What I am doing, in reality, is hurting my business.

Why Goals are Important

Business goals are important for many reasons, including:

• Focus.
  Without an end goal in mind, how do you know where to focus your efforts and actions? (On the flip side, having too many goals can spread you too thin this year, so focus on one at a time.)

• Productivity.
  Having goals in mind helps keep you on task by allowing you to operate at a great efficiency. It also helps you to break down your goals into action tasks for your to-do list.
• Accountability.
  With no goals for your business, you can feel free to slack off, work part time, not look for new clients, etc. If that’s what you want, that’s fine—but if your life plan includes running a successful business, then you should be accountable to that business.
• Progress.
  Setting milestones for your business helps you to see your progress and gives you the encouragement to keep going, much like the weekly weigh-ins at Weight Watchers.
• Success.
  How will you ever know you were a success if you don’t know what the end goal was? Think of it as running a race with no finish line—would you be able to keep running forever if you never knew you could win?

Why Goals Should be Flexible

I work in a business that involves the use of a lot of technology. From my point of view, if I don’t remain flexible and able to adapt to trends quickly, I can get passed by really fast. For this reason, your goals should not be set in stone, and you should be able to revisit your short-term goals frequently to see if they still make sense for you. I feel like this concept is true for any profession or industry, as we are all susceptible to changes in the economy, technology, or consumer behavior.

How to Set Goals

If you haven’t made a life plan (or at least have one in mind), I would start out with that.

If you haven’t reviewed your business plan lately, I’d revisit that as well.

Goals should be more about the process, not the end result, and for that reason I start out by making a master list of dreams. Once I have a list of everything down on paper, no matter how crazy it is, I can go back and prioritize and quantify everything. For example, you might mark up your list in the following way:

Assign years.
For each of your goals, decide how many years you will give yourself to attain that goal. For example, is it a goal for this year, the next 3 years, the next 5 years, or just sometime in your life?
• Give priority.
  Can you assign each of your goals some kind of priority level or number? For example, you might decide that creating a new product is more important than increasing sales on an existing one, so prioritize each of these items accordingly. This will help you when it comes time to set your tasks lists or decide which goals to table for another time.
• Break down goals into milestones.
  If your goal is to create a new product, how can you set mini goals for yourself to accomplish the larger goal? The mini goals might include researching the subject, taking some continuing education classes for yourself, or hiring a new employee to assist you in this aspect of your business.
• Create measurement units.
  How will you decide if your goal of “start podcasting” is a success? You should consider adding some form of measurement to each goal, such as "creating a new podcast every month for 12 months" or "writing an e-book and selling 1,000 copies of it". Having a way to quantify your objectives makes it easier to determine if the criteria for success has been met. Some goals aren’t easily measured, however, and for those you will have to get creative.

What areas should you cover when setting your business goals? Really that is up to you, because I can’t tell you what areas you need to make improvements in or what product lines are most important to you based on current consumer trends. The idea, however, is that the more areas you cover, the more well-rounded your goals (and your business) will be.)

My Goals for 2008

It’s only the first week in January, so I haven’t come up with much yet. Here’s the partial list I am working on:

• Move our of state in the summer.
• Launch one content-based site that is separate from the services my company provides.
• Make a regular habit of writing, even on "off days" when I don’t have any blog posts going live.
• Read more and use my Google Reader share feature regularly.

What goals have you made for yourself in 2008?

Additional Resources

• Goal Setting That Works I like this one for the way in which it internalizes goal setting and encourages you to listen to your inner voice.
• 101 Goal Setting Breakthroughs: A 31 Day Blog Series That Will Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever!
• The Ten Commandments of Goal Setting
• SMART Goal Setting