Set Your 2021 Company Goal like A Pro
The year 2021 is a year most individuals and businesses looked forward to for many reasons. One of which is the need to get over with the tumultuous experience of the past year 2020. The pandemic changed the entire work culture, causing a massive movement of most businesses from offline to primarily online. However, the New Year has a great prospect. It’s one thing to be excited about 2021, it’s another thing to be well prepared and proactive as an organisation to make the best out of the year.
Goal-setting is one way to have a predictable and successful year as a business or organisation. It is critical to the success of any enterprise. It serves as a motivating factor that keeps the team focus, directing a higher percentage of their energy to the company’s priority per time. While there are many goal setting articles at the click of google search, we have compiled a few, but essential tips on goal setting as an organisation for you.
Align your goals with your mission and vision
Ensure to start by aligning your goal to the mission and vision of your organisation. This is crucial to keeping the team focus on what truly matters to the organisation in the long term.
Regardless of the task, you may need to attend to, urgently, and constantly ensure your goal aligns with your overall vision for your organisation.
Have a clear and specific goal
The more precise, descriptive and specific your goals are, the easier for everyone in the team to understand the goal in the same way. Having a specific, and clear goal helps the team to be more proactive, and take initiative towards achieving the goal. A specific goal for an insurance firm could be, “to acquire six new corporate accounts in the first quarter of the year”, this is easily understood unlike having a vague goal like “to grow our client base”
Ensure your goals are realistic
However lofty and amazing your company’s goals are, ensure they are realistic and achievable. Goals that are not within reach should be revisited, regardless of how great they may be. It’s great to have goals that challenge you, but you should be able to have a time projection of when to achieve those goals.
Break your goals into smaller objectives
Most businesses and organisations fail to achieve their goals because they set big goals without breaking them down into smaller objectives. Your goals may seem overwhelming when they are big and extensive, but when you break them down into smaller bits, you derive fulfilment for every milestone attained that helps to further fuel your motivation to achieve more. Have your big goals in multiple smaller objectives and apply target dates to achieve each component.
Your goals should be measurable
To set a measurable goal, identify exactly what it is you want to see, hear and feel when you reach your goal. If your goals are not measurable, there will be no milestones to determine if you are making progress or not per time.
Measurable goals can go a long way in refining what exactly it is that you want to achieve. Set goals that can be tracked, measured and analyzed as you progress.
Have specific actions you will take to accomplish your objectives
No matter the goals you have written down as a business or organisation; without a clear plan of action steps to achieving them, they will remain mere plans. Organisations with small goals, but take action promptly will be more successful than an organisation with lofty goals but no action.
Certain small businesses and start-ups today are considered giant-killers because of this singular factor. The internet has levelled the playing field for most industries, whether you are a small business or a conglomerate, your attitude towards taking action will remain the differentiating factor for most organisations.
Assign who will be responsible for each task
Organisations are made of people, the quality of the people in any organisation determines the outcome of such an establishment. And the contributions of the people are directly proportional to the success of the organization. Therefore, in goal setting, break the company’s goal into smaller components, assign each task to members of the team in your organisation, and have a tracking system to measure their feedback.
Through this, you can expect everyone stays on track, and ensure that there is a reporting system that shows progress each month or each quarter. Also ensure you cultivate an environment that encourages capacity building and growth, for the continuous advancement of the organisation.
Identify the resources you’ll need to achieve these goals.
As you write your organisation’s goal for the year, note down the resources you will need to achieve these goals. Resources could be a new technology, tools, financing, human resources, acquisition of platforms, change of office, alliance with certain relationships and partnership, or capacity building just to name a few.
And as you note them, appropriate funds accordingly or have a fund projection for them where it is needed. Where there is a budget limitation, be creative and improvise as you finalise your goal setting.
On the whole, setting goals for your organisation can be exciting and challenging at the same time, but it is greatly rewarding if you tick the right boxes as outlined above. While most goal settings article may point you at the traditional goal settings standard from the acronym ‘SMART’ meaning Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely, we have further helped you to break it down to the simplest and most practical everyday form and language here.
Have a mind-set to smash your goals this New Year 2021. They might look humongous and daunting at the beginning, but for every action taken no matter how small towards achieving them builds your confidence, and brings you closer to achieving them eventually.
To sum up your goal settings for the New Year, in a recent gathering of stakeholders in the communications industry. Mr Tomi Ikenye, CEO of Detail and Avedia, a leading retail and media consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria, noted that “while you may be great at execution, without a unique, customer-centric and, strategic communications plan to connect to your target audience with a huge online presence, which is now the primary contact point with customers, your efforts will lack the desired result”.
