Let’s be honest. Most of us are very good at making new year’s resolutions, we’re just not very good at keeping them. People tend to keep resolutions until about January 15th, but by the time January 31st rolls around, they’ve generally moved on, or rather back. Goals are hard to keep. The new year is a great time to reflect and think and decide where you want your life to go. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a great time for making lasting change. Unfortunately, your business can’t afford to go through the same cycle of starting and stopping that your personal life does.
If you’re setting goals, or making resolutions, for your business, you need to find ways to make real and lasting change. One way to do this is to make sure the goals you’re setting are SMART.
SMART goals are:
- Specific: The goal needs to be short and to-the-point.
- Measurable: You have to include KPIs or other metrics in your goals.
- Achievable: If your goal isn’t realistic, you can’t meet it and the goal will wind up hurting morale.
- Relevant: The goal has to be something that makes sense for your company.
- Timely: Goals need deadlines in order to see if they’re being met.
Some authors have expanded the idea of SMART goals to include extra letters; SMARTER, for example, includes Evaluated and Reviewed. The point is that your goals need to be decided on carefully. SMART goals should be detailed enough to provide a success plan, and they need to hold you accountable to the priorities your organization has determined to be most important in the new year.
Once you get in the habit of comparing your professional goals against the “SMART” rubric, you might want to consider creating your personal goals with the rubric in mind as well. Making a goal that you can’t keep or track doesn’t help you or anyone else.
At The Kaplan Group we know that a poor financial situation can get in the way of almost any professional goal. Let us help you collect on unpaid invoices so that you can meet your other goals.
