Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, ancient peoples began the practice of making annual promises to the gods, or perhaps their king or queen about loyalty to the throne. That practice has endured to this day.
We have all made them: more exercise, weight loss, a focus on spirituality perhaps. From experience, we probably all know that by the summer, if not by the spring, that those resolutions fall by the wayside. In fact, almost 80% of such resolutions fail by February.
QUESTION: What does this teach us as business owners and entrepreneurs?
This teaches us that identifying goals, without developing a realistic plan that includes defined, actionable steps is a recipe for failure.
Perhaps you want to grow your company’s revenue by 10% year over year. Perhaps you want to drive more traffic to your online store. Perhaps you want to expand into a new geographic market.
These goals are all achievable if you do three things. First, you have to define realistic goals based on your current situation. For example, if you have never run a 5k distance before, making a New Year Resolution that you are going to run a marathon by March is clearly unrealistic. But, you can create a plan to to run a 5k distance with some training and some hard work.
Secondly, you must create a written plan that includes defined, actionable steps to achieve your objective. In our 5k run example, you go out and find a training program from a coach or experienced runner and then perhaps you tailor that plan to your own personal needs.
Thirdly, you need someone to hold you accountable for your progress within the plan. Did you find a training partner? Did you hire a coach? For small business owners and executives, it is very easy to become consumed with short term, tactical issues on a day to day basis and lose sight of a strategic objective. For entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs, this is often difficult, but it does not have to be that way.
Having a trusted professional in your corner that has been through the planning process many times before is one way to insure that you will be on the right path to success. That professional should not only guide you in defining the goal and developing the plan, but also should have periodic sessions with you (online meetings, conference calls, or in person) to ensure that you are making progress as planned. Then you are likely to achieve your goal.
You can read more about this topic in Chapter Seven of risk, create change: a survival guide for startups and creators, which available on Amazon.