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You want your business to grow. So do your employees. Setting goals to inspire your team and, in turn, improve your business efficiency is the key to unlocking the continued progress both parties desire.
Successfully setting goals creates a stronger sense of support within your company. And when employees feel supported, they’re more likely to contribute to the team. Goal setting is also a great opportunity for employers to connect with individual members of their team. Gaining a better understanding of their aspirations – and how those can align with your business – can be mutually beneficial if you’ve got a common finish line.
For anyone needing help kicking their goal-setting activities into gear, these are some strategies to inspire and support your employees on the way to growing your business.
Start by thinking SMART.
SMART goals provide a process for identifying realistic goals by pairing them with clear expectations and instructions. Here’s some background on what SMART means:
- Be specific: The more details, the better.
- Make it measurable: Quantitative milestones are needed to evaluate progress.
- Keep it achievable: Goals should be challenging but realistic based on the employee’s skills, experience, and the team’s scope.
- Ensure it’s relevant: Goals must apply to both the individual’s and team’s success and mission.
- Make sure it’s time-based: Outline your dates and deadlines.
SMART goals helps employees understand what success looks like and how to achieve it. For example, instead of saying “improve sales,” the goal could be “increase sales by 10% over the next quarter by targeting new leads.”
Implementation requires collaboration.
Now that you know how SMART goals are defined, it’s time to talk about implementation. A solid first step is to dedicate one-on-one time with each of your employees to brainstorm both professional and personal development goals. Collaborate with employees to set their objectives rather than dictating them. This fosters ownership and motivation. Discuss their career aspirations and align their goals with the company's broader mission to create a sense of purpose. Grab some lunch or meet for coffee or ask to hop on a Zoom call – just make sure that this is time fully dedicated to them. The point is: you want them to open up, so why not treat them?
Professional goals correlate directly with job responsibilities critical to day-to-day business operations. Personal goals, on the flip side, are more focused on growth and learning. They make up your employee’s dreams and aspirations.
As a business owner, have your employees brainstorm a few personal and professional goals prior to your meeting, and then have some of your own goals in mind as well. Leading by example, particularly in a goal-setting situation, will help your employees feel more supported. So, make sure you’ve got a few of your own goals to share with your team.
What is an OKR?
OKRs position objectives next to key results to create a measurable, trackable framework that achieves long-term objectives using smaller, individual goals.
For example, let’s take a common New Year’s resolution – getting into shape – and turn it into an OKR. To reach that long-term goal, we’ll set some weekly goals: work out four times a week, drink two gallons of water a day, etc. Then, we sit down and reflect on our progress every week. Were we able to get in all our workouts? Should we add more workouts? Less?
It is important to note that OKRs and KPIs go hand in hand. KPIs are key performance indicators that serve as a way to measure progress toward a goal. In this case, a KPI could be how many crunches we can do each week. Using this KPI, we can adjust our routine to ensure we reach our OKR of getting into shape.
OKRs in your company works the same way. To efficiently implement this framework, put together 3-5 quarterly objectives with the assistance of each employee’s direct manager, and make sure each objective follows the SMART model.
Everyone’s OKR progress should be reported every week to measure progress effectively. Those weekly reflections can boost attitudes within your company as employees begin to see how all the moving pieces fit into the overall mission. It is also important to emphasize the need for OKRs to remain flexible, so they don’t become too difficult to achieve.
What are the benefits of goal setting?
Goal setting creates a better understanding of what needs to be done, leading to the more effective usage of time and resources within your company. Goal setting is used everywhere, not just in offices. Or your living room, for all of you lucky remote workers.
To set goals, you need to identify weaknesses and flaws and brainstorm how to turn them into opportunities. Goals also help create a sense of accountability and elevated focus, as they are constantly revisited during weekly check-ins.
Just remember to stick with it. Goal setting is valuable if you remain consistent. Keep communicating, keep trying, and keep remembering why you set your goals in the first place.
For more information
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BBB Great West + Pacific contributed to this article.