Just as a blueprint is important when building a house, goal setting is important when starting or growing your business. If you don’t have any idea where you are going, what your doing, or where you see yourself in the future; then it is extremely hard to get there. You may be asking what kind of direction I can give and I’m glad you asked.
In The 2-Hour Business Plan I mentioned that your plan should have major goals and objectives. However, in addition to those major ones you’ll need to have non-major goals as well as a blueprint for success. Without delay let’s proceed with that direction I promised.
Where are you going?
So where do you want to go? One thing that makes a vacation is to have a destination. You have to decide where you want to go, in order to generate the plan to get there. This is the first step in proper goal setting.
What are you going to accomplish?
Now that you know that you want to be the CEO of a super-stud business or at least a profitable one, what are you going to accomplish exactly. Is one of your goals to hire 2-3 more employees? Do you want your business to be a sponsor at a local event? Are you interested in developing web applications? What exactly do you want to do? This is the point where you brainstorm, list everything — there are no bad goals.
Where do you see yourself in a month, next quarter, next year?
You should now have a rather large list of desired accomplishments/goals. Next is to organize these goals into the appropriate time frame. Put them into various categories. There is no right or wrong way to do this step, however I recommend a few close time frames and a few a bit farther into the future. I tend to use: this month, 3 months from now, 1 year from now, and 5 years from now.
Achievable Goals vs. Wishful thinking
Lastly, you’ll want to know the difference between achievable goals and just wishful thinking. There is nothing wrong with dreams as long as they are put in their proper light. If you set for yourself the goal of doubling your monthly income and only give yourself one month to do it; you might be setting the bar a bit too high. You see that is a perfectly fine goal to have, yet likely not a realistic time frame. So pepper your goals with dream-like goals, just make sure to put them in their proper place.
Do you have any goal setting tips that are working well for you?
October 29th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
[...] The Importance of Goal Setting [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Let me share to you the story of Don Quiote la Mancha which was written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra; Don Quiote was a romantic while Sancho Panza was a realistic. D.Q perceives things idealistically while S.P sees things as they are. On their journey, S.P was laughing at D.Q on how he perceived windmills as giants, the search for his lady love who doesn’t exists and many more. Though his master was mad, S.P was still there at his master’s side- been through all the challenges because of the money promised by D.Q. But on the latter part, D.Q remained romantic till his last breath and S.P from realistic became romantic and followed the footsteps of his master. (but he’s still embracing realism)
Just like in setting goals, we should be romantic yet realistic. Romantic in a way that we should never fail to dream or aim high like like Don Quiote but we should be also be realistic that not all dreams may come true. We should set a time frame, analyze everything before pursuing it, we should know our strengths and weaknesses for us to be successful.
Above all this, we should stand on what we believe in for this will bring us to the peak of success.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:09 pm
There’s an interesting article with a somewhat different take on goal setting here:
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/goals/
In short, it talks about why setting goals can set you up for failure… and what to do instead.
Cheers,
Jim