The ability to set and reach goals within your career is an important part of success in business. As a business leader, you need to be able to help others create and achieve their goals as well as your own. However, even the most ambitious and capable people can struggle with setting and meeting those ambitions. These steps can help you define and succeed at your goals and show others how to do so as well.
Identify Your Objectives
The first step is to think about your long-term ambitions. If this is about your company, you might look at the mission statement and think about how you could achieve it. If this is more about your personal success, you might consider where you want to be in a year, in five years and in ten years. At this stage, it’s okay to brainstorm and set your sights high. You can worry about how you are going to do these things in the later steps. If you’re working with a team, encourage them to set aside any judgment at this stage about the efficacy of their ideas.
Be Specific
Now, it’s time to look at those big ideas you generated and distill them into something more quantifiable. “I want to make a lot of money” is not specific. “I want to have $1 million in assets by the age of 30” is. You may find yourself consolidating or even eliminating some of the objectives you came up with in the first step since this part of this process requires you to look more closely at the underlying framework of your ambitions. You may also need to think about how you would define such terms as wealth or success. Whether you are setting goals for yourself, your team, or your company, frame them in a way that is both specific and measurable.
Write Down Specific Steps
When you set out on a journey, it’s not enough to identify where you want to go. You also need directions to get there. Goals are no different. Perhaps your aim is to reduce your debt so that you are better positioned to start your own company. You might have been very specific, writing down how much you want to reduce it in a certain amount of time, but how do you bridge the gap between where you are now and what you need to do to? You’ll need to make a list of how you can attack your debt. For example, one step might be refinancing student loans. You might be able to save money with a shorter repayment plan, lower monthly payments or both.
Make a Public Commitment
It can help if you are able to make yourself accountable to at least one person or even a team. You should set specific parameters for this as well. For example, how often will you check in? What do you expect to have accomplished at certain times? You might also want to build in rewards for accomplishments along the way to keep you motivated.
