As we step into a new year, the buzz around ‘goals’ and ‘resolutions’ becomes a familiar tune. It triggers a moment of reflection, prompting questions like:

  • What do I want to achieve in the coming year?
  • How can I improve or do things differently?

For businesses, the early months symbolise a ‘fresh mindset,’ a time to engage in confident and creative thinking with renewed energy directed toward the future. Yet, the common frustration lies in the discourse around goals often remaining in the realm of words, lacking actionable plans and mapped-out strategies. This year calls for a shift in approach.

The focus is on transforming business goals into reality. Here are practical steps and tools to do just that.

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So, what do you want to achieve for your business in the next 12 months?

To prevent overwhelm, let’s narrow your focus to four key areas:

  1. What are your goals for Growth?
    Such as: more new clients, revenue, profit, business value, new services, team size, referrals, etc.
  2. What are your goals to boost People Performance?

Such as: team productivity, average hourly rate, new training, client satisfaction score (NPS), etc

  1. What are your goals to improve Efficiency?
    Such as: turnaround times, client inquiry response time, streamline systems, automate communications, etc.
  1. What are your goals to make a greater Impact?

Such as: team engagement and happiness, community involvement, thought-leadership initiatives, fulfilling what you deem as your business’s purpose, lower environmental footprint, etc. 

To sharpen the validity of your goals and determine which you should prioritise, use these questions as your soundboard check.

  • Is this goal in line with our long-term vision for the business?
  • Do we have clear reasons as to why achieving this goal is important to the business?
  • Is this the right time to be working towards this goal?
  • Do we have the capacity and resources to realistically achieve this goal
    (i.e., people, time, cash, the right space)? 

5 steps to turn your ‘goal conversations’ into action (and actualisation!).

  1. Ask yourself – what is the ‘key result’ to signify if my goal has (or has not) been reached?
  • Example WITHOUT key result:  “We want to increase our team efficiency (productivity)”
  • Example WITH key result: “We want to increase our team efficiency (productivity) and see our average hourly rate increase from $160 to $200.”
  1. List the ‘activities’ required to make each goal a likely outcome.
  • Example: if your goal is to “increase revenue by 15% to 1.8million”- your activities might include:

–    Increase our capacity by hiring 2 new people

–    Invest in a marketing expert’s help to generate new leads.

  1. Allocate responsibility – determine who’s accountable for making your ‘activities’ happen (teams or key individuals).
  • Tip: the aim is to divide and conquer! Friendly warning: if your goal plan is 100% reliant on you, you might be setting yourself up to fail (even burn out).
  1. Link each ‘activity’ or ‘key result’ to a relevant measure of success, i.e. key performance indicator (KPI). So, you can effectively track, measure, and evaluate monthly progress towards each goal.
  • Tip: Aside from the typical financial KPIs (e.g., monthly sales revenue), you could track:

–    your number of monthly referrals

–    your team engagement score


5. Lastly, put it all on paper. Ideally into an Action Plan and use it as a tool to map the right next steps with your team.

  • Tip: People are more motivated when they know what they need to do, and they can see how their role is contributing to progress.