By the time this newsletter reaches you, the World Cup soccer tournament will have recently finished. In soccer, it's pretty easy to determine if you've achieved your objective, or goal. The ball goes in the net. That, and some members of the crowd roar with an elongated GGGOOOAAALLL. Thank goodness it's not like that in business.
In business, it's not so much scoring goals as it is achieving them, and it's instrumental to any businesses' success and development. The best way to start is to define the important facets of the business to measure, says Larry Sveda, owner of Full Spectrum Solutions, LLC, a Wisconsin company that specializes in helping business owners plan their business strategy, set their direction and build high performance teams.
"You want to identify 4 to 6 objectives - the difference makers - that you need to achieve to be successful in your business venture," says Sveda. "Objectives help you focus your resources to achieve the results you want to achieve. They should be something that causes you to take action," he explains.
Typically in business, objectives will fall into several major categories including financial, marketing, and internal operations.
Financial goals may be directed at measurables such as sales, revenue, profit, cash flow, or overtime costs. From a marketing standpoint, your goals might be new contacts made, new customers added, number of inquiries about your services, tours of a senior care facility, and the conversion of those tours to residents. Internal goals could relate to personnel, caregiver retention, capacity, or bed- and room vacancies.
"Overall, objectives are a prime tool for accountability. They keep you focused and on track. A key question to ask is, 'Will meeting these objectives help accomplish your vision and mission?'", Sveda adds.
How often should you revisit your goals? Sveda says that typically a vision will hold for up to 5 years, a mission perhaps forever, and your goals should be reassessed at least annually. In addition, Sveda says that goals should be tracked on a monthly or quarterly basis, and that such an approach allows you to compare with the prior year, quarter or month.
In the end, meeting your business goals will accomplish your vision and mission. "All of the pieces fit together. Your vision is expansive; an idealistic description of what your business will look like at a point in the future. The mission is short, memorable and typically customer driven, and your objectives help focus your resources to achieve the results you desire," Sveda says.
Whether your vision is to score a goal, or to achieve one, a grounded approach, a winning attitude, and success are hard to beat. Next month, we'll talk about the strategies that you can adopt and manage to achieve your goals.
For more information on establishing your business plan, contact Larry Sveda at
lsveda@charter.net or call 608-469-5095.
