5 Steps To Achieve Your Goals
If you’re frustrated by not achieving the goals you’ve set, you’re not alone.
Life and business is unpredictable. When you have to make difficult decisions every day to keep moving forward it’s a challenge to stay disciplined and focused on important but not urgent activities.
In this post, I’m outlining a simple and effective five step process to set and achieve your business goals.
I know this works because I’ve been using it myself for the last several years to make accomplishing my business and financial goals easier.
The Five Step Process To Accelerate Your Progress Towards Achieving Your Goals
1. Take Inventory
Make a list of your accomplishments in the last 12 months so you can zoom in on what made a positive impact. Highlight the important lessons, achievements, and transformations that come to mind. Once you write down your initial thoughts, invite feedback from your team to add insights and consider different perspectives.
To complete this step, reflect on your list of highlights and underline what stands out.
2. Identify Improvement Areas
Before you take action on any plan, you need to have a clear starting point so you can identify the gaps between where you are and where you want your business to be. I recommend completing a S.W.O.T review (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to assess where you are today and identify your best opportunities for improvement.
To complete a S.W.O.T. review write down, at least, one idea for each area of the S.W.O.T. If you have a team, engage them in the process as well by gathering ideas from all your key people. While you may feel some resistance to initiating this step because it sounds time intensive, the result is worth it and you can complete it within 30-45 minutes.
To complete this step, assess the ideas generated through your S.W.O.T review and make a list of three to five key areas of your business you want to focus on improving over the next year.
3. Set Actionable Goals
The next step is to set actionable goals. Write down one to three actionable goals (maximum) you want to achieve in each quarter over the next year. Limiting the number of goals you set is important so you can narrow the focus on what matters most and avoid stretching resources too thin.
To make goals actionable, you need to be able to turn each one into a project that can be broken down into specific tasks you can schedule, delegate, and complete within the next 90 days.
I use this variation of the ‘SMART’ acronym as a guideline to ensure my goals are actionable:
Specific – Avoid vague statements like increase sales or pay off debt. For example, increase revenue by $50,000 is more specific. Because the goal aims at a measurable result, you can identify what specific products or services you’re going to focus on selling to achieve it. Retain 90% of existing customers and reduce administrative overhead costs by 15% are also good examples of specific goals. To create specificity use a number or percentage and write down exactly what success looks like, so the finish line is clear.
Meaningful – Write down why each goal you set matters. If your goals move you closer to realizing a vision driven by a clear purpose, you’ll maintain motivation and inspiration that’ll fuel momentum to succeed.
Attainable – Visualize the path to reach each goal by identifying what needs to happen or come together to realize your desired outcome. You need to be able to achieve every goal you set within 30 to 90 days to get on your actionable list.
Required – Ensure the goals you set are essential to improve your priority areas of focus.
Timed – Set the desired date you’d like to achieve each goal by and stagger deadlines so you can make progress incrementally every quarter and assess results.
To complete this step, write down the list of goals you want to accomplish this year and highlight one to three you want to focus on accomplishing in the next 90 days. Use the ‘SMART’ acronym above as your guide to ensure each goal is actionable.
4. Turn Goals Into Projects
Break the goals you’ve set for the next 90 days down into projects and make a list of action steps that can be scheduled, assigned and tracked until completion.
Use each goal as the title of every project you need to complete.
To complete this step, write out your list of action steps for each goal and turn your goals into projects. Schedule all the tasks that need to be completed and track your progress weekly.
5. Schedule Quarterly Reviews
Block time in your calendar to review your progress and financial reports every quarter so you can identify what’s working, what’s not and make changes proactively. The greatest obstacle to achieving your desired results is becoming discouraged if goals take longer than expected to achieve and losing sight of what matters most as a result. Use your quarterly review to remind you of your vision and organize day-to-day activities as needed to stay on track. And, celebrate the small wins along the way to fuel motivation.
Remember, it’s not about perfection; it’s about incremental progress. Don’t overthink it. Reaching goals is never a straight line. Regular reviews are essential so you can tweak priorities and adjust tasks along the way to keep improving.
To complete this step, schedule a date and time on your calendar to complete a quarterly review.
Are you ready to get clear on what you want to accomplish in the next 90 days? Time to schedule a date with yourself to go through this process.