers. How will you determine whether the event was successful or not?
Success or failure measurements must be decided at the beginning because they will be your yardstick during your planning and execution. If you don’t determine these metrics, everyone will have different standards for what is a success.
Review, review, review
Correcting and altering our path towards success and reaching a goal is beneficial if it is simple fine-tuning. If it’s a revamp of our entire strategy, it indicates the plan has been a failure. Don’t make the mistake of following a failed plan again. It will only lead to the same outcome.
Review what went well, what could be improved, and what you shouldn’t do again. Take this data you’ve gathered and use it to make informed decisions about your following goals and the plans to get there.
Without accountability, a plan or goal has no way to ensure it succeeds.
It isn’t straightforward to hold yourself accountable. It’s possible, but if you’ve not had success with it so far, it’s not something you’re likely to do moving forward. It’s straightforward to move the goal posts, change deadlines, or chase those shiny objects when we’re only justifying it ourselves. Our minds are clever, and we can convince ourselves of anything!
It could be a friend, family member, fellow business owner, or coach. The best accountability partner will be someone who understands what you’re going through and preferably has been through it before or is going through it right now.
Stay on track with your goals with a business coach.
Do you plan your goals and think, “Now what?” Are you unsure where to start because you have so many dreams and don’t know what needs to happen first? A business coach will get it all straightened out for you!
Get support planning your goals correctly so you’ll know exactly how to move forward without hesitation. Most importantly, you’ll have the accountability to stick to your plans, so you’ll get there quicker and with less stress!
Test drive our services with a free, no-pressure Business Evaluation session to receive complimentary guidance on what your business is doing well and where it needs to improve. In exchange for your time, we’ll give you a plan to use whether you decide to employ our services or not.
