Each entrepreneur and their business rely on goals. How many times you have set a goal in your head that you want to achieve, and you have not achieved it? The answer is probably many times.
Business goals must be achieved, and they are not a subject that can be set it and forget it. But, how can be increased efficiency in achieving personal and business goals of an entrepreneur? The answer is a commitment to achieve those goals.
What are the Goals?
The goals are simply something that should be achieved within a certain period of time in the future. They are composed from:
- Something that should be achieved. For example, the goal is increasing sales.
- Period of time in which it must be achieved. For example, the goal is increasing sales in the next year.
- Measurable indicator that can tell us whether or not it is achieved. For example, the goal is 20% increasing in sales in the next year.
Business Growth if we Achieve the Goals
I write the blog post about How You Can Achieve the Personal and Business Goals in 2010 where you can find the process to achieve the goals.
Entrepreneurial Commitment for Achieving the Business Goals
The most important thing about achievement is an entrepreneurial commitment. Imagine a goal of an entrepreneur where he/she is not obligated to achieve. Does this have a logic?
If an entrepreneur is not obligated to achieve the goals then will their employees will be obligated to achieve it? I do not believe that employees will commit themselves to achievement in such a situation.
Therefore, here I want to present the five steps that you as an entrepreneur will need to perform if you want to commitment towards achieving:
1. Make sure that they are achievable.
The biggest enemy of achieving the goals is setting up unrealistic business goals. For example, if you set the goal to increase sales by 500%, although growth of the industry is lower than 10% it is sure that 500% would be unrealistic.
If you notice that some goal cannot be achieved, simply adjust it in the line of reality. For example, use 15% increasing in sales instead of 500%. The goal with 15% would be much more realistic, and certainly it will be as an imperative for you and your business to achieve it because it is above-average in the industry.
2. Use specific sentences in the goals.
Imagine the goal from our example above: increasing sales in the future. For how much we will need to increase the sales? In which period of time we will need to increase the sales? This is a really confusing and undetermined goal. If you do not know what to achieve and when to achieve probably you will not even try to achieve it.
3. Write the goals on the paper.
There are different scientific researches that has proven that if you put something on paper commitment to that something is much greater. In his book Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini gives an example from Korean war in which the Chinese soldiers in the camps where he held prisoners (soldiers) were looking for written statements that communism is better than the US system to write on the paper. Thus a long time they were committed to his own statement in which basically they did not believe it.
If the goals are written on paper they will be in a category with a more commitment than the goals that remain only in our head.
4. Determine the activities that must be accomplished.
Knowing the activities that must be implemented to achieve the goals in advance will increase the level of commitment to the goal. Therefore, once you have the goal on paper, list the activities.
5. Assign responsible for each activity.
At the end of each activity assign responsibility for implementations. In such a way, the commitment will be transferred on the employees, and in the same time will assure achievement.
If you follow these steps in setting and achieving your business goals, the likelihood of achieving the goal will be much higher. I wish you a good luck!
Popularity: 5% [?]
About Dragan
Thank you for those 5 steps for making ourselves committed towards our goals. I have been creating goals in my mind for years now and nothing seems to have happened. Although I had read that writing the goals will help I never wrote anything down on paper. Now I am planning of using this method of writing my goals and seeing them realized.
It’s so true that one must focus on more detailed goals rather than creating goals that you yourself become confused with. Having focused goals not only provide a distinct direction, it also makes them achievable.
The best solution is to have SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Time-Limited) goals and when you commit to them, success to achieve them will be here.