Business success through Goals

To focus your business efforts and be able to monitor your progress, you should take time to regularly set and review goals.

There are three types of goals that need to be set in a business: long term goals, intermediate goals and immediate goals. When setting your goals, you should plan a time to review your goals and progress. All goals should be interrelated to the main goal of making your business as profitable as possible.

When setting goals, you should start by setting your long term goals and working from there. Long term goals can be somewhat more general than other types of goals and can be adjusted over time. Your long term goals are your destination and that can change over time and depending on the circumstances. Your destination in business can change based on market conditions as well. There can be many different ways to get to your long term goal and all of these are filled with intermediate and short term goals.

Your intermediate goals are ones that are smaller steps to the long term goal and are more measureable and are the goals that you can use to keep your enthusiasm and motivation up when you may be feeling discouraged. These goals are more detailed and should be set with a specific, measurable element so that you can check your progress.

Immediate goals are short term and may arise out of an urgent need to meet an obligation, and emergency, or a client request. Many of these goals are not set until the day they are needed to be met.

A possible example of the different types of goals is as follows – Long term: where you want to be in 5 – 7 years, intermediate: goals to be met in 1 to 6 months, Immediate: goals to be met in 1 to 5 days.

Planning sessions should be made to check progress on these goals on a regular basis and to make any necessary adjustments. You should take time to plan on a weekly basis, review your performance and make adjustments to your work plan so you can better meet your goals. It is good to set these planning periods for either the first thing at the beginning of the week or the last thing at the end of the week. You should make these planning times sacred so that they do not get changed or interrupted. That way they become habit and you do not get distracted into doing something else.

Setting goals, tracking progress and making necessary adjustments is a strong way to increase your chances of success. As the saying goes, “Fail to plan and you plan to fail!”