Have you ever had a lofty dream that seemed impossible, a wish so far past your reality that you never ended up pursuing it? I am here to tell you to dream big because big dreams can come true with hard work and proper planning. Today, I will share with you the key steps to breaking down your business goals and how to align them with your core business values.
How to Set Goals Aligned to Your Values
In our last article, we spoke about the importance of creating a value-driven business. The next step in this process is creating goals that align with the core values of your business.
It is easy for a business to forget their core values when they are focusing on day-to-day tasks. They can get tunnel vision on monetary or publicity goals, but the values that are supposed to be a part of the journey get left out. That is why it is critical to make them a priority in your goals, both long- and short-term.
When designing your long-term and short-term business goals, be sure to include your values into the language and actions of your goals. An excellent example given by Forbes was, “We are going to achieve a 5% increase in market share by using the highest level of integrity to offer only the best solutions to our clients.” They have it written right into the wording, integrity. Now, they have to create actions to match. How would you offer integrity as an actionable solution?
One Year Goals Aligned to Your Business Strategy
Now that you understand how to align your goals with your values, you need them to also align with your big-picture business strategy. Long-term plans are vital as they force you to think about the future and determine where you want your business to go and what you want to achieve.
While making a 5-year business plan is helpful, there is a good chance that it will veer off course due to things beyond your control. The COVID pandemic is a prime example of this! That is why I recommend you focus your efforts on creating one-year goals that are achievable and actionable.
Every business is going to have different goals, but here are a few examples to get you started:
- Establishing a customer profile
- Developing a marketing plan
- Sustaining a successful financial budget
- Creating a website or social media channel
- Learning a new skill
- Hiring an employee
- Designing a new product
If you are a more established business looking to grow, you can even put it into numbers like:
- Financial growth by X%
- Staff retention by X%
- Website view increase by X%
How to Break Down Your Business Goals
Big picture goals are great, but they are often so large that they seem impossible to achieve. That is why you must break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
First, take your primary goal and split it into 12 actionable steps, one for each month of the year. Then you take each of those 12 actionable steps, and you break them down into 4 smaller steps, one for each week. Lastly, you take those smaller steps (48 if you are counting) and break them down again into 5 mini-steps, one for each day of the business week. Your objective is to accomplish one thing each day for your goal.
Taking a bunch of small steps is much easier to accomplish than one giant step. Your little step could be as small as making an appointment, shopping for supplies, or scheduling posts on social media. As long as you are making progress each day, you are headed in the right direction.
How Do I Make These Actionable Steps?
Breaking down business goals can be challenging, especially when you don’t know what you don’t know. As a business coach and successful business owner, I am here to show you how. Book a FREE discovery appointment with me today. We will talk about your goals, what you want to accomplish, and how I can help you get there.